Controlling Dust When Digitizing 8mm Film

[Aaron Heverin]

Thank you very much for allowing me to join the forum. I’m hoping someone can provide me with some answers on how I might cut down or eliminate dust from getting into the film gate while I’m digitizing a huge collection of 8mm films. I have repurposed a Revere 8mm projector as a telecine, and I have a LUMIX G85 in place as my destination source. I won’t go into describing the system of electronics that makes the telecine function. All I’ll say is that it works very well. I’m able to capture almost a full-frame image and the resulting video is very workable. The system is almost “set it and forget it”, and because I’m using a mirrorless camera, I can capture the film much quicker than if I were using a regular DSLR.

The big problem I have is trying to keep dust out of the film gate while I’m capturing the 8mm film. I ran a 400’ reel through the telecine yesterday, and upon examining the individual images, everything looked perfect until I got half-way into reviewing the images. A huge hair or piece of dust had suddenly accumulated in the bottom frame and remained there for the rest of the digitizing process. I have several small fans cooling the electronics, and even a blower fan directing a concentrated stream of air at the film just before it enters the film gate. I even have a tiny fan pulling air away from the film gate to try and keep the dust out. The entire setup is in an enclosed cabinet that has been meticulously cleaned and is always wiped down before another film is ran through the telecine. Each film is cleaned prior to it being digitized. Unfortunately, this annoyance occurs more often than I like.

I supposed once I import the thousands of images into Premiere Pro I could run the offending footage through Boris FX Mocha Pro to “detect and remove” the dust, but that will take countless hours of tracking and rendering to accomplish. If anyone has solved this ever-present problem, or has a better way of addressing it, I would greatly appreciate the feedback.

Thanks much.,

Aaron

[Ty Reynolds]

Did you clean your film before digitizing? Can you confirm that the dust and hair are not part of the image, created by debris caught in the camera when originally shot?

[Alan Paterson]

Maybe an extraction fan would help remove dust or dirt from the cabinet interior.

[Stan Jelavic]

I always clean the film using the cleaning solution. For less important reels I also use a can of compressed air and blow at the gate from the front and the top.

[Nantawat Kittiwarakul]

All measures I had done so far to fight this war...

- Thoroughly clean the film path in the projector, especially film gate area.
- Clean / lube films to be scanned. Usually with the "wet" type solution (aka Film Guard). At least this will remove bulk of inbuilt dirt in the films.
- Have the film gate enlarged so that frame lines on all sides are visible. That means less chance for dust/dirt to cling into actual image area. You also have the benefit of more precise cropping later in the editing process too.

These did greatly reduced this issue. But since we sure don't have the luxury of clean room environment this issue is still not totally eliminated. Therefore I recently tried the last effort...

- Placing a piece of soft foam pad just right before the film enters the projector transport, to catch any remaining imbedded dirt & airborne dirt.

Lo and behold, this is literally the last missing piece of the puzzle. Among a few test scan done so far I see NONE of dust/dirt/hair ever pop up again, ever! Maybe too soon to conclude, but I'm pretty certain this is the right direction.

[David Strelitz]

Totally agree that cleaning is the secret and you get to sense, inherent hairs and crud ie camera crud and surface crud. I use a bit of microfibre cloth as last line of defence...don't tell my wife, who has mislaid a couple.🤪

I doubt if any of the crud is airborne, but remnants of the cleaning. Suggestions of an extractor fan are somewhat optimistic and meritless.

I used to use cans of compressed air but 25 years or more ago, I invested in a small compressor (soon paid for itself) and subsequently a year or two later invested in a Clarke's silent compressor which inconveniently died in 2022. The replacement Super Silent Hyundai, whilst a Super price being 40% of the cost of a new Clarke's but silent it ain't.. but it's in a cupboard and baffled and does a very good blow job for the money.😉

[Tim Gillett]

If possible I try to remove problems at their source. One of the ways even pre cleaned films can collect dust when projected is related to the projector's powerful cooling fan which sucks a lot of unfiltered air into the projector case. The main or sole reason for the cooling fan is to draw away the substantial heat from the very hot lamp. Converting the projector lamp to a cool LED type can negate the need for the fan which can be removed or disabled. Voila, less dust.