Seeking advice on transferring 8mm to video

[Joerg Polzfusz]

The above trick with the 1/54 s exposure duration for 18fps movies is basically trying to reduce the problem by always recording the bright phase and one of the shutter blades.
(Even when you start with „full red plus next reduce blade“, then ending up with „a little bit of advance blade plus full red plus a little bit of next reduce blade“ or „fraction of red plus next reduce blade plus fraction of next bright phase“ will still have the same amount of bright and blade in each video frame, resulting in very little visible flicker.)
But this doesn’t work for me as my projector is too bright for this - setting my camera to such a value would result in a nearly completely white image… wait! I should have „sunglasses for my camera“ (aka „ND filter“) somewhere… maybe I have to rethink my setup? (Sometimes it’s good trying to explain things to others to find possible flaws and errors, isn’t it? )

[Stan Jelavic]

Hi Joerg, your analysis is pretty close for the rolling shutter. With the rolling shutter, if the blade is caught it will produce a dark band which is very hard to get rid of by trying to sync the system. The global shutter is different. If the bade is caught if will produce a dark area, but the next bright phase will fill in the dark area (more or less). That is why I always use global shutter for my real time transfers. This has its own drawbacks. One of then is ghosting, an another one is slight brightness fluctuations for some scenes. The brightness fluctuations can be mitigated by the 5 blade shutter and smaller gaps between the blades as implemented in the TRV16.

[Joerg Polzfusz]

So I should get myself a 5-bladed shutter like this?!
https://www.ebay.de/itm/255477680144...Bk9SR7jtvMGNZQ

[Stan Jelavic]

What is your setup Joerg? Do you currently have issues with jitter and or brightness fluctuations? The 5 blade shutter can help with brightness fluctuations but may not help with jitter (black band scrolling over the screen). I ran two setups with Elmo 16CL which uses a 3 blade shutter successfully. One setup is with the RPI camera and it had no flicker and fluctuations.
https://github.com/vintagefilmography/ELMO_16CL
The other setup is with iPhoneX and had no flicker and barely noticeable fluctuations. So I did not bother with the 5 blade shutter.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FcYh5-1iBNU
So it depends on your setup, 5 blade may not be worth the trouble.

[Alwyn Adkins]

The other setup is with iPhoneX and had no flicker and barely noticeable fluctuations

Stan, that iphone quality is pretty good. Could you put up a pic of your iphone setup.

Also, what film speed did you run the projector at and what shutter speed on the iphone?

[Joerg Polzfusz]

I am normally using a Yelco Ds-810mt 2 track quartzmatic as projector and an iPhone7 as camera (with FilmicPro Legacy as software).

In the past, I was experimenting with an Bauer TR300 Duoplay, a „TV style“ projector with integrated rear-screen and other cameras (Lumix TZ61, …). This was also working pretty well regarding the flicker, but I had problems with the highlights in the image‘s center. (And deactivating the autofocus was a must.) But that projector is now broken (belt and sound).

[Alwyn Adkins]

apps like FilmicPro will allow most smartphones to shoot 4K at 4:3 aspect ratio at 18 fps or exactly 24fps

Checked it out, for Android, $8.49 AUD a week (or $104 per year)! Unbelievable. Made by the same clowns that make Evernote. Are there others that are more reasonable? I would like to try a smartphone capture but the (constant) frame rate has to be settable.

[Joerg Polzfusz]

I was lucky enough to pay a 20€ one time fee for FilmicPro several years ago. Hence, I can use FilmicPro 6 (now called „FilmicPro Legacy“) without any subscriptions. But that’s only for existing customers.
Before this, I was using an app called „Telecine“. Not sure whether it was available for Androids.

[Joerg Polzfusz]

What about „Open Camera“, „ProCam X - Lite: HD Kamera Pro“ or „ProShot“ (by „Rise Up Games“ - this app doesn’t allow 18fps, but at least claims to offer a free choice of all framerates from 24 to 240fps)?

[Stan Jelavic]

Here is the picture of the iPhone setup:




Here is the manual I put together:
https://drive.google.com/drive/folde...Tw?usp=sharing