8mm Forum: My hacked together digital capture setup

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Posted by Steve Snyder (Member # 5167) on February 16, 2016, 10:28 AM:

I've been on a quest to find an easy way to digitize my family's 8mm images without having to buy fancy equipment and I think I've stumbled on a decent solution. It's not going to be as good as frame by frame but it will suffice for now.

What you are looking at is a Sankyo 2000h with the front off. I've replaced the 100w halogen bulb with a 20w bulb I bought at Home Depot for $5. I put a piece of regular white paper between the bulb and the film gate to diffuse the light. I was getting blown out images and the camera was overexposing at 100iso. Then for capturing, I have my Sony a6000 mirrorless digital camera. I project the movie directly onto the sensor and capture in shutter priority movie mode. I just happened to have a m42 to e mount converter for some older Pentax screwmount lenses that makes a perfect spacer. I propped the camera up on some books and got an exact height match and put the camera right up to the projector lens. There is not lens on the camera. You may be asking how can he focus on such a short distance. Well the little trick I figured out is if you pull the lens out a little past the point where it projector lens is supposed to go (pull the focusing knob out and this lets you take the projector lens out but it can still stay in the projector) then it's easy to have a short focusing distance. I use the cameras focus magnification mode to really dial in sharp focus. Like i mentioned, it does capture upside down so have to post process with software to turn it right side up. But all in all I am pretty happy with the results! You could probably use an DSLR or mirrorless camera in movie mode to do the same thing. I am not sure about other projectors being able pull the lens out a little to far for short focusing. Let me know what you think!

Posted by Evan Samaras (Member # 5070) on February 16, 2016, 10:48 AM:

I tried doing something similar with my Canon 7d (cropped sensor). Didn't put enough time into it though so I only got something somewhat acceptable, and haven't returned yet. Can we see some examples? Would love to see how this turned out!

I have a Canon 40D with the sensor converted to color InfraRed and would love to shoot some film and see what fun I would get from digitizing through the color IR! Surprised no one has tried this yet (that I know of).

Posted by Steve Meyer (Member # 5197) on February 16, 2016, 10:54 AM:

That's pretty cool. I was wondering if you mount the digital camera upside down would it capture the movie right side up so you wouldn't have to do the post process with software?

That is still awesome.
Steve M

Posted by Steve Snyder (Member # 5167) on February 16, 2016, 11:02 AM:

I am going to upload some to youtube today. It takes a while to process them. I use Movie Studio Platinum because my son was using it for youtube videos. I am finding that the video out of the camera is quite a bit better than what ends up on youtube. They must compress it quite a bit and it ends up looking a little blobby. I probably have some more fiddling around to do to extract the best out of the software and the camera. I do a lot of still photography but this is my first foray into all this digital video stuff so there is a steep learning curve.

The Sony a6000 is a cropped sensor camera too. I'm sure full frame would work better but it's all I have and I'm not sinking that kind of money into this project!

I'll post a link to a video when I finish processing...

I never thought about turning the camera upside down!!! Now I have a new mini-project for today!

Posted by Mathew James (Member # 4581) on February 16, 2016, 12:05 PM:

This is a very cool setup. I never heard of one 'downgrading' the bulb, but it is a clever contraption you have made here, and how you capture directly to the sensor. Bravo.

Posted by Steve Snyder (Member # 5167) on February 16, 2016, 01:21 PM:

I plan on shooting a video to explain it better in the future when I get some time. The bulb is not an exact fit. The posts are a little too big for the little holes they are supposed to plug into and the blub is little too long for the space, but with a little fiddling it's resting in their comfortable. I don't know if there are 20w or even 10w bulbs that are an exact match but I did look quickly online and it does look like there are 20w bulbs with the right pin arrangement. I might do a little more digging.

Posted by Barry Fritz (Member # 1865) on February 16, 2016, 07:46 PM:

Bravo Steve! I will look forward to anything you can add to this tread regarding other lamps or any other improvements you may think of. I'm certain others will be also. Do you pass the image through the camera directly to your PC via firewire or other means?

Posted by Steve Snyder (Member # 5167) on February 16, 2016, 11:31 PM:

I don't "tether" the camera to anything, I just shoot in Shutter priority mode and set the ISO to 100 and record everything to a beefy SD card. The files can get quite big. I think a 15 minute capture was 4gb but hey this is 2016 and my watch has 16 gigs of data! I'll post more when I get a chance...

Posted by Jason Smith (Member # 5055) on February 16, 2016, 11:36 PM:

This looks like a really cool idea. I`m looking forward to seeing a video to see how it turned out.

Posted by Steve Snyder (Member # 5167) on February 24, 2016, 09:53 AM:

I've been wanting to post a capture of some of the home movies I have but I am not satisfied with the banding I see. Since I use my digital camera to capture, I can do it at almost any shutter speed, but it doesn't seem to make a difference. In fact the faster I make the shutter on the camera go, the more distinct the bands become. I can slow down and speed up the speed of the projector but like an old turntable it can't lock in that speed without slipping a bit and the bands just move really slowly then. Is there a magical shutter speed on my camera to make this not happen? Sorry for the newbie question I'm sure you all have answered this many times...

Posted by Janice Glesser (Member # 2758) on February 24, 2016, 01:32 PM:

Shutter speed should be set to 60fps.

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