Totally confused about 8mm to digital conversion ... I need advice

[Michael Csele]

Hello everyone!

I have 12 rolls (8mm double so 50 ft each) of home movies .... my parents wedding ... my christening .... my brothers christening.

Some is decent quality ... some very dark (can just make out images moving inside the church) ... some very light (just see the outline of a person)

First I looked on Amazon ... seems like a scanner will cost about $400 ... 1080

The problem is I will never use it again after these 12 rolls.

I would rather pay for an "expert" to convert them ..... that is assuming I will get better quality than doing it at home.

So I started looking ..... I called local shops .... I e-mailed businesses on the web ... I talked with 4 or 5 technicians at the companies ....

WOW .... way too many chooses ... every one saying they are the "best" .....

So I really need some advice on what is "best"

The local shop and many of the cheaper ones are only 480 ... Not very good at all.

Here is a couple that sounded promising but they could just be telling me a bunch of BS ....

1) At about $300, this place ..... Film Photography Project ... was the cheapest

https://tinyurl.com/yxt326ks

I wrote him and he said "I recommend HD resolution. The higher resolutions (2k and 4K) and not better, they're just larger file sizes. Service includes cleaning and color correction."

**** Just a bit worried as there is not much information and his answer to my e-mail is limited ... no real examples .... nothing about format ...

2) this one is located in Canada https://www.filmrescue.com/home-movie-transfer/

They scan at 2000 x 1536p ..... why ???? why not just 2K (I actually phone the technical who is working from home and he said "just shy of 2K")

He recommended the "wet" transfer method. They actually dip it in a liquid and let it go through the scanner.

So at $2 per roll ($24) + $.22 per ft (basic charge) + $.08 per ft (mpg4) +$.04 ft (give me individual jpeg's of each pictures, not corrected) + $.08 for scene by scene color and contrast correction + $.16 per ft for wet scan .... $348 total

I can de-grain the film if I want for another $.12 per ft (he was not sure if I want to do this as it will look less like movie film).

Plus I need to send them a USB or hard drive

3) This was one of the highest price ones ... but they claim to use a $500K sprocketless scanner https://www.videoconversionexperts.com/

They are having a sale now .... 2K scanning $.39 per ft ..... 4K scanning $.59 per ft

With just color correction (no grain, scratch or stabilization) I am looking at over $450 for 2K and almost $650 for 4K ($822.85 if I did the "works" with 4K ... way out of my budget)

I am not limited to these three companies .... I am wide open to any suggestions!

And there are dozens of others ... as I said, everything from 480, 720, 1K, 2K, 4K ... dry ... wet ... sprocketless .... there are still guys just shooting it at a wall and making a vidoe file with a new camera ... shooting it at glass and taking a video of that ..... frame by frame ......

After a week of homework, I am way too confused!

This is what happened a year ago when I got the movies. I tried to look into converting them and got overwhelmed. We were in the middle of building a house so I just put them away.

I don't want that to happen again.

These movies just mean a lot to me. Many of the people in them have passed away (my dad, grandparents, aunts and uncles, ....). This is the only movies of these people that exist.

Can anyone straighten me out and give me advice on how best to covert these old movies?

Thanks so very much !!!!!!!!

Mike
Jericho, VT

[Nantawat Kittiwarakul]

For a one-time job I recommend against buying the scanner, or DIY route. Any money/time spent or knowledge/experience gained (from DIY approach) will be of no use to you when it's done. The amount of the work wouldn't justify that also.
Besides, you will have to spend 2-3K$ to get decent scanner anyway (forget Wolverine Scanner - the quality doesn't cut it). Won't worth the investment imho.

Just let the professionals do the job and that's it. A good ransfer house should be able to provide you samples for evaluation. You may even ask to test-scan just one reel first. If the first one comes out OK then proceed the rest.
This is actually what I routinely do to my customers - providing some "proof" sample clip to them. When green-lit I'll then do the rest.

Moreover, you may ask if they can provide you both "raw" and "processed" scan of each reel, in case that you later feels like to do the color correction/restoration yourself later.

Others may have different thought, so it's only you to do the final decision.

[Michael Csele]

I completely agree ... I definitely would rather send them off to be done.

It will cost about the same but I am sure I will get a better product in the end ... plus these will probably be the only films I ever convert.

I hate the idea of sending these originals back and forth between places.

This is why I am asking if anyone has a place that they know does a good job ... or maybe looking at my links seeing if any of these jump out as good or bad ....

Thanks so much ...... Mike

[Melody Carroll]

Nantawat,

I came here for pretty much the same reason as Michael, but my situation is a bit different. I have literally hundreds of reels (3, 5 and 7 inch) of 8mm film that I want to digitize. My dad was an avid amateur photographer and I inherited about 30 years worth of his films. They include many reels of extended family documentation (many relatives no longer with us) along with many reels of footage he shot while in the civil service at Pearl Harbor during WWII. He kept them in a climate controlled room, but I have now had them for 20 years in less than ideal storage. I was looking into having some of the film digitized, but the cost is overwhelming considering the volume I'm dealing with. In my search, I found the new digitizing systems and thought it might be within my budget to get a Wolverine Pro Film Digitizer. Since I am a former professional photographer and photo research lab tech., (pre-digital), I thought this system could be my answer. That is, until I read your advice to Michael. I sure cannot drop $2-3K for a digitizer or for professional digitization.

My question is, just how low is the quality I would end up with using something like the Wolverine Pro? I'm not really looking for broadcast quality, just would like to preserve these images and share them with cousins and friends before the film disintegrates and we are all dead. Will I end up with total un-viewable crap from one of these systems? Is there another brand under $500 that would work better?

Also is the learning curve particularly steep? I have worked with Adobe Photoshop for years in my graphic design business, so I am familiar with digital. Still, I'm an old woman and while I do not mind exercising my brain by learning new things, I only have so many years left, LOL!

Any additional info or advice would be much appreciated!

Blessings,
Melody

[Stan Jelavic]

Hi Melody. Here is a typical Wolverine S8 scan. This is an unprocessed clip and you may be able to postprocess it to some extent but do not expect much better quality than this from Wolverine.
https://photos.app.goo.gl/CjVQCduhaciQa9BX7

[Nantawat Kittiwarakul]

Unfortunately I can only confirm Stan's comment.

The Wolverine's output can be "improved" to a certain degree - but not that much.

But considering the massive amount of films in the collection, it might be OK to use Wolverine to scan them all first. So you'll at least have a backup of your collection, just in case.

Then if you found some particular reels that deserves better scan, just have it done later either DIY or by professionals.

Well this sounds much like "off-line" editing for a feature film. You have draft copy of all reels shot to edit, but only the selected ones will be actually used in the final output. The rest would be just for safekeeping/bonus content in BD release - sort of.😉

[Joe Taffis]

Michael, I sent you a private message

[Leo Langston]

So how good or bad is Legacy Box in doing the film to digital conversions?

[Brad Miller]

This very question about Legacybox just popped up on a youtuber's channel a month ago as he sent in a reel of super 8 to them to be transferred to test their quality. (Note the film he sent was not reversal original film, but a much lower quality print that looked like a dupe of a dupe with virtually no resolution at all, but still you can get the idea.)
https://youtu.be/SSj3RbdhjzA?t=1073

I found the film transfer so appalling I offered to rescan it for the guy at no charge. I was surprised to see he ended up doing a follow-up video.
https://youtu.be/mwP9z5YvZ5Q

[Stan Jelavic]

And I thought Wolverine was bad he he. Impressive work Brad.

[Brad Miller]

Yup, Legacybox uses MovieStuff scanners, so no surprise there.