Anyone doing 8mm film?
 

Picked up an old Kodascope projector at the Salvation Army last week, just because I always wanted to fool with one :)

So, decided to try it out and picked up an old B&W Sylvester and Tweety flick on eBay for a few bucks, and after running it about 9 times to readjust everything and get it to stop chattering, it works beautifully, and the kids love it!

Now to find some more 8mm stuff......anyone else play around with 8mm?

Tim, you may want to check out your local library. Ours had dozens available for checkout in the 60's & 70's. Cartoons, old horror movies, classic comedies from the silent era. Bet they'd be willing to sell them for pennies on the dollar if they still have them.

An outstanding idea, thanks! :)

8mm film is still available as is processing. the better quality 8mm and super 8 cameras still fetch decent prices on ebay. The Canon 1014 being one sought after. Film students have kept the demand high enough to keep the format alive. If you do a Google search for 8mm film processing you can find a lot of very good info. Not a cheap way to play with film but still available.

We have dealt with Urbanski films several times for supplies, and he has a good rep with us. That link is to his 8mm movie page. HERE is a link to the supplies page, I highly recommend buying some FILMRENEW if you are going to be running old films. It keeps the celluloid supple, cleans the film surface, and lubricates the projector (yes, I've run problem films "wet" with this stuff!) really amazing stuff.

Have fun with the projector, man! And check in with all your extended family, someone is bound to have a few reels of home movies...

My great aunt gave me her '50s Bell & Howell projector and collection of home movies.
I had some transferred to VHS about 10 years ago and gave copies to my cousins.
I bought a Super 8 camera sometime in the '80s to mess around with.

I have always had an ongoing fascination with 8mm even long after the advent of video. Something about that "spotty" texture. May have to grab some equipment myself soon.

I've bought quite a few old 8mm home movies from thrifts stores lately.
The latest find had several birthday parties and christmas from 1950.
Quite facinating to see how people actually looked and lived back then.

I'd like to find a way to transfer them to DVD short of actually paying to have it professionally done.

My old man used to have a serious 8mm porn collection.

"used to have", hmmmmmm...

I had found one of those windup 8mm Kodak cameras back in the 70's for just $5 at a yard sale, and I loved it. Only took a couple of movies before film became unavailable. In the mid-80's I picked up a small Kodak Super 8 camera, and within the first ten seconds of its first cartridge, it stopped working. I opened it up and a plastic drive gear had snapped in two. Couldn't find a replacement at any price (wish they'd had the internet back then) so in the trash it went, taking with it my dreams of rivaling Cecil B. DeMille.
Tom

well, one way to transfer it to dvd involves having a pretty powerful computer. most tv tuner cards come with software to capture video from video inputs, assuming you don't already have software with that capability. either capture and compress to mpeg2 at the same time, or capture in lossless at say, 512x384 and then compress later. i got a cheap tv tuner card at $30 and it wasn't amazing but it got the job done... more or less. a quality capture card would be important if you really care about quality. once you have the dvd format video, i don't know a great way to burn it to a dvd, but i've been using nero XP. best of luck if you decide to do this.

If you have a DVD recorder, it's possible to project the 8mm film and pick it up with a camcorder wired into the DVD recorder. The problem with home transfers like this is usually flicker. Professional gear that eliminates the flicker is really expensive.

I suppose you could always scan it frame by frame and then reassemble the frames in software. It might take a while though. :)

I've scanned individual frame before to make still images, but I've never actually tried to do any number of frames in order and reassemble them into a movie.

In the past I've wondered how viable it would be to somehow automate this process, but I've never actually done anything with it. If it could be done the resulting transfer would be a lot better than anything done with a projector and a camcorder.

Yes but the goal here is to actually use the medium. I'm not looking to transfer it over to anything :)