8mm Forum: Digital Capture with Sankyo 2000h and Sony a6000

»	8mm Forum » 8mm Forum » Digital Capture with Sankyo 2000h and Sony a6000

UBBFriend: Email this page to someone!

Author

Topic: Digital Capture with Sankyo 2000h and Sony a6000

Steve Snyder
Junior
Posts: 14
From: Woodinville, WA, USA
Registered: Dec 2015

posted February 29, 2016 02:58 PM

I finally got serious a few months ago to figure out a way to capture my father's miles of super 8mm family movies. At first I was going to use his Elmo fp-c and just project on a wall and capture that. I don't have any great desire to get the very best digital capture that I can. This is mainly to share with my family. I wasn't happy with the quality I was getting with off the wall type capture so I decided a way to capture directly into one of my digital cameras. I am an avid photographer and have a couple of DSLRs and my latest camera is a mirrorless Sony a6000. These things aren't cheap new so I would only do this if you have one laying around already. You can buy a Workprinter XP used for less and have better results. But I didn't want to shell out another $600 so I went with what I had.

After goofing around with some telecine devices, I stumbled across this by accident. What I do is project directly onto the sensor of the digital camera with no mirrors or lenses (other than the projectors lens). The trick to this whole setup is that if you pull the lens out slight past the notch on the lens (I'm sure so you don't pull it out all the way) you can close focus the lens down to a couple of inches. It just so happens I had this m42 converter for old Pentax lens on my new Sony camera. It acts as a great spacer to keep out stray light. I propped the camera up on some books and shimmed it up with until it matches the height exactly. Move the camera around until the image is focused on the the sensor

The other piece of this puzzle was an accident because I am kind of a newbie to this whole 8mm projection thing. When I got my sankyo 2000h off of eBay the bulb was burned out. It looked like a typical halogen bulb you might get at your local hardware store, so I headed down there. I picked up a 100w bulb that looked similar but when I got home it didn't quite fit right but it did fire up. So I kind of just propped it up in there until I realized that I needed a slightly different bulb. I ordered one of those and was back in business of doing projection on a wall. When I started trying to capture, many of you know that 100w bulbs are way to bright. A lightbulb went off in my head and I went down to the hardware store and bought a 20w bulb. That was still a little too harsh and I had seen on the web where some people had put a piece of paper between the bulb and film gate to diffuse the light and that works perfectly.

In the camera I go to shutter priority mode and select 1/60 of a second and 100 iso. It isn't too hard to line up the camera to the projector lens. It take a little fiddling to get the projection focused on the sensor. Once everything is lined up I hit record at the highest quality I can. A 3 minute reel takes up about 500 MB or more.

The other issue is that because it is so close, it projects the image upside down and backwards. So, I use Sony Movie Studio 13 to correct the layout and to give me an MP4 file for Youtube.

Here is a video I did with it on Youtube : https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cnq3gDemYMU

Here is a picture of the bulb sitting in there with a piece of paper. I can't put the cover on because the bulb takes up too much space.

Here is the camera pointed at the projector lens ready to capture;

Here is the adapter that is just used for spacing

Here is the difference in the bulbs. The one on the right is the correct bulb for the projector:

| IP: Logged

Ty Reynolds
Film Handler

Posts: 93
From: Calgary, Alberta, Canada
Registered: Nov 2015

posted February 29, 2016 04:35 PM

If you adjust the projector speed ever so slightly, you should be able to eliminate the rolling bars.

| IP: Logged

Steve Snyder
Junior
Posts: 14
From: Woodinville, WA, USA
Registered: Dec 2015

posted February 29, 2016 05:04 PM

If you watch the film long enough you'll see me fiddle with the speed and I get the banding under control, but it's still there a little. I might experiment with a different shutter speed on the camera, but I know that 1/80th is not good. I could try 1/50th.

| IP: Logged

Janice Glesser
Film Goddess

Posts: 3468
From: Sunnyvale, CA USA
Registered: Sep 2011

posted February 29, 2016 05:37 PM

Try 1/30th. It sometime works better that 1/60th.

--------------------
Janice

"I'm having a very good day!"
Richard Dreyfuss - Let It Ride (1989).

| IP: Logged

Rick Butterfield
Junior
Posts: 3
From: Bristol, IN, USA
Registered: Mar 2016

posted March 18, 2016 09:45 AM

Steve,
Do you know whether the Sankyo 1000 and your 2000 have the same lense?
I like what you are doing, I too have a a6000 but no convertor and my projector is the 1000. My lamp went out last night so I would like to try your setup or LED. Too bad there isn't a lense setup that could flip and reverse the image prior to capture to save on post.
Also thinking of using the cameras HDMI out to my Blackmagic capture device. My a6000 gets pretty warm when recording for extended periods.
Rick

| IP: Logged

Steve Snyder
Junior
Posts: 14
From: Woodinville, WA, USA
Registered: Dec 2015

posted March 18, 2016 10:08 AM

I have no idea, but I would probably think the mechanisms are very similar. I have an Elmo FPC-C in which I can over compensate the projector lens outwards from the body to focus very closely. I don't know if it degrades the image in any way but it works good enough for me! Nice thing about the a6000 it has a flat top so if you set it up right you can put the camera upside down. It's just hard to control the camera when it's upside down but it does save you the time of post processing digitally.

The adapter I got of ebay for something like $10. Shipped from China, but you can use anything for spacing. Maybe even a PVC pipe.

The light I got down at Home Depot for $5. I would even see if I could get a 10w one if I could. I haven't looked around too hard.

BTW, Janice suggested I use 1/30th and that worked a lot better but I still get some bands flipping through. I tried all different shutter speeds and none of them completely cleared up the problem.

| IP: Logged

Rick Butterfield
Junior
Posts: 3
From: Bristol, IN, USA
Registered: Mar 2016

posted March 18, 2016 10:28 AM

Guess I will look around for a 10w lamp.
I also have a Sony HDR-CX900 camcorder that I originally thought I might use, it has a 1inch sensor but I don't have the knowledge of how the optics come into play and since I can't remove the lense guess I'll stick with the a6000.

| IP: Logged

Steve Snyder
Junior
Posts: 14
From: Woodinville, WA, USA
Registered: Dec 2015

posted March 18, 2016 10:32 AM

If you poke around here you'll how you can capture with a video recorder either directly into the lens or through a mirror and lens arrangement to right the image. That's what I wanted to do but settled on this because it's what I had on hand...

| IP: Logged

Janice Glesser
Film Goddess

Posts: 3468
From: Sunnyvale, CA USA
Registered: Sep 2011

posted March 18, 2016 12:50 PM

The Sankyo 1000 and the 2000H use the same lens.

--------------------
Janice

"I'm having a very good day!"
Richard Dreyfuss - Let It Ride (1989).

| IP: Logged

Rick Butterfield
Junior
Posts: 3
From: Bristol, IN, USA
Registered: Mar 2016

posted March 18, 2016 01:02 PM

Thanks Steve and Janice, I value both your opinions.
Janice FYI, I sent you a PM regarding manual(s) last evening..

| IP: Logged

All times are Central

Printer-friendly view of this topic

UBB.classic^TM 6.3.1.2