Reversal Film to Digital HD Transfer: Automatic or "One Light"?
After unsuccessfully perusing a variety of "Mom & Pop" shops in South Florida where I live looking for a truly high-quality, state-of-the-art film to digital transfer facility (they all use the "old school" method of running the film through a projector and pointing a camera at the projected image, which yields sub-par results to say the least, foggy resolution, limited contrast range, inter-frame double or triple-image effect from 30fps video "upsampling" 18 or 24fps film, and jitter/roll roll every time the projector chokes on a bad splice or torn sprocket holes in the film), I found a company in AZ called Video Conversion Experts that uses same high-speed scanner, I believe a Rank Ursa Diamond and/or Phillips Spirit DataCine, that is used to transfer Hollywood movies, to transfer my old Super-8mm films to 1080p HD digital. The company's scanner uses rollers with no claws to grab onto sprocket holes, so torn sprocket holes and sloppy splices are no problem. The company can transfer film in up to 2k resolution, which despite their advice, I feel is overkill for Super 8, not to mention outside my budget, so I selected 1080p.
Their website shows screenshots of their work and it is razor-sharp. All customer reviews and Better Business Bureau rating of this company according to the web give them top marks for quality and service. Eureka! My prayers have been answered.
After being skittish about sending my priceless family memories and earliest exercises in filmmaking out-of-state, even using Fed-Ex in a padded box, lest Fed-Ex lose, damage or destroy the film, I decided to take the plunge and sent them a couple little 50-foot reels that I'm not that emotionally attached to to be transferred to see the results and get comfortable in the shipping process.
I had these first two reels transferred "automatic", per their advice, meaning the scanner and transfer machine are set to automatically adjust for brightness changes in the original film. I haven't seen my transfers yet. After I look at the results, I'm considering re-mailing them the exact same two reels and having them re-transfer them in a "one-light" transfer (as I understand it, the scanner/transfer machine is set manually at 1-2 f-stops below what the machine considers proper exposure for the gray opening leader, that stretch of blank film before the image starts playing) so I can compare the two transfers and decide how I'd like to proceed in future transfers.
They're concerned, as am I, about preserving the highlights, the brightest areas in the picture, keeping the highlights from being too blown-out white. Dark scenes can be dark, because that's the way I originally shot them, and I can always brighten them up in my video editing program if I feel needs be. I'm concerned about "dynamic shift", that phenomenon or anomaly where, in the old school days anyway, the transfer camera would attempt to adjust its aperture on the fly to compensate for changes in the film's brightness, with about a 1-2 second lag where the image is either too dark or is blown-out white while the transfer camera's aperture is adjusting itself. That's what I'm trying to avoid here. Even if this company's high-speed camera is much more efficient than the old video camera transfer method, makes such adjustments with frame-by-frame accuracy, I'm still concerned about preserving the original look of my films.
The film I'm having transferred is all reversal stock, meaning the original camera film IS the final projection print film. Reversal stock is "what you see is what you get" and has a much more limited contrast range between highlights and shadows than negative.
Has anyone else had their cherished family memories and/or earliest exercises in filmmaking transferred using a high-speed scanner, and if so, which method did you prefer for preserving the look of your film?