DIY 8mm Film Scanner - A Brief Guide
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- Опубліковано 28 чер 2024
- Over the summer of 2020 I made a DIY film scanner for 8mm film and thought I'd share. Feel free to ask questions in the comments if you have any
Resources:
An excellent guide that includes Photoshop scripts for processing the image files: keneckert.com/kenfilms/teleci...
Guide for building a shutter release cable: www.instructables.com/How-to-...
Another very impressive and well-documented system: github.com/etiennecollomb/Sup...
Custom 3d printed GT2 timing pulley: adskfusion360/sta...
The STL files for my timing pulley: drive.google.com/drive/folder...
0:00 Introduction
1:53 Overview
2:43 Feeding the Film
5:04 Capturing Images
6:40 Maintaining Tension
8:27 Conclusion
Pretty cool to see all the ways people have developed to capture their films. I think it comes down to what we have on hand in combination with who we are. Thanks. I enjoyed the video.
$10 to start. $60 if you want a chair.
Rube Goldberg comes to mind. Clever set-up and it works! I would have gone sprocket-less, with a capstan feed, otherwise, nice project.
You said you used a gravity system, and then, "Here's how that works," after which you said it's the end of the video and skipped that part. :/
I will say that there is a desperate need in the market for an 8mm film capture system that produces high quality scans. The Wolverine and similar products (which all seem to use the same basic parts) produce poor quality scans of each frame. I have captured movies in real time by shining a projector on cardstock on the wall and capturing with a miniDV camcorder (with firewire going into an older MacBook Pro and capturing with older iMovie HD). This works ok, and gives me twice the resolution of the Wolverine, but it's still half the quality I'd get from doing a quality scan per frame like you're doing.
Surely someone could build a system for under $1000 that solves the "advance the frames" problem and either provides a decent built-in camera (4megapixel+) or lets you attach your own.
Your DIY system looks cool, but obviously isn't doable by many people.
You may be interested in my project. An old projector solves the transport problem. Replace the bulb with a LED. Use a digital microscope for the camera. Attach camera with magnets to allow it to be positioned.
That's the coolest invention I seen. I'm impressed.
Ha, not an invention. This kind of system was already invented a long time ago.
Fine video. Thank you for the inspiration
This is genius! Thanks for sharing.
Awesome Dude!
Brilliant!
Interesting, Dylan. I'd like to know more about your camera settings. I see the Canon's dial is on manual, so you've locked off the ISO, white balance, shutter speed and aperture? How does the nifty-fifty perform on the end of so many extension rings? I use a Laowa 25mm f/2.8 2.5-5x macro lens on my Sony A7Rii to do roughly the same thing, but focus on such a tiny film frame is problematic, to say the least, and DoF is slivver-thin tiny.
Yes, better to use the silent / electronic shutter. Not familiar with Cannon, but it might have the option. Did you really mean a gravity fed system for the takeup reel, or a slip clutch. That clip got lost somewhere but we can see below a belt that goes around a 7" film reel and the the motor.
Any issues wtih precision single frame advance? That's 4.321mm +- 0.01mm per frame.
Very clever and practical!
Good point. If I did this again I would probably use electronic shutter mode.
The precision of the single-frame advance didn't need to be perfect, but it was good enough for the perforations to end up in the same general area. I used a Photoshop script to line up the frames to near pixel-perfect precision.
Hi mate! Just starting out on my project build - what do you need the Custom 3d printed GT2 timing pulley for? Doesn't the stepper motor just go straight into your heisted sprocket? I feel like I might be missing a step! Awesome video, and inspired me to make my own, though instead of a camera, I'm going to be feeding it through a Plustek 8200i scanner!
Glad my project was able to inspire you to make your own scanner. You have the right main idea: the sprocket was connected to the stepper motor, which precisely let film run through the system. The custom timing pulley was part of the gravity fed system to maintain tension on the film. I used the biggest timing pulley I could fit in my setup to maximize efficiency (i.e. the bigger that timing pulley, the more feet of film is moved per foot the weight moves downwards). The role of the stepper motor was not to power the movement of the film, but rather to selectively release tension supplied by gravity. Without the stepper motor, the weight would fall quickly to the ground and the film would run through in an uncontrolled manner. Hope I could clarify things; good luck on your project!
Very interesting. Results look good. Did you use the script you have given the link to in the resources to line up each frame afterwards using photoshop? I am just testing my build and I have slight variations (mainly up/down rather than sideways) between each frame.
Yes, I used batch processing in photoshop to run the script over every frame. It corrects the slight jitters between each frame quite nicely but takes a while. It actually takes longer to process the frames than to capture them, at least with my hardware.
this is a bit of genius.
Im having a problem where the display is showing the image properly, but when I watch the SD card either in display or on PC the footage rolls up and down. I can record fine on some super 8 and others it rolls........ Any suggestions?
good show, I;m trying to build one also for boy scout project
.....The gravity fed system....???! seems to be missing, but thanks for the general idea.
How does the gravity feed system work for the take up spool? You cut the video where you was going to explain
Oof, yeah I totally missed that bad edit.
There's a spool of fishing line connected to the pulley beneath the foam core. When the spool of fishing line rotates, the pulley rotates, and also the take up reel rotates. I run that fishing line up through a hook in my ceiling and hang a bag of coins from it. This weight pulls on the fishing line around the spool, which delivers some torque to the pulley, keeping the take up reel in tension. The bag of coins will slowly fall to the ground, so every few hours I have to reset and re-hang the bag of coins from the top (I tied alpine butterfly knots along the fishing line so there was always a loop to hook the weight to). I hope that was a coherent explanation!
@@dylanglenn4866 that's rather ingenious. I'm building a cine scanner using a flat bed scanner and am really struggling with the take up spool/reel. I'm g8 with electronics but hardware is killing me. I tried a spring loaded tension arm with a potentiometer and pid control but couldn't build it right. My next option is to use the tension arm with 2 lever micro switches. To adjust the speed.
ua-cam.com/video/BSTUYZD67xc/v-deo.html
This is my design.
"Here how that works... All right it's the end of the video." Noooooooo! 😂
I bet those monitors have those layers of diffusion sheets even if we _don't_ look.
And actually, it even depends on what _kind_ of monitor. So... what _kind_ of monitor?
LCD screens - take an old smashed laptop screen, pull it apart to get the different layers out - there's a nice diffusion piece in there :)
@@duk242: Oh, thanks, yeah, that makes sense. He should have been more specific.
So how did the take-up reel work? That's cut out of the video.
@@HelloKittyFanMan funny guy
@@bbrendon: I see that you corrected yourself up there, so that's cool. I wasn't trying to be funny though.
"Maybe one sprocket on the film at at time"? So only one of those wheels at a time? Or... did you mean "one sprocket _tooth_ on the film at a time"?
One frame at a time? That's what projectors already do, isn't it... stop-and-go at 18 or 24FPS?
"Here's how that works."
*END!*
Uhhh... uhhhmmm... HUHH?
Wow, that load of tape just above your take-up reel is... all kinds of "pro," isn't it? Ha!
Transferring your grandparents' films?
This is a great solution, but:
If I understand you correctly, your DSLR takes one shot for every frame of your Super 8 film. This is 18 or 24 frames in one second, which depends on the shooting speed.
For the calculation below, let's assume 24 frames per second.
With one hour of Super 8 film, your DSLR does 24 x 60 x 60 = 86400 releases.
Don't you think this amount of shutter releases will destroy your DSLR very quickly?
Yes, you’re right about that. My DSLR managed to hold up alright, but it was definitely a mistake to not use the electronic shutter mode of the camera.
Just a college student and reveals a super complex built 😂😂😂
ma cos'i la macchina fotografica ti dura pochissimo con tutti quei scatti
Esattamente. 150-200k scatti e l'otturatore va a farsi benedire. In pratica, da nuova, può fare un paio di ore di pellicole, poi dovrebbe cambiare fotocamera.
You´ll ruin your camera´s shutter by shooting frames one by one. It just doesn´t last for long. The shutter life is between 100 000 to 300 000 shots. One 50 feet film has 3600 frames, so you´ll get only ca 80 reels and you have to change the shutter for your camera. That is not cheap to do. You need a shutterless camera to do the job.
I blew the shutter on a canon eos doing timelapse for a year. shutterless is certainly the best idea, or better still a raspberry pi camera.
A mirrorless camera would be fine with a electric shutter shutter rather than a mechanical one
@@slarti42uk Expensive stuff though! I've been checking out the arducam 64MP camera for Pi4 which looks like It will totally fit the bill! Exciting times :)
Not necessarily a shutterless camera; just one that can go into e-mode.
Too bad you don't show us the machine actually shooting frames!
Uh, he did.
Oh... I must have been confused with another video of another scanner... Sorry!
@@patrickdelafon8618: Or... you might just be an impatient person.
Good way to scratch the film. SMH
Yeah, with that straw and things like that, huh? Pschh!