Digitizing super 8 film yourself

In our previous post we looked at fixing a super 8 film projector. While watching filme with a real projector has its own charm, it is inconvenient to say the least. First of all you make the entire room properly dark or you can't see anything. This is regardless of the fact that the projector bulb is consuming 100 watts of power to show the image. Even if you manage not to burn the film merely running it through the projector causes wear, scratches and tearing. While film typically ages very well, eventually it will turn into magenta goop or gets eaten by vinegar syndrome. Thus you'd really want to convert all these films into high quality digital files.There are several companies that offer this service. If you only have a few rolls, using those is the smart thing to do. I, on the other hand, have so much material that using a commercial service would cost thousands (possibly tens of thousands) of euros. Fortunately, this is a fairly common problem and there are dozens of existing…