Scanning is digital. You have a choice between: CCD or CMOS, rolling shutter or global shutter, Bayer or monochrome, area or line sensor, express or GigE, optical low-pass filter or not, camera manufacturer, and choice of lens.
Are you looking to build a scanner?
Hello, my name is Garrit and I am very new to this community. I got my first 16mm camera 2 weeks ago and finished the reel of Vision 3 500T. I plan to develop this weekend. I am looking at options for scanning in the future and had a question. I see all these DIYs with projectors or taking pictures of individual frames.
Is it not possible to just use a light bed to project the negative and use a digital camera to shoot 4K “X” Frames per second. All else equal framing could be an issue but if there was a way to sync?
I’m not sure I understand the question. If you’re using a projector you can build a “projector telecine” that involves removing the shutter, putting in a good LED light and then pointing a camera at the gate. Past designs used video cameras which weren’t very good, but you can get very good quality machine vision cameras now which aren’t that expensive. If you’re using a projector you just put a small magnet on a gear that rotates once every frame and use a hall-effect sensor to trigger the camera (see this diagram). You can capture at realtime (24fps) or even faster using that method, but that will also depend on the choice of camera the resolution and the data speed. Negatives have a thinner base compared to prints, but a decent projector should still be fine handling negatives in decent condition as your transport.
Beyond that most modern scanners ARE just a camera pointed at the film at the heart of it. There’s a bit more involved, this shows you how the Filmfrabrik scanners work:
And this is just the stuff that’s in the direct line of the camera:
That part is exactly the same design that’s in the Lasergraphics Scanstation and the Blackmagic Cintel. Camera, Lens, Gate, Integrating sphere/cube to diffuse light, RGB LED light, heatsink.
Welcome to the community!
Welcome @Floyd_Parker ! The current design does not use a DSLR. The most (not very at this point) up to date specs can be found on the wiki: https://wiki.kinograph.cc. That will be updated in the coming weeks/months as more component designs are finalized.
I am glad I found this forum as I thoroughly enjoy reading the technical and engineering discussions of the many problems to solve in this domain.
I’ve probably spent a grand or two over the last decade on sending 8mm and 16mm films to Memorable.com. A few dozen family movies and some for a historical society. Memorable did a fine job, I have no complaints. Yet I still have additional films I wish I could scan cheaply and well. I don’t want an MP4 or a DVD, I want a nice raw scan shipped back to me on a hard drive that I can process myself.
I don’t think I could line up enough client revenue to justify buying a MovieStuff Mark II. Sure, it looks nice. There are only so many museums in my area who might need help archiving or restoring films and who would be willing to pay. I don’t think there’s enough people with old home movies in my area to find enough of that business to justify that purchase and it seems foolish to try compete with the likes of LegacyBox. After all, there are plenty of people who do want just an MP4 or DVD and don’t want fancy restoration or editing. I could risk $400 on a Wolverine Pro, but after someone here called it “a film grinder” I less like the idea of risking films on it.
Following the old adage “good, fast, cheap: pick any two” I’d be quite happy to having a scanning system that’s good and cheap (US $1000-2000?) and super-slow. I like the idea of throwing cheap CPU / GPU power and storage at the mechanical problems.
Move the film a fraction of a frame, stop, take another pic, let the software sort it out later… the software finds the sprocket holes, finds the frames, joins the pieces in software. Maybe the HD camera view is zoomed to a fraction of the film width, move the camera around over the frame and this buys more resolution. Maybe there’s a way to do several exposures and varying illumination to squeeze more bit depth. Concerns of mechanical precision are washed away by post-processing software.
I like the idea of a vacuum gate to pull the film down during exposure and leave the film to move more freely at other times. I’d be willing to risk film to a system that moves the film by friction along the sprocket edge. I’d like a system that could handle all types of film without paying $850 for a new set of rollers.
I’m old enough to know I rarely have original ideas. Has someone out there tried a software-heavy approach?
I have a 1930s 16mm film that’s vinegar’d and shrinking and brittle. I’d love to have a way to rescue it in software, even if it meant slicing it up into chunks and laying it on a flat-bed scanner and re-assembling the frames in software.
Hey welcome!
I may be able to refer you for scanning send me a private message.
The Retroscan is a piece of junk, awful for the money, and the owner (Roger Evans) is on this forum and is welcome to respond. Think about cars and buying a lemon. Yes there’s not as much competition but the product is well, well short of what is advertised.
I may be able to refer you to a good company that can scan that for you at a competitive price, send me a message and let me know where you are. 
I started working on a simplified transport -without sprockets or claws- mostly to do some R&D on film travel distance sensors.
It will be super-extra-ultra-slow, and the transport part would not be costly. It should be good for 16 and standard/super 8.
No sound, but it would be good to capture optical sound and post-process it.
Don’t know much about bridle film. This may be an interesting use case for this transport, it would be very gentle on the film, and maybe an option to avoid the slicing it on a flatbed.
How bad is your film? Are you be able to unroll the film by hand gently or would it fall apart? hold on for a few weeks until I get some results.
Again, I am doing it for measuring sensors, but think after I get it going I can make it work as a very-precise-very-slow scanner.
I will post all the information on the built, including the firmware to make the transport work. Results for scanning would be dependent on how well size of the spool and the movement of the film work with these sensors.
What can you share about your method of transporting the film very slowly yet precisely?
Does it use some sort of gentle pinch roller? Or a method of gently clamping along the sprocket edge, and pulling it along?
The particular roll of film in question is quite brittle. If I try to unroll it, it will break into pieces a few inches long. I think it shows some shrinkage and warping, too.
But if I had a scanner that could accept each piece, scan what it can, and re-assemble in software…
In that case, the transport in-progress is not going to work.
There are some examples of using flatbed scanners. Here is an example I found on the subject, hope it helps.
My name is Marco, I am italian, but I live in Germany since some years now. I have got a PhD of Physics and now I am working in the industry, more specifically in the EMC (electromagnetic-compatibility) field.
I take photos and print them in my darkroom. Recently, I have also started to film in 16 mm and to develop my 16mm films alone. The main issue is that I could just see the result by projecting the film. When I wanted to digitize I had always to ship my reels to an external service. I was enerved by spending a lot of money to have a film returned from the service to me (almost 60 Euro for an UPS, inside EU!).
I was visiting Kinograph pages since the project began, but I had always the fear to start a project to digitize the film by myself. Last September, I have found a very nice Siemens 2000 projector for just 10 Euro and then, little by little, I decided to proceed. This is what I did until now. Recently I have increased the data taking frequency (in the video I am posting, the speed is very slow).
Thank you for your space! I have to say that Kinograph was the website which triggered my project to start!
Hello!
My name is Diego. I’m Spanish, living in London. I’m part of the UCL Film Society at University College London. I’m putting together a 4k 16mm film scanner for the society’s archive, which goes all the way back to 1948!
I’ve been lurking this forum for quite a while, but now that I’m finally in the finishing stages of the machine, I’ve got many questions to ask.
Thank you for hosting this project, it’s an incredible space for knowledge exchange!
Welcome.
If UCL has the budget they should look into commissioning a Lasergraphics Archivist if they can. You’ll get through 10x the volume of work and they cost a fraction of the price that LG charges for the full ScanStation. If you need any advice on that send me a DM. Anyway good luck with your build, you’ve come to the right place!
Thank you for your message, @filmkeeper !
Although we’re all UCL students, the society isn’t directly funded by UCL (we’re part of the Students Union UCL, as we’re a student-run society) and sadly we don’t have the budget to get what seems like a 30k+ GBP machine, haha. But thanks for the suggestion anyway!
Hello! New to the forum, currently building a super8/8mm scanner. I run a local history group with too many reels to affordably transfer professionally.
A few false starts, started rather ‘off the wall’ with a plustek 8200i.
Results were as good as what I was getting back from the pro’s using Filmfrabrik scanners…but the amount of scanning and time it took was insane so moved to the more ‘neo-traditional’ method.
Arduino UNO…which then spilled over into a Pi4b…Arducam 64MP camera (Buzzer fail sound) and on to a Pi HQCam V3 with a microscope…getting there.
I’ve come looking for likeminded friends to beg for help, haha!
Hello, my name is Hans and I’m from the Netherlands. Have been on this forum for about half a year now and appreciate the amount and level of info published. I was for years used to digitize video cassettes and since a year I’m into (regular8/super8) 8mm digitizing. I’ve built 2 scanners, the first one is the T-Scann8 https://moevi.nl/t-scann8.html and the second one is a Bauer T192 with @Manuel_Angel hardware modifications and DS8 software program https://moevi.nl/t192.html. I even have a 3rd one that I have modified and use with a FLIR BFS usb3 camera https://moevi.nl/t502.html and yes I’m still looking for forum members that are willing to share their SpinView expierences. This Bauer T502 based scanner is able to capture Super8 with audio at 18-25 fps. My next projects/scanners will be a Bauer P8 T400 (similar mods as the T502) and a 9,5mm Pathe scanner. For the last one I’m looking for some examples/inspirations. Any help is welcome.
New here. LONNG time follower of this project, but first time posting. I am actually quite interested in finding someone to pay to build a working version of the latest in the near future. I am waiting on writer’s strike ending and my next union gig starting up again before I fund that endeavor but, soon enough. this looks like a great community of people putting their heads together to solve this thing.
Welcome @maddoxjoseph. As you may have seen, the community was created around problem solving for the Kinograph project, and has, somewhat, become a hub for different projects around DIY film scanning. Based on social media updates (youtube/instagram), Kinograph 2.0 work still in progress (35mm & 16mm).
Enjoy the community, and good luck with your project.
Hi Matt. Hi everyone.
Happy New Year.
First off, thank you so much Matt for starting this community years ago, and for your very humble approach to the people you engage with here, and for attracting so many of us.
Without you Matt, I would have given up on making my own scanner long ago. Thank you, and please do not give up this project. I hope you succeed, and I hope you will allow this great forum to continue to exist long into the future.
There might be “professors” giving out free lessons here, but you made it possible!
Second off, a big thank you to all of you who shared your projects and ideas, or asked the questions others were afraid to ask. It’s such a pleasure to learn from the very knowledgeable people here, and see the solutions people come up with for the same problems.
I’m Chris from Denmark, and a software developer by trade, but have very limited knowledge when it comes to photography (lenses), lighting, and electronics. And I also regret not really caring much about how things worked when I worked as a projectionist for several years in my youth (Victoria 8 and Kinoton machines).
Like many others I have a lot of family films in both regular 8mm, Super8, and 16 mm, and did my first 16 mm transfer by projecting into an angled box with a mirror and then recorded the other end with a Hi8 cam directly into a PC through a matrox graphics card (terrible quality) many years ago.
Back in 2016 I saw Joe Herman’s project turning a projector into a film scanner using a raspberry pi, and got hooked, bought some machines, and life got busy with other things.
Then I came across Dominique’s (dgalland) project / google group, and read all the post there, and then finally came here in 2019 and got hooked again, read all the posts, and got invaluable knowledge and sparring (special thanks to Arthur Kelly for sharing some of his 3D models for printing back then).
Life got in the way again, and probably will again, but for now I’m slowly getting things printed and basic software going.
I see that it has been a while since Matt posted youtube updates, and uploaded new designs to the main page, but I hope you haven’t burned out or worse, and still feel like keeping this going. It really is the place to come to for information regarding film scanning for folks like me.
Hello to you Chris,
I see you’ve come a long way!
You are referring to my yart project, as I have finished all my scans I have not modified it to take into account the software modifications of the raspberry PI. (libcamera and picamera2).
But out of personal interest I continue with some tests in this new context which, as you have seen in the forums, is still quite unstable.
The closest project currently is that of Manuel which closely follows the architecture of that of Joe Herman’s, a little too much in my opinion because the architecture and certain parts could be optimized, but at least it works!
Best regards
Dominique
