howIseeit wrote:
I have followed the Scanner topic with more than usual interest as its something I am involved right now. Here is the thing, I do have a quality HP scanner that did good job before I cant no longer use it on the Imac it doest accept the install. Well so be it, but now I am reading on here all the great things about the lens reverse/macro process and I am exited to say the least.
I recently sucumbed to the GAS syndrome and splurge for the little scanner from China/120.00 greenbacks. Just because it promised to what has been my life passion.
The contraption turned out to be huge wash and am going to sell it, after one hour of use. Seems ok for everything but the 8mm frames and that was my reason to buy it.
By the way its called QPIX, does 110, 135, 126 and of course the coveted super 8 format it says 14mp scan but its interpolated, whatever that is, cant be any good.
Let me explain, in the sixties I was nuts about cameras and a certified nut using them. I knew nothing about those rings on the lens and it was all crap shoot most of the time. If I acidently made a reasonable picture it was for all my friends to see, whether they want or not, I might ad.
Then the cinema bug bit me, hard! got to have that 8mm camera or I will die and be forgotten. Got me a fancy spring wound contraption and i was a movie maker on earth at least.
Nothing was safe from my prying fast triple lens, Bollens camera comes to mind.
Those spools pilled up and eventually I proudly glued them together as I was also a proud owner of a noisy projector and got tired of changing the short reels, of 25feet or so. My images were not impressive though, plenty of blurr. The old camera had light leak somewhere in the housing and some of my shoots had interesting sunset in the picture......Oh must no forget, it had auto run ( but not time release) I even instructed my subject to move around as this was just like *movie* and there is no point just sitting still. So invariable i had some people wave at the lens.........
I just could not get it right, or to slow down the panning.....Now here is the thing, most of the outings were on the movie film now and there are some jewels in there, please dont say not likely..... And it is precisely those, precious and irreplaceable images I want to drag into the photoshop and make gasp... real photos, imagine real blue skies, real puffy white clouds!
So my quest is to scan the *single* frame images from different sessions and make * photographs*
So in short I need your ideas as to home project 8mm scanning, how many of you have done it and to what d\egree of success
anthony
I have followed the Scanner topic with more than u... (
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You need a scanner that can resolve the tiniest of details... AT LEAST 6400 PPI optical resolution. The frame size of regular 8 mm is 4.8 mm × 3.5 mm. At that resolution, a scan will be about 1200 x 900 pixels... barely enough for a 5" x 3.75" photo print. Unfortunately, a higher resolution scanner isn't going to resolve much more detail from film that small.
The sad fact of life is that your best choice may be to have your films transferred to video on DVD (or posted to YouTube or Vimeo).
Flatbed scanners are generally okay for scanning full frame 35mm film and larger. Dedicated film scanners can scan at higher resolution, but are very expensive.
You may be able to get a macrophotography rig set up to copy individual film frames. You will need a bellows unit mounted on a dSLR or mirrorless interchangeable lens camera. On the other end of the bellows, you need a flat-field apochromatic enlarging lens, or a true macro lens. The bellows needs to be long enough to magnify up to 8X life size, on full frame, or 6X on APS-C, or 4X on Micro 4/3. The film you are copying needs to be mounted in some sort of flat metal or plastic or cardboard mask, and placed over a highly diffused, color-correct light source, such as a 5000°K, 91 CRI slide viewer.
Such a setup isn't cheap, either, but can provide copies of 8mm film frames that can be enlarged far more, and more sharply, than a scanner can provide.
Of course, at 8X magnification, your images must be scrupulously clean. Any speck of dust or scratch will be a large imperfection in the final image. Maybe you can remove it in Photoshop, or maybe not.
The biggest problem with enlarging still frames from such small film is that the grain structure of the film becomes very visible. Remember the DISC film format from the early 1980s? The film images on that disc were 10x8mm, about four times larger in area than an 8mm film frame (and 2X larger on the diagonal). Remember how awful the images were? Well, images from 8mm will be twice as awful, because of the 2X greater magnification.
All that caution stated, you still may want to proceed, because the memories on that film are so precious to you.