📽️ 🎞️ 📸 ⤳💾✨ DIY 🛠️ 8mm / Super-8 Film Scanner, Part 1: Overview

📠 This is a video about film, my project using a projector. 😉 The goal: "scan" film using a mirrorless camera + macro lens set-up, making a 4K+ RAW digital photo-to-video workflow a possibility.

Commercial film scanners exist, but I wanted to try building my own, and also have the benefit of best "theoretical" quality. With an uncompressed source, I have the ability to edit scanned footage in a lossless way before exporting a final video - either in lossless, or compressed-only-once format.

Certainly, 4K raw etc. could be considered overkill. Most exports I've done thus far have been at 2048 x 1536, given the 4:3 aspect ratio of film.

Notwithstanding - in the words of Tori Belleci from the TV show, Mythbusters: "If it's worth doing, it's worth overdoing."

12/2020: Part 2 is available, as well.    • 📽️ 🎞️ 📸 ⤳💾✨ DIY 🛠️ 8mm Film Scanner, ...  
03/2021: Part 2.5 with Q&A, and some updates:    • 📽️ 📸 💾✨ DIY 8mm Film Scanner, Part 2....  
04/2021: Part 3, finally!    • 📽️ 📸 💾✨ DIY 8mm Film Scanner, Part 3:...  

📠 HARDWARE MODS
Using a Canon film projector as my base, I added my own stepper motor, 12V automotive LED light and Arduino hardware/software controllers to orchestrate the entire sequence.

📠 PROCESS
The process, roughly, is "advance the film one frame, and take a picture" ... thousands of times, up to three times a second. At 18 frames per second, a 3-minute Super-8 video has 3240 frames. 😅 With my current set-up, that's a little over 64 GB of raw .ARW files. It's a lot of data, but it's worth it!

📠 WHAT'S HERE, WHAT'S NEXT
Part 1 covers most of my early work and findings, in the process of getting digital copies of film. In the next part, I plan to dig more into the camera, film, and post-processing workflows that worked for me. Stay tuned. 📺

📠 WHAT'S UP WITH THE FAX EMOJI? 🤷
Y'know - so you have the *facts*. WAKKA WAKKA. Sorry. 🤣

Comments, critiques and questions are welcome! I've had fun both working on this project, and making this video. I'm not an expert by any means, on any of this stuff; I'm a software engineer by profession. Hardware and tinkering as such is not my usual hobby. Like many other things, I consider it a work in progress. 😅

🙇 CREDITS
I owe thanks to a number of people, videos and web sites for inspiration and guidance.

Ken Eckert's adventures in using a real scanner to digitize film:
   • How to Convert 8mm/Super 8 to Digital...  

Related studies in motorizing projectors, etc.:
http://keneckert.com/kenfilms/telecin...

Dronebot Workshop on Stepper Motors:
   • Stepper Motors with Arduino - Control...  

Curious Scientist, Arduino + TB6600 controller:
   • TB6600 and Arduino - Wiring and demon...  

🎼 MUZAK 🎵
I'm asking for forgiveness, not permission, on some background tunes. It seems that YouTube's bots haven't picked up on my selections at -24 dB volume. 😅😇

Fantastic Plastic Machine - "The Girl Next Green Door" (1999)
   • Видео  

Piero Umiliani - Lady Magnolia (Royal Belleville Orchestra - Kid Loco Remix) (1998)
   • Видео  

⏲️ Timeline:
00:00 - Introduction
00:58 - "Step 1": Stepper Motor + Arduino
01:40 - Variable Speed Motor w/10K Pot
02:49 - Widening projector Film Gate
04:14 - Removing film shutter "fan blades"
04:52 - Installing the Stepper Motor
05:46 - 12V LED Light Source
06:33 - LED diffuser, mount
07:15 - "IR Sensor"-based Camera Trigger
08:04 - Working Prototype!
08:22 - Camera set-up (teaser)
08:46 - Thank You, sample "Star Wars" Super-8 clip / end-of-film sequence
09:27 - THE END