The Story
Somewhere in the forties of the last century my dad bought his first 8mm movie camera. It was an Eumig C3, powered by a spring mechanism. After a few years it was replaced by a more modern one that had zoom capabilities and was battery powered, a Nikkorex Zoom 8. This all resulted in a respectable pile of 8mm movies. Vacations, the kids first steps, the first day at school, birthday parties, it's all on 8mm. The first few years we watched them using a rented projector. The whole family came over to see the results of my fathers efforts. Later on, my dad bought himself a Zeis Ikon Movilux 8 projector. Now, in the digital era, I had the idea (like so many others...) to transfer these old movies to a more modern medium so they could be viewed on TV.
A search on the internet to find out how to do that, resulted in a hand full of solutions. Of course, in the past I had already tried the simple method of placing a projector and a videocamera next to each other and point them to the same screen. But the results were not very promising. Lag of contrast, hotspot and interference of the shutter were the main problems. I knew that I had to look for a different approach. The website of Freddy van der Putten set my attention to the Telecine method. On his site he shows how you can build a Telecine Machine from an old 8mm projector. The results are fabulous. Even with a cheap webcam and lens, the images are way better than whatever other method you are using.
