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Wolverine Super 8 Scanner


Pavan Deep

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The Wolverine Super 8 scanner is pretty cheap and basic and I'm sure the quality is pretty mediocre. I suppose to get decent scans with it one would need a better light source, a better camera and lens inside. Just wondering if anyone has tinkered with this unit.

Pav

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I haven't used it myself but the three main complaints were the quality of the scanned movies and breaking or jamming the film due to the one sprocket being used to advance the film instead of three sprokets used on more expensive equipment which caused people to have to rescan many times, and breakdown of the equipment. Also the warranty was only for 200 scans. One reviewer said it took more than 20 tries to scan one 3 minute piece of film. At that rate the warranty would expire after 8-10 film scans.

I thought the biggest problem was compression

Edited by Bob Speziale
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I scanned this with a Wolverine.

 

nsfw

 

 

Too low Q for me.

 

Plus it broke after 20 something reels. Then it ate up an important film. Once it starts to squeal, stop scanning or you risk getting your film ruined.

 

If it was higher Q and lasted 20+ reels, then it could work even as a disposable and still be economically feasible versus paying a lot of $ to get the film scanned.

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The ONLY good thing about this scanner is that it's affordable. Besides that, it's not meant for any type of serious preservation. I bought this when I was offered a job to scan priceless footage of Wisconsin and I ran into many problems with it: the film wouldn't be in the same place you aligned the camera when you hit the record button, the film would get stuck in the gate so I had many five seconds to hour long scans of just one frame, the recording quality was so bad I had to apologize to the client, the scanner will not play back the footage like advertised, and the list goes on and on. Unless you're just buying this to keep some footage alive, don't buy this.

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Has anyone tried to change its camera, or lens?

Pav

 

Check here, I think I remember reading about a guy that modded it.

 

http://8mmforum.film-tech.com/

 

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The ONLY good thing about this scanner is that it's affordable. Besides that, it's not meant for any type of serious preservation. I bought this when I was offered a job to scan priceless footage of Wisconsin and I ran into many problems with it: the film wouldn't be in the same place you aligned the camera when you hit the record button, the film would get stuck in the gate so I had many five seconds to hour long scans of just one frame, the recording quality was so bad I had to apologize to the client, the scanner will not play back the footage like advertised, and the list goes on and on. Unless you're just buying this to keep some footage alive, don't buy this.

 

BH used to have a super 8 scanner that looked like a movie projector. It was about $1200. It had good reviews, but they don't seem to sell it any longer.

 

The movie film scanner options are terrible for anyone that is on a budget. Really sad industry has not filled this niche.

Edited by Daniel D. Teoli Jr.
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Too bad they didn't make this one in higher res. I heard they were decent scanners.

 

https://www.ebay.com/itm/MovieStuff-Retro8-8mm-and-Super8-Film-Scanner/183486607073?hash=item2ab8a76ee1:g:Wx4AAOSwOuBbtYZg:rk:3:pf:0

 

A lot of these film scanners seem to be made in some guys garage. I don't care about that, as long as they are affordable, reliable and produce decent scans.

Edited by Daniel D. Teoli Jr.
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  • 2 months later...
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I received a Wolverine 8mm scanner as a gift. It's plugging away right now on a reel. Before even looking at the quality of the scan, what I notice is the amount of time it takes to actually scan a 50' reel. Like 1-3 seconds per frame. It advances the frame then adjusts the frame to line up properly before scanning then moving to the next frame and repeating.

 

You must have a ton of time on your hands to use this thing.

 

My goal is just to scan some reels for reference before choosing what to send out for real scans.

 

It does have a switch to handle negative film which is a positive (pun intended) but really honestly it's just for knowing what's on the film...and an 8mm viewer would be much quicker. But if you can put it in a separate room (the constant clicking will drive you crazy) and let it do it's thing then a crappy little reference scan isn't so bad.

 

The other minor plus is that it is very easy to use...

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Just have it exchanged. It produces low end usable images. You may have got a bad one.

 

Yes, good for previewing / deciding on what to send out to get done. Also gives you something of a back-up if your original gets lost in the mail. You set a timer when doing reels and come back near the end. No need to sit there. Although if there is an issue and it jams, it will eat up the sprockets.

Edited by Daniel D. Teoli Jr.
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Hi i have test Photo interruptor sensor to detect sprocket hole and then trigger camera to take a picture and it works very good i think the RetroScan universal works the same way

 

but the camera need to have fast exposure 1/2000 or faster because the film move constantly

 

here is a movie clip when i test it i hand crank the film up to 18 fps no problem :)

 

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ABlW4jvSruM&frags=pl%2Cwn

Edited by Mattias Norberg
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Hi i have test Photo interruptor sensor to detect sprocket hole and then trigger camera to take a picture and it works very good i think the RetroScan universal works the same way

 

but the camera need to have fast exposure 1/2000 or faster because the film move constantly

 

here is a movie clip when i test it i hand crank the film up to 18 fps no problem :)

 

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ABlW4jvSruM&frags=pl%2Cwn

Looks good. That type of equipment is usually in the $5K to $10K range including the camera. Could you post a follow up video of the finished scanned video?

 

I'm wondering if anyone has tried taking a high fps (120 to 240 fps) video of a film clip projected on a screen in a dark room? It would be simple to grade the video of the film clip and slow the sequence down to real time in the editor. Instead of working with about 3,000 frames for a 3 minute reel they would have a few minutes of video with multiple segments of images for each frame that could recorded and slowed down to real time in a few minutes. If I still had my 8mm reels and projector I'd try this myself.

Edited by Bob Speziale
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Looks good. That type of equipment is usually in the $5K to $10K range including the camera. Could you post a follow up video of the finished scanned video?

 

I'm wondering if anyone has tried taking a high fps (120 to 240 fps) video of a film clip projected on a screen in a dark room? It would be simple to grade the video of the film clip and slow the sequence down to real time in the editor. Instead of working with about 3,000 frames for a 3 minute reel they would have a few minutes of video with multiple segments of images for each frame that could recorded and slowed down to real time in a few minutes. If I still had my 8mm reels and projector I'd try this myself.

 

Hi my camera can do max 20 fps here you can see my main scanner setup it does about 7fps that i use https://www.flickr.com/photos/94271811@N03/11007177505/ and i use hall sensor to trigger the camera https://www.flickr.com/photos/94271811@N03/10312776126/

and here you can see some HDR captures i have done i run the film two times low and high exposure and join them with Avisynth

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=o0tv4im6HPo&frags=pl%2Cwn

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nCcKXjlwgRw&frags=pl%2Cwn

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aQd5RWj3hrA

Edited by Mattias Norberg
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Hi my camera can do max 20 fps here you can see my main scanner setup it does about 7fps that i use https://www.flickr.com/photos/94271811@N03/11007177505/ and i use hall sensor to trigger the camera https://www.flickr.com/photos/94271811@N03/10312776126/

and here you can see some HDR captures i have done i run the film two times low and high exposure and join them with Avisynth

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=o0tv4im6HPo&frags=pl%2Cwn

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nCcKXjlwgRw&frags=pl%2Cwn

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aQd5RWj3hrA

Wow. Really well done. Great results. Great memories.

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  • 2 months later...

Who I am and what I do - I work in television as a broadcast television engineer and have history as a producer and editor in corporate and regional broadcast television.  I judge the unit based on my past experience in editing and Telecine transfer.  I have transferred many reels of film with this unit.  It does a surprisingly good job for the price of the unit.  Is it a Telecine level unit? No, but it does a good transfer as it scans every frame of film. It is many times better than trying to set up a projector and camera to do a transfer and dealing with the frame rate issues of 18 or 24 fps to 29.97 fps (US).  I did the speed calculation and adjusted the speed using some simple consumer grade software,  rendered it all then created DVDs of family home movies.  That is the point of this unit, transferring old 8mm and Super 8mm family movies so you don't lose your family memories.  I recommend the unit for that purpose.  

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On 12/23/2018 at 12:11 PM, Mattias Norberg said:

here you can see some HDR captures i have done i run the film two times low and high exposure and join them with Avisynth

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=o0tv4im6HPo&frags=pl%2Cwn

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nCcKXjlwgRw&frags=pl%2Cwn

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aQd5RWj3hrA

Mattias I am legitimately stunned. That first link of Disney World on R8 is absolutely the most beautiful and sharp 8mm footage I have ever seen! Such incredible detail and colors that I dream of shooting today but obviously cannot. Fantastic work. I've seen 35mm scans look worse than this! haha. 

I assume the cost and set up of your rig is quite expensive and complicated? I saw your flickr photo.

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My results with the Wolverine were very similar to Daniel's example posted. It almost looks like it was captured at 360dpi and enlarged to 1080. Like I said, it makes otherwise sharp footage look like a Monet painting.

If you want to say it does a fine job for the money, I guess maybe that's the case since it's $300...but it would be completely unusable for me in any situation other than simply to know what was on the reel.

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I guess it worth the $300 considering the +/- 20 scans it makes before it breaks.

20 divided by $300 = $15 a scan. It gives you a decent $15 scan...I guess.

And you may be luckier than me and get 40 or 50 scans out of it.

If you are going to look at the footage on your phone in the smallest of sizes, then maybe it is acceptable. I would not like to sign my name to the output of the Wolverine. It is painful to see.

I'm not a pixel pepper. I don't have to have 5K, but the image quality should not be painful to watch. You can't enjoy the movie. All you see is how bad it looks.

 

Edited by Daniel D. Teoli Jr.
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Doesn't the US have consumer protection? No way would you get away with a limited warranty like that in the UK. 20 uses? What a joke. Like a car you can use for three weeks.

Edited by Mark Dunn
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3 hours ago, Mark Dunn said:

Doesn't the US have consumer protection? No way would you get away with a limited warranty like that in the UK. 20 uses? What a joke. Like a car you can use for three weeks.

Hahaaa "Consumer Protection" in the USA????

 

Have you seen who runs this place???

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