8mm Forum: Going to build my own frame by frame scanner

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Topic: Going to build my own frame by frame scanner

Jeff Self
Junior
Posts: 7
From: Chesapeake, VA, USA
Registered: Jun 2019

posted June 26, 2019 02:46 PM

I've been thinking it over the last few days. I've decided I will build my own rig. There are two parts to this. The first will be using a Raspberry Pi and an Arducam camera with it. I'll use the Picamera software library to get it to capture a frame of my film. This looks pretty easy to do from the docs.

The second part will be building the hardware to advance the film. I'm thinking there will be a small light table with an LED light underneath the path of the film. The camera will be mounted above the film. A stepper motor will be used to advance the film frame by frame and the camera will take an image when each frame gets advanced. I may need an Arduino board as well to provide communications between the stepper motor and the camera software. I don't know. I'm just brainstorming right now.

There will be more software involved for fixing the images, i.e. cropping, white balance, exposure, etc. But all the images will be stored individually on some sort of external storage, preferably an SD card. Initially, I'll probably import all the images directly into FCPX and create my movie there.

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Kev Morrison
Film Handler

Posts: 76
From: Land of the Mouse, USA
Registered: Feb 2018

posted June 26, 2019 04:15 PM

Wow - Jeff, sounds like you're about to take on an ambitious project!

As you probably know, there's a wealth of experience and knowledge in this forum.. Maybe some folks can help you find some of the components you'll need.

Got my attention - good luck!

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Nantawat Kittiwarakul
Master Film Handler

Posts: 280
From: Rajburana, Bangkok, Thailand
Registered: Aug 2017

posted June 28, 2019 01:17 AM

Since there's no one giving some informative comments yet,I think I should do the start.

- No comments about the camera to be used. There're several (maybe too many) choices to consider. For me a mirrorless camera with electronic shutter mode&wired shutter release should be the most practical.
- And about the film transport. Since there had been already hundreds of thousands of projector lying around the globe,which can be used as basics of the whole transport setup. I see little point recreating the mechanics. Why reinventing the wheel?
Moreover since we will likely to run the film at slow speed 1-5 fps during the scan anyway,the risk of damaging the film should be insignificant then.

Here's the test result from my setup,made with "junk" dual8 projector,analog video camera,freeware capture program,and some trial&errors. Not yet perfect,but quite close.

Super8 Negative test scan

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Just a lone collector from a faraway land...

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