A somewhat moronic question about 8mm development!

[Aaron Razi]

 

Hello all!

I am currently working on a project with some old 8mm film. It was a roll of Kodachrome II that I found. I got it developed to B&W, as that is the only way most places develop it these days. However, the film is very faded. This is somewhat to be expected, considering it had been sitting undeveloped for upwards of 50 years. However, there is only so much I can do digitally to enhance the image. Is there any sort of chemical process that could be applied to the film after it is developed, to retrieve some of the image? Something that would boost the contrast? I'm assuming the answer is no, but I wanted to ask. Additionally, if anyone had any other suggestions or remedies, I would very much like to increase the clarity of this footage, as I am trying to track down the person who shot it. The footage is below for your convenience. 

Thank you so much!

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Here is the ungraded roll: 

 

Here is the graded roll: 

 

[Daniel D. Teoli Jr.]

Looks like interesting footage. We used to use chromium intensifier back in the day with neg film. No idea if it would do anything for you. It was for silver based film. 

[Mark Dunn]

That is processed to b/w neg so it will be a silver image. Intensifying that much material would be quite a job but I don't think you'd do any better than with software. It's badly edge-fogged and if it's already been through a grade I don't think you're going to see much more than you already can. Shame.

[Aapo Lettinen]

I would test what a noise reduction software like NeatVideo could restore when you tweak it enough. I am pretty sure you could get much  more out of the first scene of the roll but the middle portion is probably non salvageable, there does not seem to be any information there to begin with. The end of the roll seems to be heavily damaged but probably one could get something out of it too. 

I haven't tested AI based restoration for old footage but maybe it could find out more detail as well

[Aaron Razi]

6 hours ago, Mark Dunn said:

That is processed to b/w neg so it will be a silver image. Intensifying that much material would be quite a job but I don't think you'd do any better than with software. It's badly edge-fogged and if it's already been through a grade I don't think you're going to see much more than you already can. Shame.

I'm a bit confused as to your phrasing here. Are you saying a chromium intensifier would or would not work? If that is a possibility prohibited by costs, I could certainly weigh the idea of splicing the negative and only getting the first segment treated (as that is by far  the most interesting segment). And yes, unfortunately I've definitely pushed the scan to it's limits. If there's not a remedy for the film itself, I'm doubtful the quality could be improved. 

4 hours ago, aapo lettinen said:

I would test what a noise reduction software like NeatVideo could restore when you tweak it enough. I am pretty sure you could get much  more out of the first scene of the roll but the middle portion is probably non salvageable, there does not seem to be any information there to begin with. The end of the roll seems to be heavily damaged but probably one could get something out of it too. 

I haven't tested AI based restoration for old footage but maybe it could find out more detail as well

Thank you for these suggestions! These are very compelling softwares, and I have tried/am trying various tests. I am skeptical how the software works with 8mm grain as opposed to digital noise, although I'll concede I'm out of my depths with this sort of stuff. Do you have any recommendations for services that could handle this/AI based restoration? I will also start looking myself. 

Thank you everyone for such quick and helpful responses! 

 

[Mark Dunn]

The idea of intensifiers was to increase the contrast enough to make a very thin neg printable. Now it can be done with software, IMO there's no point.