Teeny Weeny Camera

First pics. from the Sumix 150M camera I'm playing about with now. Though it's strictly black and white only, this little industrial CMOS camera makes 1280x1024 images, has a 2/3" sensor and can be triggered from an external source. My hope is that this can be integrated into my cine projector for frame by frame super8 film capture. The lens I've got with this c-mount camera has a focal length of 35mm; I've ordered some extension tubes to see if this might go macro enough to capture the movie frames straight from the film.

The DIY TK Set-up

Here's the set-up used to digitize the 'California 08' super8 film.

1: Modified Chinon 2000GL projector. Adapted to run slow (around 3 fps with pulsed motor control circuit) also with low voltage cooler-running light source to prevent film burning. A magnet attached to the rotating shutter disc triggers a reed switch every time a frame is stationary in the gate. A hacked mouse circuit provides a USB click to the host PC to trigger capture of each frame.
2: 120mm diameter plano-convex condenser lens to capture aerial image thrown by projector. Lens held in place by home-made foam board mounting.
3: Borrowed Canon XM2 3CCD mini DV camcorder captures images at PAL resolution, connects to host PC via IEEE1394 (Firewire).
4: Host PC (Windows XP) runs Cinecap software. Incoming mouse clicks from projector ensure frame by frame capture to hard disc.

Super 8 Film: 'California 08' (on Vimeo)

California 08: super8 film from project on Vimeo.

Super8 Film: 'California 08' (on YouTube)

Californi8

Well the Kodak 64T film I shot in California has come back from the lab in Germany. The first cine film I've shot for a very long time. Mixed-results with the 'new' Nizo S800 camera though; there's just too much jitter in the footage and a big fat hair in the gate. Still it's an early '70s era camera and probably hasn't had a service in a while (if ever.) The old footage I've been looking at from my student days is way steadier than this, so stumping up for a camera servicing is probably the next step.

On a plus note, these stills show some results from my DIY telecine set-up. (modified Chinon 2000GL projector, Condenser Lens, Canon XM2 DV camera, Cinecap software). I'll probably show some detail on this system soon, but meantime, enjoy the holiday snaps.

Further Adventures in Telecine

After around three months research at the extreme edges of DIY film-making, technologists in Enfield have today switched on a machine that captures some of the tiniest and most elusive sub-atomic images known to man ; the so-called 'Super 8 frames'...

Following in the esteemed footsteps of of Roger Evans, Fred's Telecine and with guidance from the extensive notes published at diy super8 telecine the UK based team have extensively modified a Chinon movie projector to create a home-telecine unit for 8mm film.


Jeff on Bridlington beach 1992

We can reveal that the initial tests have been quite promising. A single 50ft reel of super 8 film was digitized frame by frame at PAL resolution at around 3 images per second. Slightly higher speeds may be obtainable soon, and upgrades to the camera and optical elements will surely follow...

Happy 3rd Blogday

Hey! This blog is celebrating its 3rd birthday. Was it really Monday, August 22, 2005 when this thing started?

16x9.tv

One of the domain names I'm selling over at sedo.co.uk has received an offer and is thus now up for auction this week, ending this Thursday 28th August 2008. The sale page for www.16x9.tv can be found here

Gadget: Nizo S800 Super8 Camera

I obtained this beautiful Braun Nizo camera just in time for our family trip to California. Having located a pair of the PX625 Wein cells (required to power the light meter) I shot one test roll of Kodak 64T reversal film whilst in Los Angeles and San Francisco. I'm back in the UK now and have sent the film away for processing ... the film should be at the lab in Germany by now ... ooh the anticipation ...

Adventures in Film Scanning

While I had those old Super 8 films out, I thought I'd have a go at scanning them with the flatbed scanner I bought last year. The Canon Lide 500F has a highest resolution of 2400x4800 dpi, so assuming the Super 8 frame to be around 5mm wide, then this ought to give a scanned image that is around 500-900 pixels in size. The scanner comes with a Film Adaptor Unit (FAU) that scans with additional infra-red to perform dust and scratch fixing automatically, and the images came out pretty well.
The strip scanned here (see left) is as much as the diminutive Lide 500F FAU can scan in one go; it's designed for scanning 35mm stills of course. Scanning a movie this way could become very tedious.

Some folks out there have tried this already; some have even devised home-made frame advance mechanisms to automate the process, scanning a strip of film at a time, then using software to break the strips into separate frames. My scanner only scans a short strip of around 10 frames at a time, so it might be better to scan individual frames (avoiding the need for custom-made software to split-up the images). I might possibly then need to use After Effects to stabilize the images afterwards.

I've made a few first moves on this project, but it's a long way from working yet. Firstly I've acquired a stepper motor from an old Microtek flatbed scanner. The stepper motor has a step size of 1.8 degrees and came with a handy gearing mechanism which ratios this down even more. (I looked online to find out how the 6 wires should be connected up). I've made a film channel to fit inside the 35mm film tray of the FAU from strips of card that guide the 8mm film down the centre of the film unit. I've glued an old 35mm film core onto the stepper motor's output gear and this happens to fit very snuggly onto the FAU tray such that a rubber band on the film core contacts the film and slides it across the scanner glass. Now I've just bought a USB stepper motor driver board (StepperBee) and have used the Autostep software it came with to successfully transport the film through the unit.





The mechanism actually does advance the film! It takes approximately 13 steps of the motor to move the film one frame. The problem though is that; 'approximately'... Unfortunately the mechanism isn't accurate enough to transport the film repeatedly by the required distance. The distance the film should move is somewhere inbetween 13 and 14 steps (4.23mm to be precise). The 35mm core I have used has a large diameter of 75mm so transmits too much rotational movement with each step; a much smaller drive wheel might just work though...