You'd be better off getting one of those 8mm film boxes to capture your footage instead of taping it off a white wall. You will get much better results.

Here's an example I found on e-bay

Both RalphM and Jsnkc's suggestions are excellent. I transfer 8mm and Super8mm using the Workprinter (the "ultimate" way to transfer, but not something for casual use). The toughest thing to get right is the color. Some people reocmmend doing a manual white balance on the bare bulb; some recommend doing a white balance using a pure white section of white (not clear) leader; others recommend using the default tungsten or default outdoor white balance settings. I've tried them all, and none work all the time, for all different film types and exposures. Try each one and see what works best.

Also, whether you continue to capture off the wall (not a great idea), or use the transfer box, or a slightly gray reflecting device, make sure you expose for the highlights. By this I mean, make sure that a white shirt still looks like a shirt, and you can still see detail in the shirt. Let the shadows look dark. You may have to adjust exposure manually to do this. Then, use Vegas to adjust the shadows, if necessary (use the gamma control in Color Corrector, or use the Color Curves -- use the VideoScope to check the levels while you're making adjustments -- BillyBoy has some very useful color and level correction tutorials that will assist you in doing these corrections).

johnmeyer,
So you invested in the Workprinter. I hear the captures are excellent.... I chose the Cinemate as the real time transfer was important to me. I've run miles of 8/S8mm through it with really good results.

I'm trying to come up with a digital still camera to use in making good quality single frame captures off the Cinemate. Panasonic now has a 12X zoom FLZ10 (I think). Have you ever tried doing anything like this?

Way off topic for this thread, if you wish I'm at rmorris21942 at yahoo.com

I'm trying to come up with a digital still camera to use in making good quality single frame captures off the Cinemate. Panasonic now has a 12X zoom FLZ10 (I think). Have you ever tried doing anything like this?

I went through a calculation of the actual pixel resolution of Super 8mm film. Let me see if I can remember where I did that ... here in this forum? ... ah, here it is:

Super 8mm Film Resolution

As you will see, my conclusion in that thread is that for 8mm, and probably for Super 8mm as well, the resolution of a DVD camera is pretty close to the resolution of the film itself. This is definitely true if your film stock is Ektachrome (the Super 8 mm Ektachrome was/is really grainy -- I just took my camera out of mothballs for the first time in twenty years last August because someone wanted Super 8mm film of their wedding. Long story for another thread about how to rebuild the exposure meter batteries for the long obsolete mercury batteries ... but that's for another thread. Anyway, the Ektachrom was really grainy. A still camera wouldn't have grabbed anything more than my DV camera).

Despite my conclusion that a higher resolution camera wouldn't give me much better results, I did briefly look into using still cameras, especially since this would be easy to do with the Workprinter (it would be pretty tough with the Cinemate, however). The problem is that I couldn't find any still camera that was rated to shoot continously at any reasonable frame rate (although the Olympus model that has the 10x zoom came close).

The other thing to think about is that if you are ultimately going to put the results on NTSC or PAL format (DVD or otherwise), any increased resolution will be mostly lost.

Of course, if you plan cature from 16mm film, and you have a way to put the results on some sort of HD material, then that's a whole 'nother story.

Johnmeyer,
Positioning the Cinemate to a single frame is no problem. I tried using my Coolpix 995 but the X4 optical zoom just couldn't bring the image to any reasonable size.

As grainy as 8mm is, there are sometimes frames that would be treasured by family members as prints.

Actually, one of the needs is to pick off some stills from Silent 16 color. I modified a variable speed Revere projector so that the film is backlit and I use the mirror/lens assembly from the Cinemate. Beautiful captures although it does take a lot of attention to keep the flicker dialed out.

Nero74,

Since no one actually answered your question, here is the answer:

The Color Correction filter.

Gary