8 mm movie preservation.bigbumbleJanuary 8 2013, 01:41:40 UTC
First off, I recommend storing the movies in a room temperature or below, low humidity environment. The more stable the environment, the better.
Check the film type. It is written along the edge of the film. If it is Kodachrome and the color still looks good it will keep its color for a long time if stored properly. Old Ecktachrome, along with other brands of film, is less stable and should be at the top of the list for digitizing. If you know whether Kodak film was developed by Kodak it will likely last better than film developed by someone else. Digitize the non-Kodak developed film first, especially if it is Kodachrome. (Kodachrome was very tricky to develop properly. After about one try with non-Kodak processing most people learned to send their Kodachrome only to Kodak.)
Unless it used a different process from still slide Kodakchrome, undeveloped Kodachrome movie film will present something of a problem. The chemicals for developing it are gone, out of production by Kodak and used up as far as anyone knows. (The last place able to do it set a deadline, developed everything they could, and then ran off the last roll ever themselves.) There are some places that will expensively develop it, in black and white, using an alternate process. Not relevant to Kodachrome that's already developed, of course.
Costco and the like will do DVD conversion of home movies, which looked fine to me when my parents did it. I suspect that if you want to do editing, you would want conversion to some sort of raw video format instead, which would cost more.
Re: 8 mm movie preservation.almedaJanuary 8 2013, 20:41:43 UTC
Given what I know about my grandparents' tendencies, it seems likely they would have gone for name-brand processing.
*goes into the basement for a specimen reel to look at*
The metal case the reel is in says "Steinberg-Baum Company / for all photo needs", which I presume is who they bought their blank media from.
Popping out the reel, MAN that stuff is SKINNY and hard to see! I mean, yeah, obviously it's 5x narrower than 35mm film (which I'm quite familiar with), but it's more like tiny adhesive tape than anything I'm used to getting images off of. Ok, squinting as I hold it up to bright things ...
I don't see anything written along the edge of the film. I presume it would be on the sprocket side (there is only one set of holes)?
Re: 8 mm movie preservation.bigbumbleJanuary 8 2013, 21:26:01 UTC
Yup, I do believe it will be on the sprocket side. There may be writing only every couple of feet with the words interrupted by sproket holes. Get out the magnifier.
If it is old style regular 8 (Not Super 8) the writing may be on only one end of the reel. Some of the old regular 8 cameras used 16 mm film and exposed only half of the film. At the end of the roll the film was flipped over and reversed and the other half of the film exposed. After development, the film was split lengthwise and spliced end to end before returning it to the customer for projection.
Comments 9
Check the film type. It is written along the edge of the film. If it is Kodachrome and the color still looks good it will keep its color for a long time if stored properly. Old Ecktachrome, along with other brands of film, is less stable and should be at the top of the list for digitizing. If you know whether Kodak film was developed by Kodak it will likely last better than film developed by someone else. Digitize the non-Kodak developed film first, especially if it is Kodachrome. (Kodachrome was very tricky to develop properly. After about one try with non-Kodak processing most people learned to send their Kodachrome only to Kodak.)
Anyway, my two cents worth.
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Costco and the like will do DVD conversion of home movies, which looked fine to me when my parents did it. I suspect that if you want to do editing, you would want conversion to some sort of raw video format instead, which would cost more.
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*goes into the basement for a specimen reel to look at*
The metal case the reel is in says "Steinberg-Baum Company / for all photo needs", which I presume is who they bought their blank media from.
Popping out the reel, MAN that stuff is SKINNY and hard to see! I mean, yeah, obviously it's 5x narrower than 35mm film (which I'm quite familiar with), but it's more like tiny adhesive tape than anything I'm used to getting images off of. Ok, squinting as I hold it up to bright things ...
I don't see anything written along the edge of the film. I presume it would be on the sprocket side (there is only one set of holes)?
Reply
If it is old style regular 8 (Not Super 8) the writing may be on only one end of the reel. Some of the old regular 8 cameras used 16 mm film and exposed only half of the film. At the end of the roll the film was flipped over and reversed and the other half of the film exposed. After development, the film was split lengthwise and spliced end to end before returning it to the customer for projection.
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