8mm Forum: New to film; need some help

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Posted by Eric Bowen (Member # 5791) on February 09, 2017, 04:11 PM:

Well, I'm new in the sense that I haven't been involved since the early '80s. I was always the designated projectionist for our family regular 8mm home movies and at school running the 16mm Kodak projectors, and I shot and developed my own 35mm and 120 still pictures in the school darkroom. But in the intervening 35+ years I've fallen out of practice.

What brings me back is a family request from my parents. I've recently used a prosumer Mitsubishi D-VHS deck, a Hauppauge tuner/digitizing card, and Corel's VideoStudio software to revisit, edit, and master for DVD some old VHS tapes which had been sitting on the shelf for 30 years. Mom & Sis were properly blown away, and now they want me to turn my attention to our old 8mm movies which have been sitting even longer...in some cases, much longer.

I'm looking at the purchase of a film scanner. In addition to the old home movies, we have inherited my great-uncle's collection of Super 8 films which he shot while traveling extensively in Africa and Asia after retiring from the railroad in the early '70s. He was an excellent photographer, and he kept detailed notes about locations and subjects. Also, I have contacts at a local library which archives material from the space program. They have (or at least had) a number of 16mm silent prints of NASA footage from the Apollo program. Last I spoke with them they were very frustrated because they no longer had a way to view it.

The scanner I'm looking at is suitable for Regular 8, Super 8, and (with an additional gate) 16mm. It's going to take most of my pennies. My main reason to participate here is in hopes of finding a crash course in how to handle this valuable footage properly...how best to clean it; what kind of ancillary equipment I will need to locate (editor, splicing tapes, rewinds, etc.), and any one of a hundred other topics which I probably don't know enough to ask about now. So, any friendly and helpful advice will certainly be appreciated.

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