8mm film reels to computer or other?

Question

my grandpa loved shooting video with his camera. i never know him, he died when i was young but my mother says i am on some of the footage. i watched one reel, its very good, in focus and he always carried around a light. With a metal box full of these these, why waste family history? i want to back them up. is their any machine that i can run them through that has like an output that i could hook up to a PC capture card? or whats something like that called? I can assume they are expensive, my budget for this machine can run up to 2000 dollars and a little more. ( i know many many people that would like their films saved also)

Answer 1

OK...the easiest and possibly the best way of doing this yourself to project the films and shoot them on a camcorder in HD. That will give you as good archive footage as you'll get. You'll just need the projector, screen, camera and tripod..that's all. You're certainly right about getting them digitized as the consumer 8mm film was good for shelf life but some of it is rotting badly now. It depends a lot on how it was stored.

Once you have it digitized then you can edit away to your hearts content to produce something the family would be proud of. If your grandfather had had the technology we have now I'm sure he would have been making great films...so do him justice and finish the job for him.

All the best with the endeavour

Cheers.