The Gugusse Compact DIY Film Scanner

[Al Warner]

Hey Everyone. A few of you know me from Cinesea in October of 24 (I'll be back). A few years ago, I stumbled onto a DIY film scanner called "The Gugusse Roller". I mention stumbled because I found it when the inventor of the project scanned a film I had sent him as a gift and had it on YouTube. I was blown away at the quality and he gave me the link to his website where there were some of the things you would need to do your own but also a lot of details left out. His name is Denis-Carl and he walked me through building my own scanner using a 3-D printer and various parts. I have a knack for writing documentation and I started contributing to documenting the build process and eventually a usage guide. I think anyone who's decent with computers and likes this type of project can build one. It's been a blast for me. And what type of film can it scan? Pretty much most of it. We have gates included in the FREE download for 8mm, Super-8, 9,5mm, 16mm, and 35mm. Denis-Carl has built a custom one for himself that does 70mm and IMAX. And, yes, it's 100% free. The printer models are in one free download, the software is free to download, the instructions are free as well. I'm not going to lie, it does take a lot of time to scan a film and there is a lot of post processing required but it really does an amazing job. I think the cost to build is probably $1200-$1800 depending on the lens you use.

Here's a 35mm cartoon I scanned: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=u_DCBMEee6o&t=59s
Here's a Super-8 film I scanned: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Y__wcnM5_xU&t=10s
Here's a 16mm Film I Scanned: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=txRUtnn9NIY&t=441s

A link to the project is here: https://www.deniscarl.com/dokuwiki/doku.php?id=start

If you have any questions, feel free to message me.

-Al-