I agree with John. I have transferred many thousands of feet of 8mm, super 8 and super 8 sound for my own use. If you want good results it is essential you use the right equipment. I used Moviestuff's WorkPrinter XP from http://www.moviestuff.tv/8mm_telecine.html. With a small quanity of film to transfer I would check with the transfer service and find out what process equipment they use and make sure it is a frame by frame capture. If you plan on editing and authoring the movies, and you have a DV video camera, I would have the movies transferred to your camera's DV tape format.

Ed B

Ralph Morris is part of this forum and does a ton of these using the workprinter. I've seen his work and it's very well done, either to hard drive or DV tape.

I'm sure his contact information is here or you can email me at chenopup at gmail dot com and I'll send it to you.

cheno

Something I didn't mention in my last post. Roger Evans, the inventor of the Workprinter, spends a lot of time in the forum there. You might ask him if he can recommend a Workprinter-enabled transfer shop near you. A month ago, I just shipped 19 cans of 16mm film back to Chicago, and it cost $$$. Yesterday I transferred 31 cans (400 ft. reels) and have to ship those back to Minnesota. The person I'm doing them for (for free) sent me a check for $115 just to cover shipping. Point is, the shipping costs are an issue, and you may be uncomfortable potentially losing valuable film in the mail.

All that said, if there is someone on this forum that will do them for you, that's even better. You should ask him about how he cleans the film and how he does the color correction, something that is pretty tricky (and for which Vegas Color Corrector earns it stripes every day -- why Sony didn't continue to add features of this caliber in the last two "modest" release is beyond me).

Although the results won't be as pristine as proper telecine, I've had a fair degree of success projecting onto plain white card and shooting with video camera.

Two things to watch out for are lamp hotspots on screen and slight distortion (correctable "in post") of frame shape because of offset position.

I did this many years ago with a VHS camera, and am thinking of repeating with HDV for much better quality.

You might be able to find a lab with a S8 gate for their telecine but not a cheap option, a superviced transfer does give the best results.

Having said that the difference can be pretty minor, I've seen how my own work done on a rather clapped out Elmo telecine compared to a Bosch telecine and to be honest it was pretty hard to pick the difference.
A lot depends on the quality of the film that you have to start with. A lot of what I used to work with was pretty aweful when it was shot and it'd certainly gone downhill since.

Bob.

I wouldn't go too crazy trying to get pristine results from Super 8.
It was never a pristine format to begin with.
So I can second Ralph Morris as a wonderful resource for these transfers. I had him do my entire 8mm collection to DV and it's fine.

We had one piece of film that was shot 53 years ago and had never been projected. It came out spectacular! Of course the "never been projected" part is paramount to success - having avoided dust and scratches.
But by and large, the dust and scratches that do appear simply add to the look, anyway.
You can contact him thru the forum: He's "RalphM".
Highly recommended.
v

Thanks for the kind words Cheno and Vic - I'm really gratified that you approved of my work.

I do want to clarify one point. Much of the discussion here has mentioned Roger Evan's WorkPrinters. I use one of Roger's CineMate units.

The difference bretween the two is that the WorkPrinter is a frame-accurate device (one film frame for one video frame). WorkPrinters transfer at about 6 frames per second; CineMates transfer at either 15 or 20 frames per second. While CineMates are flicker free, they are not frame accurate.

All my transfers are supervised and I ride the camera controls to counteract brightness changes, color shift and fading. While I would love to use a WorkPrinter, it would triple the time for each transfer. With many clients bringing 4 to 10 hours of material, few would want to pay for for my increased labor hours.

My experience is that lighting, focus, processing, and proper storage of the original films are the biggest impacts on the quality of the transfer.

RalphM

Don't know where you're at but I just had a bunch of regular & super 8mm film transferred by this lab:

http://colorlab.com/archives/home_movie.html

They use "non-sprocket drive Rank Cintel film-to-tape machines" and have offices in Rockville, MD & NY city. Not cheap, either. They also clean the film & splice all the little reels together onto another archival quality reel. Hey, I even have a little clip where I compared a old transfer to VHS that a cousin had done about 10 years ago (& I captured from VHS) to the Colorlab work. Titles show the "old" vs. "new" section.

To view, it's probably better to right click on the link, pick "Save As," and save to your computer to view (file's about 33MB):

Sample Transfer

"All my transfers are supervised and I ride the camera controls to counteract brightness changes, color shift and fading. While I would love to use a WorkPrinter, it would triple the time for each transfer. With many clients bringing 4 to 10 hours of material, few would want to pay for for my increased labor hours."

This is why I only transfer 8mm movies as a courtesy. I recently transferred 8mm movies taken in 1939. In addition to correcting the exposure and color balance problems, the 1939 vintage movie cameras, at least the ones I have seen, did not frame consistantly. This required a frame adjustment for almost every scene change. I used a 3 CCD Sony TRV-950 to capture to keep the dark noise at a minimum. I also used Roger Evan's cleaning method with a leader inserted every 50 feet to searve as a starting and landing pad for cleaning. You can argue that all these steps are not necessary and no one would pay for my time which is why I do it as a courtesy. :)

Ed

also used Roger Evan's cleaning method ...

I haven't seen that described. Is it at his site (moviestuff.tv)? Or can you briefly describe? I am still not satisfied with my cleaning technique.

You can definitely spend hours and hours perfecting the transfer. The color is the toughest for me. The HDRAGC AVISynth plugin that I discovered a few weeks ago has made a huge difference in getting the gamma correct. As for exposure during the transfer, I use the spotlight mode on my FX1, and then create six PPV menus, each with a increment in exposure decrement. I use zebra control at 100 (not 100+) and then ride the PPV menu to make the zebras disappear. I set the exposure response to FAST.

The advantage of this approach is that I still get auto exposure so I don't have to react instantly. The only thing that is still a problem is when I get a section of film that is grossly underexposed. I have the exposure set so that I use the ND1 filter. When I hit one of these underexposed sections, I remove that filter. Works well, but I lose a little of the beginning of a dark scene (unless I want to stop and go back).

I'm killing time here because I'm waiting for the post-processing on reel 26 of 31 reels to finish. I then have to edit almost six hours of 16mm film. I sure wish there was a way to automate or at least speed the color correction.

"I haven't seen that described. Is it at his site (moviestuff.tv)? Or can you briefly describe? I am still not satisfied with my cleaning technique."

The following is Roger Evans description of his cleaning process:

"Here is how we clean film. You will need 8 things:

a) Soft white cotton t-shirt ( no polyester blend)

b) Edwal's Anti-stat film cleaner or similar film cleaner

c) Pair of rewinds. The rewind mechanism on the projectors is not
suitable, being too fast.

d) Kodak universal splicer or similar splicer that handles the film gauge
you are using

e) Appropriate good leader in the gauge you are using

f) A small desk lamp

g) Large ziploc lunch bags

h) A selection of good holding reels and a take-up reel


Here are the steps:

10 Make sure your take-up reel is clean and dust free.

2) If necessary, add good leader to the front end. This will make loading
easier and will let you know that the projector is running correctly prior
to the film entering the gate. If the leader runs smoothly and the film
doesn't, there might be damaged or stretched film.

3) Wind the film from left to right onto the take-up reel and add leader to
the end.

4) Before rewinding, check the original source reel for damage or warping
that might cause it to feed improperly during transfers. Replace it if
necessary with one that is open and smooth running. Also, make sure that
you clean the reel so that you don't rewind your freshly cleaned film onto a
dusty reel. Older regular 8mm reels often have either film dust or mildew
on them. Cleaning them with alcohol and lint-free paper towels is a good
idea.

4) Liberally apply film cleaner to a single fold of cloth.

5) Fold the cloth around the film, holding it firmly between your right
thumb and index finger. Again, this should be a single thickness of cloth
and not several layers.

6) Start in the leader and squeeze firmly as you rewind slowly with your
left hand. This may seem counter-intuitive and scratching the film may seem
likely, but it will not be damaged due to the film cleaner keeping things
moist. However, you need to maintain even, firm pressure to create a
"squeegee" effect across the entire width of the film. This will prevent
any lint or dust from getting by the cloth. You will notice some of the dye
coming off on the cloth. This is normal and your film will not be damaged.

7) Rewind as slowly as necessary to let the cleaner evaporate. Placing the
desk lamp nearby will help expedite the drying and will also allow you to
see the cleaner as it dries. Don't stop until you are completely rewound.

8} Place the cleaned film in a ziploc bag and seal it until you are ready
to transfer.

NOTE: One liberal application of cleaner will be good for a 50-foot roll.
Do not use the same area of cloth more than once. Also, if you are putting
more than one reel on a 400-foot reel, leave the leader between them for
separation. This provides a handy "stopping off point" during cleaning to
allow for re-application of more cleaner and to brush away any debris that
collected. Make sure that you check both the top surface and the bottom
surface of the film for collected lint, dust, debris, etc. This should be
removed gently with a piece of cloth by brushing to one edge. When you
continue cleaning, overlap the previously cleaned area of leader a bit to
ensure total coverage. Keep the cloth in a large Ziploc bag when not in
use. "

I use ECCO VSF299 cleaner which can be used on sound striped film.

Ed

PS I transferred using a Sony TRV-950 which did not have a exposure response adjustment. Worse case it took 2 -3 frames for the TRV950 to correct the exposure. I found it was a lot easier to edit out the 2 frames then backing up and redoing and correcting exposure in editing gave unacceptable results.

Ed

THANKS VERY MUCH Everyone!!
Great Info!!!