Have you scanned super8

[adamj5]

Have you ever scanned super8 frames?
What were the results?

[miguelito]

Hey adam,

I have tried scanning super-8 frames into
photoshop on several different occasions.
It seemed to work o.k. however, I never
have made prints from these files. Who knows
how well they'll print. They don't look
too sharp on the screen to begin with.

miguelito

[eddie]

I captured some black and white super8 that had been transferred to video, and saved a few individual frames as Gifs.
These I printed out onto photographic (glossy) paper. The results were good - but on close examination dont look like photo's - they are pixellated - but it would depend on how much you wanted to enlarge them.

[adamj5]

My thoughts were the quality of the scan would only be limited to the resolution of the scanner being used.

Hear is why i ask.

Ok lets consider you had a scanner that could scan at decent quality. Now if you wanted to could you not scan strips of super8 frames then in photoshop either create one long image or cut each individual frame as a seprate, then import into your editing program. Native 24 fps enviroment.

Ok i know if would be time consuming, but by my calculation if you scanner was capable of 8x10 it would only take 4 scans per 50ft roll.that about 15 strips of super8 cut to 10 inches long.What i was going to do was get some 8x10 clear sheets and put staples up and down for dividers to keep the super8 flat and evenly spaced.then either like i said before cut into one long stip or leave as a whole page.then create a photoshop macro to cut and save each image as a seprate image with number filename. Import into Premiere.

Am i just crazy.
Any Comments.

[ulrichsd]

I've never scanned super8 slides, but the computer lab I used to work for had a 35mm slide scanner, where you would just put the slide in and scan it. I would think that you could mount a Super8 frame into a 35mm cardboard slide (as used in slide machines), scan it, and then just crop the image to the Super8 frame size. I don't have any idea how much one of these costs, but I'd imagine there are some used ones floating around out there for cheap.

I knos this might be time consuming, but how long of a clip would you be planning on putting together this way? It could be a worthwhile and good qaulity way to do it if the clip was short, say under 5 seconds.

Hope this helps,
Scott Ulrich

[adamj5]

I was considering doing all my film this way. I want to do test on a high quality scanner but i dont want to buy one right now and i really dont want to buy one if it will not work.

Another question:
what does rank use to tranfer its image?

[mdevlin]

I have been looking into scanning s8 film,I have been planning on taking some to the pro photo lab i like ,If they can do slides and other negitives why not s8 film.
One more thought,if you can scan the frames they could be made into a animated gif in image ready.
I will give a try and see what happens.
mdevlin

[Nigel]

Or you could try to convince someone to find a S8 gate for a Spirit Cine machine and then our problems would be solved.

[adamj5]

I did call my favorite photo lab in the area and they said they could scan individual frames but scanning strips would be hard. Now if i wanted them to scan every individual frame they said they could do that at 15 bucks a frame. Ouch! now if i wanted to make a print this is the way i would go. the resolution is something like 8000+ dpi. There is another big lab in town thats decent ill give them a call in tomorrow.

[Matt Pacini]

There are two main problems to this approach:
1.. it would take literally thousands of hours to do even a short film like this.
2. you would never regsiter. Those frames are very small, and they would jump all over the place, without some very, accurate feed mechanism.