I’m glad to be in the testing phase of my journey into building a scanner for my family films. I realized that I was digitizing the back side of the frame, whereas I know from digitizing 35mm and 120 film photos that you should handle the emulsion side for the best quality.
I’ve made some adjustments and I’m getting much better results, as expected. When I thought about it, it actually seemed quite logical. I won’t make this mistake again as a rookie in scanning Super 8.
I also get better defined contrasts now, as they should, and it looks much better to me when I watch it in front of my TV.
May I suggest to check that the illumination is even? It may be the film itself, but I noticed the upper left side corner seem darker than the rest of the frame.
Hello @Utrecht This is an incredible output; the frames are incredibly clear for something that you threw together with stuff that you mostly already had! I had a few questions: what lens are you shooting the stills with on your Sony, and what software are you programming the Arduino with?
@Ambichrome I only just saw your message after quite some time. I haven’t worked on this project in a long while.
The lens is a Nikon El-Nikkor 50mm 1:2.8, which I mounted using reverse rings on extension tubes. What I ran into was that focusing with the setup I had was very difficult, since I didn’t have a focus ring or anything like that, just an adjustable table (very DIY haha). Eventually, I want to buy a Laowa 25mm lens, purely for the flexibility and quality. But the lens I used actually works great too.
I programmed the Arduino using the standard software, called Arduino IDE. With my limited knowledge, I managed to piece together the script using ChatGPT. It was mainly to drive the gear motor and apply correction if the frame went out of view (which sometimes happened). The signal to trigger the camera was sent by sending a signal to my mouse to click the shoot button in my camera remote software.
Anyway, I was thinking in terms of possibilities, even with my limited knowledge. I’m sure there are easier ways to do it
