Converting Super 8 Film Movies To DVD

S

Sandpatch

Senior Member
I have 15 Ea * 7 Inch Reels of our family's movies on Super 8 film that I want to convert to DVD. I also have a nice c. 1965 Bell & Howell projector which works great.

I do not want to have the conversion done commercially because (a) I'm cheap and (b) I cannot risk losing the films. Using a circa 1980 Sony Videocam and a Sony VCR-4 mirror box (projector in one side and camera in the other side looking through a diffuser) designed for this very thing resulted in muted and blurry images. I found a larger generic mirror box and it was only slightly better.

Tonight I experimented by projecting the movies on a large glossy poster board and setting my D5100 and 18-55mm kit lens set at 55mm on a tripod as close to the projector lens as I could (to minimize parallax) and my first brief attempt was surprisingly successful.

It's grainy, but I prefer that to blur. The color is very very good.

Can anyone offer suggestions to improve my tests?? Will I harm my D5100 doing this by getting hot or whatever? I think the D5100's time limit is 20 Minutes, which should be just about right. I have a high quality, high capacity memory card.

Sorry this went on. I'm excited, but don't want to damage or shorten the life of my D5100. Thank you all.
 
D

DraganDL

Senior Member
No harm to D5100. No problem with the time limit - you stop playing each time the recording has been interrupted, continue with playing+recording, and afterwards you join the 20 minutes long files using any modern PC program such as Freemake Video Converter (freware) or Adobe Premiere ($)...
 
Last edited:
G

Geoffc

Senior Member
I got my late father's done last year commercially. One thing that struck me is that 8mm is low quality anyway and you need to sit back some way to view it. This is how it would have been viewed on a screen originally. I only say this as most on this forum are used to very high quality these days from a DSLR.


Sent from my iPad using Tapatalk HD
 
S

Sandpatch

Senior Member
Thanks everyone. As an experiment, I'll try dialing the size back to 640 x 424 and see what happens. This will be a much closer match to the rectangular film ratio and as Geoffc noted, a Super 8 film image isn't razor sharp anyway. The lesser size might actually improve the "watchability" on a TV screen.

I friend told me about a local lab which converts movies to DVD, so if my efforts fail, I now have a safe alternative. I'm not sure what the cost is.
 
S

Sandpatch

Senior Member
That's true Wayne. I'll talk it through with my brothers to gain their input on the decision. I've since discovered too that some of the films are Super 8 which my projector will not run.
 
S

Sandpatch

Senior Member
Update Two Months Later: Further 8mm copies went very well. Each reel was about 30 Minutes, so I used AVS Video Editor to electronically splice the two D5100 segments together from each reel. The color and clarity is much better than I expected and we've really enjoyed the results.

Until today I had no Super 8mm projector. In a case of serendipity, I stumbled upon a Super 8mm projector today at a garage sale for $1! It's a low feature all plastic 'Anscovision 88' as made by GAF, but it's in mint condition, it works and it only needs to last for three reels.
 
Last edited:
Top