This is too funny. While packing up for a move I came across some old 8 mm film. I had no idea what was on it, so when it came back from being converted to a digital format it turned out to be footage of me and my sister on the day we came home with our new parents as we were adopted in Calgary. Right around 1963. There is even footage of the Calgary Stampede pretty amazing stuff!
Thanks for posting this, much appreciated! I have all the old family 8mm films and keep meaning to get them transferred to digital so everyone can see them and this was a good reminder! The quality of the scanner is much better than the old way of projecting films and filming them again with a video camera. Thanks once again 👍🙂
Great video, Marlene! I just finished scanning 78 rolls of Super 8 and Regular 8 film from the early seventies--over fifty years old! I used one of the Wolverine clones ("Eyesen") which I got for $200.00 on sale from amazon. Other than the scanning resolution (mine does 1080), smaller view screen than the Kodak but the ability to connect to an external monitor while scanning (one feature the Kodak doesn't have) which mainly helped me adjust the framing, and, of course, the price, they are basically identical. So, I decided to give the Eyesen unit a try. I was very pleased with the quality of the scans, although I did run them through FCPX to make white balance and other adjustments. I am impressed with the skill of your camera operators, and of course your skateboarding prowess! Thanks for sharing these great memories with us!
Yes my grandmother was quite the documentarian. She had the skills to create stories in-camera without doing any editing. If she wasn’t shooting the clips she was directing others, so that she could be in the shots too. Thanks for watching!
Absolutely love this! The slight colour shifts and the odd choppy bits only add to the value! Well done! I didn’t realize that this technology was available to the consumer so another plus. Perhaps we may see some of the ‘earlier Marlene’ interspersed with some new skateboarding shots on occasion.
This video is a treasure, Marlene, pure gold! I have been watching this week 6 hours of very bad digitalised super 8 family videos of the 80' and 90' and now I know how to make a much better version of them. Thank you very much!
Interesting that your family was still shooting Super 8 film that late in family movie "history". A lot of people I know have crappy video tapes from that era. But somehow they don't have the charm of the old film. Maybe in another 20 years they will. Enjoy your oldies! So fun to revisit our family history.
A huge thank you for this video which influenced my decision to purchase a unit for myself. I am so glad I did, and that I took your advice to order direct from Kodak for big savings! It arrived in good time, with low-cost shipping just as you had said. But the best part is rediscovering all those lost memories -- faces and long-ago moments previously trapped in inaccessible media.. My family is so pleased with the results of just the first few films -- I clearly have many hours of scanning and editing ahead of me! So... Thank You!!
Wonderful to hear this Liz! I’m sure your family is having as much fun as mine with all the old time memories. Thank you for following up with your experiences as it will help others too. And I’m really happy to hear about the low cost shipping. Cheers and happy scanning!
Wonderful memories from another age!❤ Some farm scenes took me back to my childhood summers in Vermont on my great uncles farm. "Helping" bring in the hay was great fun, especially riding on top of the hay stack while holding onto a chain as my great uncle's team, Sally & Sam, picked up their pace to get back to ghe barn for wayer.😂👍
Glad you enjoyed it Jason! It was so fun to see all the old scenes. And I've barely scratched the surface on that pile of 8mm film. My grandmother was a great documentarian.
Very nice, and now it is easy to share as well as watch. I did something similar, but with cassette tapes of family stories from family elders. Time consuming, as it has to be done in real time. had to find a cassette player with an output to hook into a mixing panel, which i then routed in to my computer and recorded digitally.
I wished I had started that years earlier than I did with my mother. She had a heck of a life path, experiences, and such a detailed well spoken narrator. By the time I got around to it her mind was sharp enough but it would have been pushing her stamina when she should be at ease.
Thanks for showing. Have boxes of these, forgot about those rubber band film holder with the tab on them. Hula hoop on 8mm was a standard specially when the older folks tried it. Super funny when viewing time came.
This is fantastic! I have some old films at home in France. I think the projector still works but what a great idea to digitalize them. Thank you for a great video!
Nice to see where you come from... a little bit of who you are. Actually more interesting than the technical treatises on photography. Greetings from a Frisian fan,
Very nice piece you did there, Marlene. I really enjoy your videos, the production quality and the attention to audio. They are good. I converted all of our many reels of Super 8 some time ago and have since even up-rezzed a few of them, which worked out better than I thought.
Last month I watched a recent documentary about a champion skateboarder. "One Way Ticket" is the title. His parents had been photographing and film recording him since I think he was about 8 years old. For documentary it's part of the authenticity to see the home movies as they were. I transferred some one-offs using the crude method of projecting them onto a wall to about 12" wide and record to miniDV, then to a PC. They mattered to the clients and that's the main satisfaction for me. These days I volunteer and shoot video/photos for a small town Ontario skateboard park. It keeps my camera coordination hopping like the day job stuff can't.
Ooh I'll have to look that doc up. Thanks for letting me know. I love photographing skating too. Do you, or did you, also skate? Which Ontario town? I have skater friends all over. Cheers!
Having digital backups of all your film is a must! So, it's a neat little device to get that done. Though I've seen others who have modified these and replaced the existing camera sensor and lens with something higher quality. But just having a digital backup of all your family memories is priority number one. Though, I'd still try to fix the projector or hunt on eBay for a working one. As, in my opinion, nothing beats watching 8mm, super 8, or 16mm on a projector. I have one for all of those. I also have a slide projector and love projecting all my grandparents' old slides from time to time.
Interesting tip about modifying the machine. Yes it’s lovely to view on a projector. I have thousands of 35mm slides of my own too! Not as old though. Cheers!
Really enjoyed watching this Marlene. The footage was really well captured and of course I enjoyed the skate shots! I shot some 16mm snowboard footage years ago and had to send it off to Toronto for processing at the time and then digitized after. Quite the ordeal. This machine definitely looks like a great investment.
Thank you, Matt! I figured you'd like the skate clips. I wish I had more! Yes, this machine was definitely worth getting. I'm having so much fun scanning these old films. The family is going to have some good memories and laughs at our reunion.
Hi Marlene, thanks for this. I also have a huge box of my father's 8mm films but I also have MP4 files from DVDs from VHS tapes from the films... my parents videoed projections of all the films (you can hear them discussing on the soundtrack) in time before their projector broke. So I can see the films in very poor quality, but as you say that is part of the charm
Is the quality better with scanned 8mm or projected? I’m curious as 10+ years ago a friend of mine projected the 8mm film and recorded it with a high end video camera. But I no longer have those dvds to compare.
@@ImageMaven Hi Marlene I have sent you a message via your ImageMaven website. Please reply then I can send you links to some if the films - you can judge for yourself.
This is really rather interesting to me, thanks. I got into super 8 during my teens, even going to a club (didn't work out for me as they were moving to video...) and I did some stop motion stuff and also shot a reel or two at my sisters wedding. The other reason of interest is I work in a camera shop and cine to dvd/usb conversion is a service we offer, though someone else does it for us. I've been thinking about buying a device like this and your vid here gives me an idea of what to expect if we take this approach. Take care and thanks again :)
Hi Mark, This is definitely a consumer option. But maybe your shop can sell the machines to customers who are on the DIY track. Thanks for stopping by!
Fantastic and literally like a time machine. I had mine scanned at a shop and they put everything on disk in MJPEG format in super high res. It looks good but honestly yours is really nice. Also, I wonder what running our movies through one of those AI app websites would look like? Next Video For Hielema!!
Some years back I purchased a Wolverine Movie Maker Pro to scan my dad's 8mm film reals. I got started but never finished. 🙄 Unfortunately, he is no longer with us. The difficulty I had with the unit was the picture staying in frame. It seemed to drift over time. This made the task of scanning the reels even more time consuming and frustrating. I would have to stop the process, recenter the frame and restart. Did you experience this issue with the Kodak unit??
If I set it up really well to start with, it didn't drift unless it hit a bad splice and even then it didn't always happen. But it's super easy to correct the drifting with this machine as you can adjust the framing before you start scanning. You can also zoom in a bit so you lose the rough edges, but I like seeing them.
That was really interesting. I never knew that you could scan film form back in the day. Good effort. 😀 Have you considered tinkering with White Balance or contrast in post production, rather than leaving that decision toe the Scanner? I'm guessing that there isn't much leeway but maybe something like Black Magic Resolve could add a little sparkle to your projects?
@@ImageMavenIf it was me doing such a project, then I'd have the Scanner do as little "post production" as possible. I'd save the things like sharpening, contrast and White Balance to my computer and editing software which has more computational power under the hood to do a better job. Investing all that time into scanning 4,000ft of happy memories is a big investment of time that I'd want to do it only once. Took long enough scanning all my old photos that I'd cry at the thought of 4,000ft of footage. But its only one reel at a time. 😃
@@ImageMaven One reel at a time, and the task will soon be completed. If there is any way that I can help you tinker with the grading, then I'd be honoured to help. I only know how to use Davinci Resolve, and its served me very well.
Thanks for the offer Frank. But I'll be fine. I'm looking forward to doing all of the work on this as it's fun to do. And much more fun than making yet another Lumix video!
Not that I know of. But there may be better options for 16mm at the pro level as it was a popular format for many years. I got some of my own 16mm film from school converted to video tape 30 years ago. But it’s time to get those films digitized for the current technical standards. Luckily I don’t have much. So perhaps I will just outsource it.
Thanks Marlene! I bought the digitizer through Bed Bath and Beyond and was able to use one of their 20% off coupons! I have rolls and rolls of 8mm and Super 8 movies. This will keep me busy for weeks. Question, what imaging software did you use to join and edit the files?
Ooh bonus! It’s amazing what you can find at that store. I use Final Cut Pro (Mac only) to edit all of my videos but there are lots of options out there. A lot of people use DaVinci Resolve which has a free version which might be enough. If you have a Mac, try iMovie.
