I have hundreds of feet of 8mm home movies that my parents stored in their attic. In Hawaii. For ten years. Any attempts to uncurl the film just breaks it. Can you think of any way to recover the images?Steve,

Hope all is going well.

First question: what does the film smell like? I'm sure you've heard of the "vinegar syndrome" where the film's acetate backing starts to break down into acetic acid. If you've done B&W darkroom work, you'll recognize the smell because acetic acid is what we used to put in the stop bath, in between the developer and fixer. It smells almost the same as vinegar. If your film smells like that, you don't have many options.

Vinegar Syndrome ("VS") can be stopped using a "chemical sieve" that Kodak created many years ago (I have a one gallon tin of the stuff), but most people don't have access to this, and once the film shrinks, curls, and gets brittle from VS, you cannot undo that: you can only slow it down.

So, if your film smells like this, then it cannot be transferred by any means because the film falls apart when handled, and each frame will be a different size, due to the uneven shrinkage. You might be able to use a flatbed scanner to grab a few frames from each part of the film, and that is what I suggest that you do, sooner rather than later.

If the film doesn't smell like vinegar, and is merely dried out from hot storage, you might be able to get it pliable again (and relax the curling) by using one of two methods. The first method is to soak the film in a product called "Filmrenew." You can find information on this, and other preservation techniques at sites like these:

Film Preservation Basics

Film Forever

Another chemical that has been used forever is camphor. In fact, old film often smells like mothballs (which is camphor in solid form) because that was often put into the film can to help keep the film pliable. You can Google and find various sites that describe how to soak the film in a solution which includes camphor.

Some of the professional transfer companies which use a Rank Cintel or Spirit transfer system might be able to transfer the film because those machines don't have a loop and rapid start/stop torture path that film must endure when put through a projector. However, they will only take your film if it is not infected with VS. No one will touch (literally) VS film because it leaves behind a chemical residue in the transfer machine, and these particles can infect good film. VS is a chemical, not a biological process, but the way it spreads is similar to a bacteria or virus.

I actually have tried, on two occasions, to transfer VS film. I'd get about ten frames transferred and then the film would break. I'd start again, and the same thing would happen. I did manager to get a few minutes of intermittent motion, and the client was happy, but it took three hours of compressed air, alcohol soaked Q-tips, lots of paper towels and rags, before the machine was clean.

Like most other people, I now refuse to transfer VS film.

Now that Blackmagic Design is about to release a new Cintel film scanner, at a bargain basement price of $30K (compared to previous versions) the business of re-scanning old films might become an affordable business again.

The initial machine is 16/35mm only, but there is some talk of them producing narrower film gauges.

See here: http://www.blackmagicdesign.com/products/cintel

I didn't know Blackmagic bought Cintel; Rank owned them for a long, long time.

The new unit sure looks small compared to the original $300K+ machines. It does indeed seem like a bargain basement price. This will give Roger Evans a run for his money. He has increased the quality of his transfer systems and now builds his own, but the price has increased from the $500 I paid for one of his beta units over a decade ago, to $5,000 and up for his new designs. However, the Cintel approach handles the film much more delicately and provides much more even illumination (a problem with all designs based on a projector). If I were doing this as a full-time business, and could amortize the equipment cost over several years, it would be very tempting to go with this unit.

Thanks for posting!