Josh Gladstone

The Retro-8 is an 8mm scanner sold by http://moviestuff.tv/, although the newer model, the Retro Universal, does multiple formats.

A little underexposure is better for reversal films, and overexposure better for negatives, right? I'm sure that's why.

You might want to make just one thread for all your experiments, instead of a new thread for each one. Just a suggestion.

Super cool, keep posting. If it helps, here are a bunch of films I processed and scanned with my DIY setup. The scanning setup was/is still a work in progress, so the scans tend to get better the newer they are. And everything is processed as a neg either in D-76 or caffenol-c (they should all have information in the details on youtube) https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PL6E414828ACB06EE9

This was processed as a negative, right? Are you just going to be doing a bunch of film stock and processing tests? Because that's cool. I'm into it!

Wow. I hope you got a good deal on it!

My super 8 and 16mm scanner uses an enlarger lens on a macro bellows rig. Enlarger lenses are good for macro photography because they give nice flat images. Edit: I'm using a Schneider Kreuznach Componon 80mm f/5.6 mounted the proper direction on the bellows, and I've also got a Nikkor 50mm. But also keep in mind I'm not using a full frame dslr, I'm using a machine vision camera, so my image area is much smaller.

My Beaulieu R16 is like this. The viewfinder is oily/dirty on the right half, so that focusing is still possible on the left side of the viewfinder, and then I use the whole viewfinder for framing. It's inconvenient, and I'd love to get it cleaned, but it doesn't seem like it's worth disassembling the whole thing.

Flatbeds are set to focus a very small distance just above the glass, which is why film holders are supposed to get you the best results. In practice, this isn't always the case because 35mm and 120 film is often not completely flat to begin with. So sometimes putting it flat on the glass, and then having it curl a little bit, puts it in the sweet spot for focusing. But theoretically, the film holders are supposed to elevate the film to the proper position. So now when you're scanning super 8 and keeping it flat to the glass, I'm guessing it's just slightly out of the focal plane. And since super 8 is such a smaller image area, when you blow it up, it becomes more noticeable. But yes, suffice it to say this is not going to be a good way to judge your picture sharpness. Do you have a projector?

The frame lines appear soft, so I'm going to guess it's a scanning issue. What kind of scanner is it?

Shoot a landscape or something outside, and set the focus to infinity. You could also measure the distance from your subject to the film plane and use that to set the focus instead of doing it by eye. If those are sharp, then you know it's a focusing issues, probably not setting the diopter correctly. If those are not sharp, it's something else, i.e. possibly the lens, the camera, the scanning, the film, etc.

Could be. But that should be pretty easy to test. Just shoot a roll of some fresh Kodak film and see if it has the sharpness you're looking for. If it does, then it has to be either the cartridge or the loading or the filmstock itself. If factory fresh film doesn't solve the sharpness problem, then it's either your camera or operator error, or a problem with processing or scanning. Start eliminating possibilities.

Congrats, Goran! That's an insane price! Lucky you!!

WOW. Jeez! I JUST bought a 100' roll on eBay a month or two ago for $30 with shipping. I know I got a good deal, but there's no way it's worth THAT much more.

What about at Mono No Aware? http://mononoawarefilm.com/

I don't see it as sloppy with such a small negative. It's a clever engineering solution that utilizes the physical properties of the small negative size to its advantage.

There's a fairly prominent vertical line weaving around the middle of frame from about 1:10-1:45

Looks good, but the bit rate limit on Vimeo's end kills the grain and it ends up looking kinda chunky. So, why the conversion to b/w? Especially if it's just a sound test. And what's the deal with that scratch in the middle?

I dig it! Old tech + arduinos makes me happy.

Magazine cameras. Ah yes. I had a fantasy of walking around with one of those and a sack of magazines to just document everything I saw. Unfortunately, they take double perf film, which can be had, but isn't super easy to find these days. And reloading the mags is finicky. I do still want to do that some day.. Alan Gordon was selling reloaded mags a few years ago, and even supplying new ones, but I'm pretty sure they're out of it now. You can find some fresh ones on ebay, though. That's probably your best/easiest bet. Any 16mm film lab can process the film. If you have some magazine and you want to reload them yourself, again you'll need some double perf 16mm film, but here's a video showing how to do it!

They can be a bit cost prohibitive. I was working on a super low-cost DIY Arduino-based light meter, but I got sidetracked with a Polaroid hacking project, but once I finish that or get some time off work, I'll try to finish up the light meter project. Might be up your alley.

You don't have an incident light meter, do you? That would be the best way to know where to set your exposure.

No problem, happy to help! You just hang it to dry. The easiest way is to twist paperclips around a clothesline and then hang the film to dry by the perfs. The key is to space it out so that none of the wet film is touching itself while it dries, or those sections will stick together and you'll get uneven drying/water spots. You need reels. They're plastic and very inexpensive. Spectra and Pro8 sell the 50' reels for about $1 each, which is the length of one roll of film. If you're going to be editing or need to store longer durations of film, they make 200' and 400' reels as well. http://www.spectrafilmandvideo.com/Products.html http://www.pro8mm.com/Merchant5/merchant.mvc?Screen=CTGY&Store_Code=01&Category_Code=DIYSupplies

And yes, you can develop the second reel right after the first in the same developer. Though, if you do decide to use spirals to keep your film separated, you will have to wait for them to dry, since the film will just stick to everything and you'll never get it loaded up. Developer will eventually degrade with continual use, so be wary of that. It also degrades over time. Stored D-76 officially has a shelf life of about month when exposed to oxygen (although i've used it 6-9 months later with no problems so I say its shelf life is much longer, but generally if it's not clear you should probably make a new batch). Personally, I rarely reuse developer. D-76 is very cheap to start with and on top of that I'm diluting it 1:1, so I don't mind throwing it away after each batch. But that's totally up to you.

Simple, you don't do it in the dark! ;) I use a Lomo tank, a soviet made processing tank. It looks like this: You load the film into the tank it in the dark, but you work with the tank in the light. There's a port on top where the chemicals go, a tube to drain everything out, and a little twisty spigot on the top that spins the reel inside the tank, since you can't invert it for agitation. Now, if you're going to do it in a bucket, get something as dark, opaque, and light-tight as possible (so with a lid!), then reduce the lights in the room to a low but comfortable working level. You're going to have to turn the lights off every time you want to dump liquid out and pour the next solution in, but that could work. If you're feeling DIY inventive, you can put a drainage port/spout/hose at the bottom of your bucket. On the top, you could put a PVC u-bend, which should keep the light out since light can't bend around 90 degree corners. But like I said before you could also just use something with a lid and then shut the lights when it's open. The other thing you should take into account is that wet film sticks together. If you bunch your film up and stuff it into a bucket, some surfaces will touch, and those areas won't receive any chemistry and thus won't be processed. This can lead to interesting results, especially when perfs sort of bleed through, so it might work for your aesthetic, but just be wary of it. That's why the film in the lomo tank is wound onto plastic spirals, it separates the film, ensuring that chemicals can flow over all the surfaces evenly. This guy is getting some fantastic results from his home-made processing tank with home-made spirals, if you're interested: http://www.chrisgavin.com/2013/07/diy-spiral-proccessing-tank-for-cine.html