8mm Film to DV

Jimco wrote on 12/30/2002, 9:24 AM

I have been tasked with transferring some of my wife's family's old 8mm film to DV. Their projector, unfortunately, is not variable speed and is a 2 blade system. The flicker is extreme.

Has anyone out there had any luck in reducing flicker without using a variable speed projector, 5-blade system, transfer box, or telecine? (I know, you're laughing.)

Jim

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mjdog wrote on 1/2/2003, 2:33 PM

Jimco - glad to hear of your success. Over the holidays while visiting family, I shipped my dad's old 8mm projector (needs new bulb though) and 20 odd reels back to my house and hope to convert them to DV.

Question: did you project the video onto a white piece of foamcore and have the camera next to the projector. If so, what was the distance between projector and white board. Were you shooting in a dark/almost dark room? Any other details you can give from your experiments?

Summersond wrote on 1/6/2003, 9:14 AM

I have been doing this for years and have found that I can only get decent results when using a variable speed projector (actually 3 now.) I have one for 8MM, one for super 8, and one for 16MM. All variable speed. The 16MM one is REALLY old, but hey, it does the job. I use a really white piece of paper that has very fine grain, tacked on the wall. I use a very fine grain because if it has any grain in it, it will show up on the camera when you focus on the picture. I set my camera and projector about 5' back from the wall with the camera just to the side and the same height as the projector. You want to try to keep the angle between the projector, wall and camera as small as possible so there is no distortion in the picture. I can adjust the speed of the projector to stop any flicker and I shoot the picture at 60fps NTSC. It is best to have the room dim so when you set the color temp on the camera for the projector light, the ambient light wont interfere with the picture quality.
You will have to ride the focus on a lot of the film, because when they splice the 50' reels together, it will sometimes throw off the focus when the splice runs thru the projector. Also, on older films, pe prepared to stop and splice occasionally, as the film is starting to get brittle.

my 2 cents worth,
dave