The
Top of the Line
The best system available
to transfer film to any other format is called “Rank”. They are pretty
expensive because they are considered to be top of the line machines.
Their cost runs between $500,000.00 to $1,000,000.00. Professional filmmakers
use them and they produce exceptionally professional looking results.
If you are prepared to spend the big bucks this may be for you. Given
the extreme cost of these units, I’d estimate there are less then 5
of these available through out the USA.
The next type of system
commonly used is a variation of a projector, a mirror and lens arrangement
that allows the video camera to be placed usually at a right angle to
the projector. This concept is sometimes referred to as an “aerial image
transfer.” It can give very good results depending on a variety of factors
such as, projector, quality of the lens, which camera is used to capture
the images etc.
Another method that is used
is a system called “Goko.” This system was made famous going back 10
-15 years ago and involves using revolving prisms. It is a system that
still seems to have its admirers.
If your looking to purchase
“cutting edge” technology, there is a company in Houston Texas that
seems to be coming up with new technologies and methods to provide the
latest innovations to the film transfer industry. Information on them
can be found in the links section at the end of this booklet.
Compare and Contrast:
Why ours is better than
theirs
If you choose to have your
films transferred by a professional company, and we suggest that you
do for a number of reasons, you’ll find various Film Transfer Company
websites that boast of being better than their competitors. Their sites
show several captured stills from a single frame of film as a demonstration
to you that they are indeed better. Remember that looks can be deceiving.
The problem with this approach is that it is very easy to take that
captured still from an 8mm film transfer and use any photo editing software
to easily manipulate it, crop it, reduce the sharpness, the vividness,
the color saturation or the size of the image.
They can do anything to
make their competition look bad. They then show you an image captured
from a competitor which, surprise, surprise, pales in comparison to
the method they use to transfer your film. They can manipulate things
to give themselves a positive edge. The truth is that what you see may
not actually be what you get in the final result.
Another approach that these
dubious businesses use is to create a poor, good, better and best, transfer
scenario that will encourage the customer to pay more based on this
same captured still image concept. The unbelievable thing is one site
we reviewed had an option to choose to have your 8mm film conversion
done in a method that they said insured the result would be poor quality.
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