About quality of 8mm films

[Rafael Yanez]

Hello everybody!
First of all, sorry for my English.
I'm a newbie converting 8mm films to digital. I've just bought a Somikon scanner and I've scanned my firsts 8mm and Super8 films. The result is not as good as I guessed. I've scanned with the highest quality but the footages have not a good definition. I know that this is a low range machine, but I am a little bit disappointed. The footages aren't well focus (the original are) and they are not well defined, with many pixels.
Could anyone tell me which is the main reason of this poor quality? I don't know if it is for the low quality of the lens, for the codec used or maybe because it is imposible to get a better resolution footage from a 8mm/Super8 film, or maybe o bit of all.
Thanks in advance for your help.

[Stan Jelavic]

Hi Rafael. There are tones of complaints in this forum regarding the image quality of these machines. Other forum members can pitch in here but in the meantime here is my summary.

1. The camera used on these machines is a dash type camera that is designed to do time lapse photography. The camera firmware was changed by the scanner designers to make it suitable for film scans but the core chip features could not be changed. One of the key issues is the amount of compression used. The original intent was to save on memory space and use lower image quality which was ok for the original usage model but not ok for a film scanner.

2. The camera sensor itself stores the image into a temporary buffer that is not accessible from the outside. The image is then used with the upcoming images to form an MP4 stream. So it is not possible to extract the individual images. If you take the MP4 file and break it down into a stream of images you end up with a low quality images which is not very good.

3. The lens used is pretty decent (6mm) but they should have gone with the 12mm instead of using the 6mm and doubling the image digitally which further degrades the image quality.

4. Some postprocessing can be done to reduce the digital artifacts somewhat but no postprocessing will eliminate it all. Depending on the scene content the postprocessing improvement will not be very consistent. Will work ok for some scenes and not for others.

I have developed a new controller kit that uses a third party camera. It creates a frame by frame capture into your PC with very low artifacts. You can read more about it here:
https://8mmforum.film-tech.com/vbb/f...ye-for-newbies

[Nantawat Kittiwarakul]

The real resolution of Wolverine's scanner (and all of its variants) would be close to Standard Definition, not that HD in any ways.
So yes, DVD quality at best.

https://8mmforum.film-tech.com/vbb/f...rt-of-revealed

If higher quality needed from this unit that would means LOTS of modifications/upgrades as Stan's dedication. In the end I eventually give up the idea of acquiring this, and keep going on my DIY route.

[Rafael Yanez]

Hi Rafael. There are tones of complaints in this forum regarding the image quality of these machines. Other forum members can pitch in here but in the meantime here is my summary.

1. The camera used on these machines is a dash type camera that is designed to do time lapse photography. The camera firmware was changed by the scanner designers to make it suitable for film scans but the core chip features could not be changed. One of the key issues is the amount of compression used. The original intent was to save on memory space and use lower image quality which was ok for the original usage model but not ok for a film scanner.

2. The camera sensor itself stores the image into a temporary buffer that is not accessible from the outside. The image is then used with the upcoming images to form an MP4 stream. So it is not possible to extract the individual images. If you take the MP4 file and break it down into a stream of images you end up with a low quality images which is not very good.

3. The lens used is pretty decent (6mm) but they should have gone with the 12mm instead of using the 6mm and doubling the image digitally which further degrades the image quality.

4. Some postprocessing can be done to reduce the digital artifacts somewhat but no postprocessing will eliminate it all. Depending on the scene content the postprocessing improvement will not be very consistent. Will work ok for some scenes and not for others.

I have developed a new controller kit that uses a third party camera. It creates a frame by frame capture into your PC with very low artifacts. You can read more about it here:
https://8mmforum.film-tech.com/vbb/f...ye-for-newbies

Hi Stan, thank you so much for your explanation. It has become very clear.
I'm really impressed with your job. It's awesome. Congrats!

[Rafael Yanez]

The real resolution of Wolverine's scanner (and all of its variants) would be close to Standard Definition, not that HD in any ways.
So yes, DVD quality at best.

https://8mmforum.film-tech.com/vbb/f...rt-of-revealed

If higher quality needed from this unit that would means LOTS of modifications/upgrades as Stan's dedication. In the end I eventually give up the idea of acquiring this, and keep going on my DIY route.

I agree with you. Quality is closer to SD than HD. I'm impressed with Stan's work. I'd try to modify it but it sounds too complex for me. Thanks Nantawat!

[Stan Jelavic]

Thank you Rafael. It is quite a bit of work and additional cost to get the upgrade and it is not for everyone. But still in my opinion you get the unit somewhere in the middle where it is better than the low end and less expensive than the high end units.

[Kurt Froberg]

I had the Somikon scanner a couple of years ago and one of the first thing I found out was that the lens was not properly focused from factory. I did write about this in the old 8mm forum, (hope this link works!)
https://8mmforum.film-tech.com/cgi-b...1;t=011395;p=6
There are a couple of posts and pictures from me in the thread "Topic: Review Wolverine Reels2Digital MovieMaker 8mm film digitizer" starting on page 6
I did a video on it too

[Rafael Yanez]

Hi Kurt, I've watched your video on YouTube, and it's a nice improvement. I think that I could try it. My images looks like the left side ones.
By the way, since you have a Somikon, is there any upgrade of the firmware? In Somikon website I haven't found it.

Thanks!

[Rafael Yanez]

Thank you Rafael. It is quite a bit of work and additional cost to get the upgrade and it is not for everyone. But still in my opinion you get the unit somewhere in the middle where it is better than the low end and less expensive than the high end units.

Sure it is. I'll look your manual to try understand it. Do you have any demo to see the differences?

[Stan Jelavic]

Here is a short demo.
https://drive.google.com/file/d/1-AF...ew?usp=sharing

[Lee Mannering]

Having loved my film making for 50 years or so I wouldn't dream of passing 8mm material over a fairly rough shod piece of plastic inviting damage to precious film efforts.
My own lifes work behind the 8mm lens has been scanned on a MWA scanner system in ProRes and looks gorgeous safe in the knowledge it's a job well done.

Perfect full frame registration, graded and of course Stereo mag sound. My documentary film Cinema in Miniature scan was fed into my 4K projector and it was nice to see the full camera aperture for the first time on a 8ft screen after so many years.

Yes it is a new dawn for film transfer but please look after your film masters of precious memories as the can't be replaced when damaged.