Transferring Super-8mm Films to Digital HD!
I've been wanting to do this for 30 years, ever since I stopped shooting film and started shooting video. It looks like the technology is finally there to deliver a level of high quality transfer that delivers ALL the resolution in the original film, and then some!
I found a company called Video Conversion Experts in AZ on the web that uses a high-speed scanner like a Rank Ursa or Phillips Spirit DataCine, the same machine used to transfer Hollywood movies, to transfer small-format film like Super-8mm to digital in up to 2k resolution. I went with 1080p, mainly to keep costs down (they're running a $.36 cents a foot plus $49.95 flat fee to convert the film to an HD .AVI file for editing special right now; it's usually $.51 cents a foot) and also because I think 2k is overkill for Super-8; 1080p should be sufficient to show all the visual detail in the film.
I sent them 2 little 50-foot rolls (about 6 mins.) of film, and if I like the look of their transfers, the floodgates will open and I'll begin sending them maybe 800 feet per month until all 10,000 feet of film that I've got, family memories and my earliest exercises in filmmaking, are transferred!
I found a company called Video Conversion Experts in AZ on the web that uses a high-speed scanner like a Rank Ursa or Phillips Spirit DataCine, the same machine used to transfer Hollywood movies, to transfer small-format film like Super-8mm to digital in up to 2k resolution. I went with 1080p, mainly to keep costs down (they're running a $.36 cents a foot plus $49.95 flat fee to convert the film to an HD .AVI file for editing special right now; it's usually $.51 cents a foot) and also because I think 2k is overkill for Super-8; 1080p should be sufficient to show all the visual detail in the film.
I sent them 2 little 50-foot rolls (about 6 mins.) of film, and if I like the look of their transfers, the floodgates will open and I'll begin sending them maybe 800 feet per month until all 10,000 feet of film that I've got, family memories and my earliest exercises in filmmaking, are transferred!
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