Somewhere in the forties of the last century my dad bought his first 8mm movie camera. It was a 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 great.

Using the Telecine method the image is projected straight onto an electronic device, that converts a picture into an electronic signal. Because on the internet there are enough sites where you can find out how this works, I leave the theory for what it is.

No doubt, I knew this was the method that was ideal for my purpose.

Next, I started to make a list with whishes that my Telecine Machine had to fulfill

• Suitable for normal8 as well as super8

• Use of a CCD chip to capture the image

• Perfect synchronizing to provide interference free capturing

• Capturing images on a computer

The first thing to do was to look for a suitable secondhand projector. A few days of looking around on various EBay-like sites brought me to an Eumig Mark 8 projector. To be collected "just around the corner", for a suitable price of course.

The inside of the projector was completely removed and thoroughly cleaned. Although the projector was maintained well, a lot of dust was collected by the greasy parts. The grease itself had become old and had to be removed as well. Next I removed all the unnecessary supports by using a miniature grinding disc. After that I refitted the parts I needed in the new configuration. A few parts I didn't need anymore...

These parts are all obsolete
This is the inside (only the drive assembly has been put into place)	And this is the other (in) side

Because this is a DIY project, it will never be finished. Many pages on this website will be updated from time to time. Important changes in the project will be listed on the "Revision History" page.

Jan Demmendal.