Help! I have 40 to 50 rolls of old movie 8mm film that I need converted to pictures or video tape. It has the only pictures available of my grandma. My mother does not have any pictures of her mom. Would like to convert for a Christmas present......I am very computer illiterate. I do have a scanner and printer but need help...

-- Tonya Kroff (jkroff@srv.net), November 16, 1999

Answers

Tonya....

I had a lot of old 8mm movie film and tried everything I could think of to transfer them to video tape. I finally decided that the best, and also the simplest way to make the transfer was as follows:

1. Find someone who has a good camcorder, preferable Hi-8, and knows how to use it.

2. Set up your movie projector, they are tough to find now days, and project the image on a good screen (easier to find than projectors).

3. Set the camcorder up on a tripod, behind, and just above, the movie projector, disconnect the sound from the camcorder so it doesn't pick up the projector noise. Turn on the projector and shoot the image. It is that simple. Edit the movie film before hand and probably put it in a chronological sequence. You can later dub in some music and have your grandmother, et al, provide some naration. Use some imagination and be heavy handed on the editing. Making copies for others is another project, find someone with a good recorder and remember, use the best tape you can buy. Do your editing on the film and not on the tape since every time you run a copy, you lose definition. Don't be afraid to zoom in with the camcorder on interesting parts of the film, it is really effective in highlighting points of interest.

I bought all kinds of gagdets and tried all kinds of things but the simple procedure described above was by far the most satisfactory.

Good luck!!

Dick

-- Richard Ostrander (rno@hargray.com), November 17, 1999.

Not sure how you can do this without spending some serious money. Call up a film lab in your area to ask if they offer any optical printing conversion service.

If you want stills, a flatbed scanner will not work very well, if at all. It just can't offer the amount of resolution you will need to enlarge the image for a print. So, you need a film scanner. But then the trick would be in how to scan from a roll of film. There might be equipment out there that can do this, but all the available consumer-end models are equipped only to take slides or "pieces" of film. This means needing to cut up your film. If you can get yourself to do that, I'm sure with a little patience and care, you can jig up a 35mm slide mount with extra cardboard or tape, to hold a piece of 8mm film.

G'luck!!

-- Andy Voda (avoda@together.net), November 23, 1999.