Blow it Up

[DJ Dubovsky]

It's definately worth a look see for sure.
DJ

[DJ Dubovsky]

Jim
That Vizcam 1000 looks good but when they say contact a sales rep for prices I get the impression I'm buying something pretty costly. Must be looking at a $1000 ore more? Looks like they get good results from it.
DJ

[kaulike]

Chiming in late---but I have had some luck taking stills from old super-8 films without cutting them up. This is a subject near and dear to my heart, since mostly what I have left of my childhood is on 49 short rolls of super-8.

My current scanner is a four-year-old Microtek X6, $89 special, with a "LightLid". I also have a moldy-oldy 8mm editing setup, the old hand-driven one with reels on both sides, and it was easy to set it up to where I could load a reel into the editor, roll it to the still I wanted, and then carefully remove it from the editor and stretch it up to the scanner. No cutting or splicing, but cleanliness is all-important, as is keeping cats etc. out of the way during the process.

As a caveat, I didn't get the kind of resolution being discussed here out of my X6, but the stills were still useable. I had no idea what I was doing at the time---this site hadn't yet been invented! I want to re-scan using the same technique as soon as I acquire a decent scanner, my old X6 is finally showing blurry, noisy scans with lime-green and magenta vertical lines from bad CCD pixels. (Or perhaps I'm just more picky these days?)

8mm is about 1/3 of an inch. With a 2400dpi scanner with a lighted lid, e.g. the Epson Perfection 2450, 600x800 (or so) is eminently possible, not much but probably good for a 3x4 print at 200dpi. Better than I would have expected with less than $500 in materials. A 4000-dpi film scanner will get you into the 5x7 category. Better than that will require cutting it up and outsourcing to a drum ($$$).

Also, I had this discussion on photo.net a while back, and I notice there are a few more threads. If you go hunting, also look at the threads on scanning 110 film, since it's very similar in size.

Someone displayed onto a screen and photographed the result with slide film, but was unhappy with the results. One suggestion was to simply mount 110 film in a standard 2x2 mount and scan it, I don't know why that wouldn't work for 8mm if you were willing to snip it. I would worry that it would fall down inside the scanner if using one with motorized feed.

(BTW, since 8mm film moves at 24 frames per second you can snip out a good chunk without actually disturbing the action to any great degree. Snip 3 consecutive frames, that's 1/8 of a second, faster than my eye can grab. Stitch back together and no one will be the wiser except grandma, of course.)

Let us know what you figure out!

[Jim Conway]

Originally posted by DJ Dubovsky
Jim
That Vizcam 1000 looks good but when they say contact a sales rep for prices I get the impression I'm buying something pretty costly. Must be looking at a $1000 ore more? Looks like they get good results from it.
DJ

You are right about the cost at 1K but the quality of the unit is worth the price and then some. They use them in the school science rooms so there apparently is a big market for them and I had to wait three months for delivery. I tried it a few days ago with a roll of 8mm, stripped the film out and taped it down on the light table then brought the unit down to about 1/4 in above a single frame. The enlargement (to about 6 inches on the monitor) is no problem but stabilizing the unit is! Touch the table or camera arm and it takes a few minutes for it to stop moving from the vibration. Nice to know it can be done I guess, however I was testing it with a pro film and have found in my past experience that most of the amature films were pretty soft to begin with. Hope there isn't much of a market for this or we will all go broke - I spent an hour goofing around with it to get one frame. :-)

Jim Conway
Timemark Photo Conservators

[DJ Dubovsky]

Jim
I figured it had to be at least that much. It may be out of my reach at this point but something to wish for for sure.

Kaulike
First, welcome aboard. I have the Epson Perfection Photo 1650 which has the built in transparancy adapter. I thought there should be some way to use it on film but I have a feeling even the ability to scan at 3500 dpi might not be enough for a frame that is only half inch wide. It is certainly worth a try. I'm a bit booked right now but I will definately give it a try after the holiday crunch when I get more free time. Unless someone else beats me to it.
DJ