Not all digital transfers are the same...

 

Always ask to see film transfer examples to ensure you receive a quality reproduction of your precious films.

There are numerous film transfer service providers using a multitude of different transfer methods. Most will be using professional level equipment to achieve a high quality conversion of your films, however some are not offering the best possible reproduction due to poor technique or use of non professional equipment.

Perhaps the best way to make an assessment of our film transfer quality is to view a sample transfer. Many service providers don't show samples of their work because the quality may not be up to professional standards.

We are very proud of our craft and invite you to make your own assessment after playing the video below.

This example is a comparison between our Budget Real Time Optical Transfer and the Regular Frame Scanning Restoration option. The Frame Scan production is displayed in the right hand screen with the Budget Transfer to the left. This film is Standard 8mm originally captured in the mid 1950s and survived many years of storage in a hot humid environment. The final finished production will of course depend upon the quality of the original film, so poor capture, composition and lighting may produce a different outcome.

These example have both been captured in HD format. The one on the left is the real time capture, the one on the right has been scanned frame by frame. Frame scanning is a slow process and very demanding on computer resources so the cost is a little higher for this type of capture.

The results speak for themselves. If you have special films that deserve the highest level of preservation then Frame Scanning is the way to go.

Image Stabilisation

Image stabilisation is another process that can be applied to some film. Most 8mm home movies were capture using hand held cameras and the use of a tripod to eliminate movement was very rare. Computer programs are now available to help reduce camera shake, however this can only be used effectively on film that displays very gentle hand motion. We have found most home movies have excessive camera shake or the camera is panning at very high speed beyond the capability of the software to rectify.

With the right film, stabilisation works very well but is an additional process with associated costs. The film example below shows stabilisation on the right hand film but not the film on the left. If you require stabilisation we would need to first inspect the film playback to ensure the camera movement is within acceptable stabilisation parameters and a separate quotation will be provided for this service.

Example of real time optical transfer on the left and frame scanning on the right

The example below is 16mm film from 1925, shot just a few years after this format first entered the market.

The following film is the oldest we have converted. Two tins of film were found under the seat of an old abandoned truck in rural Queensland with the date 1925 written on them. Although badly warped and twisted through age we managed to successfully project and capture these films. We had just one shot at this, as the film began to disintegrate as it passed through the projector. The capture process for this film was the real time optical conversion. This example displays the 4:3 aspect ratio film in a 16:9 wide screen format with black bar padding each side.

The people in this film are unknown, however they will be someones long lost grandparents or great grandparents. This is a glimpse of life 90 years ago that could have been lost for all time.