The results are pretty stunning, too. He has some examples on his blog, and I am amazed.

Posted at 1:45 am on Dec 9th, 2007 by Dave Eaton

Hmm, interesting…
I dont think thats gonna be real good for the tape.
What I had in mind when i read the intro was one motor connected to one tape reel, then the other just free wheeling, but with a little tension thrown in. If i were gonna do it, id have the motor continuously turning, and hack the scanner driver, so that it sits in the same position, and scans the images as they go past. Bit of software to join up the scanned lines, viola.

But i like doing things the hard way. Cause its better

Posted at 3:05 am on Dec 9th, 2007 by abunai hito

id love to have a 35 mm one that also can do the sound for cheap.

Posted at 4:02 am on Dec 9th, 2007 by werejag

the site is down. mirror?

Posted at 9:33 am on Dec 9th, 2007 by andrew

http://209.85.165.104/search?q=cache:viD-L8ViDbMJ:www.kaimio.fi/blogs/harri/entry/fun_with_mindstorms_old_8mm+http://www.kaimio.fi/blogs/harri/entry/fun_with_mindstorms_old_8mm&hl=en&ct=clnk&cd=1&gl=us&client=firefox-a

google cache

Posted at 9:59 am on Dec 9th, 2007 by Sp`ange

It’s a manual process, but can be sped up by use of SANE’s scanimage, a command-line processing tool (ImageMagick or NetPBM), Mplayer, and Python or Perl.

Posted at 11:22 am on Dec 9th, 2007 by STrRedWolf

neat idea. im glad he got his kids involved.

does anyone see anything wrong with using a webcamera, some python and a stepper motor instead of a scanner? ive tinkered with video capture (python) [http://videocapture.sourceforge.net/] and taking individual frames / images with a webcam is pretty easy.

also:
is there any IR correction that has to be made for the super8 film / film in general? anyone know of any good batch image processing tools
-Thanks
Dane

Posted at 5:51 pm on Dec 9th, 2007 by Emperor_Dane

#4, thanks for the link.

Dane, VueScan by Hamrick Software (which is what he used) does support ICC color profiles. Ed includes profiles for dozens of popular films and processes, and profiles for many scanners as well. That’s good, because when I was looking an IT8 target would have cost me about $100 locally (they’re about $40 on eBay now). The images I’ve scanned using VueScan (over 3,000 slides and negatives) came out quite well, and I never would have finished without it.

And it was great to get his kids involved, but I’d be afraid that the rubber Lego tires and home-made film path might damage his original film. A sprocket drive would have been better, but I have no idea where he could have found one.

Anyway, I agree with the author of the article that VueScan is not particularly easy to use, nor is it designed for use in a batch mode. I bought it primarily because the Minolta software that came with my film scanner completely sucked.

If you’re just looking for batch tools, ImageMagick is really good. For processing a lot of pictures visually, I like RPhoto, but it has its flaws — only work from copies of your images!

Posted at 8:59 pm on Dec 9th, 2007 by jaded

If you tore down an old scanner, you could setup the scan head motor to move the film instead of the scanner head. This would eliminate having to even touch the mindstorm stuff. In fact, if you tricked the driver into making the print bed infinite, you could continuously scan the film. The film feeding system could be easily be setup with the parts from an old, dead 8mm camera. I’ve seen plenty of those at thrift stores for under $5.

Posted at 10:50 pm on Dec 9th, 2007 by Sp`ange

Informated Article… Appreciated!

Posted at 2:00 am on Dec 10th, 2007 by Tabansi

There is another site that is worth mentionning for anyone interested in transferring 8mm films to digital.

Although the hardware part isn’t well documented, the Java software is well integrated with source code available through sourceforge. It can control the scanner through TWAIN, trigger a film advance mechanism using parallel port, extract individual frames and eliminate overlapping ones automatically.

The source isn’t complete because of some license restrictions on fundamental routines extracted from an old ‘c’ numerical methods, but instructions are clear enough for an experienced programmer to get working binaries.

With Christmas around, family memories could be a great gift for grand parents

http://www.jiminger.com/s8/index.html

Posted at 8:00 am on Dec 10th, 2007 by Sle118

Love it when jerks refuse to release the software they make for a “hack”

If you dont release the software and you publish your “hack” then you are simply gloating not hacking.

you instantly lose your hacker badge and ID.

Posted at 1:56 pm on Dec 11th, 2007 by fartface

Hmm, I’ve been thinking about something along these lines for a while. My parents have hundreds of tapes.

Though I was thinking of using a stepper motor so I wouldn’t have to worry so much about slip (in theory anyway). I was also thinking of mounting it so there were multiple strips across the bed at any given time to speed it up, but in the end, that would probably complicate it an order of magnitude.

Posted at 4:40 am on Dec 15th, 2007 by shotgunefx

Legos, not Lego’s. Sheesh…

http://www.angryflower.com/bobsqu.gif

Posted at 4:23 am on Dec 16th, 2007 by JET

Informated Article… Appreciated!

Posted at 6:55 am on Dec 17th, 2007 by Shabby

Happy Christmas to All!

Posted at 3:44 am on Dec 21st, 2007 by Jeff