Film Conversion Equipment

Film Scanning and Film Transfer Equipment Types

The type of film scanning machine used for your 8mm, Super 8 or 16mm film conversion will have as much of an impact on the quality you receive as the resolution of the scan itself will. For example, if you wanted to digitize a photograph and tried doing it two different ways. You first put the photograph down on a table and took a picture of it using your smart phone or camera. Then you took the picture and scanned it using a flatbed scanner. If you compare the two side by side on your computer it will become really obvious that the flatbed scanner produced a digital image as good as the photograph. However, the picture you took with your phone or camera does not look close to the quality of the original photograph.

The same goes for scanning your 8mm, Super 8 or 16mm film. The real-time and frame by frame machines below are using a camcorder to take a picture of your film. The motion picture film scanner and Datacine machine are scanning the film. The results will be significantly different.

Film Conversion Equipment
	Real Time The lowest class would be your high volume retail resellers like Walmart, Costco and Walgreens. They all farm it out to a company in California. They all squeeze the supplier to the point where they have to do it as cheap as possible with the cheapest equipment and cheapest work force. They are usually using modified projectors and camcorders in a closed/open box system. It’s kind of like using a camcorder to record your film off the wall as it plays in the projector. These machines cost about $2000-3000.
	Frame by Frame The next class would be small independent companies. Basically your mom and pop shops that sell cameras or video games and in addition will transfer your video tapes to DVD. Typically they are using real-time or frame by frame machines – basically modified projector and camcorder setup. They charge about the same or maybe a bit more than the high volume retailers like Walmart but the staff is usually better trained and they might be able to give you personal attention that you can’t get from the Walmart’s of the world. There are probably about 500 of these small independent companies around in the USA today.
	Professional Film Scanners The last class would be companies that professional scan film. Some only work on Hollywood films. Some do a mixture of Hollywood and semi professional work. A few span the entire spectrum from Amateur film to Hollywood films. Because these companies do some amount of professional film scanning they will have the most expensive and best quality machines to scan your 8mm, Super 8 or 16mm film. The machines they scan on usually run well over $100,000 each. if you are looking for the best quality these are the companies you want scanning your film. In addition, these companies usually do some amount of restoration. So, color correction, grain reduction, etc.

Equally important as resolution is the type of film transfer. There are a few basic types of film transfer processes. More than 80% of the companies out there today use a real-time transfer. Any type of real-time film transfer will result in video that is 40-50% worse than the film’s current condition.

So, at this point you’ve learned that film transfers can capture at standard definition (480 lines), high definition (1080 lines) or 2K (1556 lines). You’ve also learned about the 3 different types of film transfers being used today. In order from least to best quality we have:

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