Digitizing Magenta faded Fims

[Walter Stanton]

I have a few Super-8 travelog films from Disney Home Movies that have faded to magenta. Obviously, since I don't own the copyright to these, I'm guessing most legit scanning services would not digitize these for me. However, I'd like to digitize them just for myself so I can color-correct them and see them as they were photographed.

What's the simplest options available for digitizing them? I could try filming them off the wall with a phone or video camera, I just don't know how I would get rid of the flicker. I imagine I could buy a used Wolverine, scan them & them unload the scanner on ebay.

Any thoughts?

[Ed Gordon]

Walter, you will find many discussions on methods to digitize you films in this section. Once you have the digital files you can do color correction.

Sample with scaned 16mm film:

I would recommend DaVinci Resolve to do the color grading.

DaVinci Resolve started as an exclusive high-end color grading suite and has evolved into a full-feature professional post-production suite that’s available to anyone with the free version

Here is a Tutorial on version 17 (current version is 19):

[Nantawat Kittiwarakul]

If you opt to do intensive color correction yourself, DON'T use any of those Wolverine/Kodak/etc. scanners. Its aggressive auto - only will have mind of its own, which will be very problematic in post processing.

The next best option is to use a camera with FULL MANUAL CONTROL to film it while projecting onto the screen. With strictly manual settings (and I mean everything - focus / zoom / iris / white balance / etc.) and proper skill in color correction that would make this possible:


But since you have only a few reels to deal with, it might be easier to negotiate with certain scanning service who's willing to "bend" the rules for you.

[Joerg Polzfusz]

Try to find an app that allows to shoot at non-standard frame rates. E.g. „Filmic Pro“ also allows you to shoot at 18 fps. This allows you to avoid most of the flicker.
Also project onto a white piece of paper that is glued onto the wall at the smallest diameter (postcard size). This reduces the hotspot effect.
Depending on your app, you might also be able to get rid of some of the „redness“ by turning off the „automatic white balance“ (awb) and then playing around with the settings.

[Walter Stanton]

Nantawat Kittiwarakul Ed Gordon Thanks for the tips! I'm playing around with filming it off the screen for now and did a little experiment. Since the film has faded to magenta, I projected it on a green screen, and because the colors are complementary, a lot of the red was cancelled out.

In the attached pic, the raw images are straight from my camera: the image on the left was projected onto a normal WHITE screen & the image on the right was projected onto a GREEN screen. Obviously it doesn't solve all the problems, but I'm curious if it will help out when color-correcting in DaVinci Resolve.

(FYI: the white screen test was done at night in a fully darkened room, the green screen test was done quickly this morning with some ambient daylight in the room)

[Nantawat Kittiwarakul]

That's definitely helpful for subsequent post processing!

Starting out with very, very magenta cast means there's little yellow / cyan to begin with. Aggressive color correction will bring out not only signal, but also noise up. The result would be noisy / inconsistent then. OTOH starting with as much in-camera correction would already give you, say, 50% of what to do so there's no reason not to correct it early on.

BTW only if Kodak didn't cheap out on their Eastman color system in the first place. Sigh...