Going through my childhood as I clean out my moms home. Any recommendations for digitizing these? I’ve checked legacybox but they charge per reel. These are short reels so would end up costing a fortune. Would it be worth somehow transferring to one larger reel which would count as one reel therefore much cheaper. If so, how would I do this? Or is there a company that would charge by foot instead? Amy advice appreciated.
I used a wolverine 8mm film converter. It was around $400.
It stops the film and takes an image, so the film needs to be in decent shape. It only runs at 2 captures per second, so 50 foot reels take ~30 minutes.
I captured around (20) 50 foot reels, and (25) 400 foot reels with just a few issues. Sometimes damaged film prevents it from moving properly and repeated frames occur, or the machine will jam up, but these are resolved easily.
Once captured, you need to stabilize the frames because the raw video is very shaky and the frame rate is captured at 24 fps when 8 mm film is closer to 18-20 fps.
It helps to setup a film cleaning system to keep dust off the captures. I setup a few brushes and passed the film through them. Professional setups will use fluid baths.
Overall, it was worth the purchase. The digitized quality is very good. There is slight room for improvement which are definitely solved by $2000+ setups.
I considered paying for professional services but it seemed I was looking at $1000+. Also considered recording from a projector, but that produces very poor results.