Harbor Digitizing
by Steven K. Roberts
Friday Harbor, Washington
updated: September, 2023
Please contact me via the webform to discuss film, video, audio, or still-image digitizing projects. (We do projects for local clients as well as those shipped from afar...)
Like most businesses, this began for personal reasons. I inherited a library of 8mm movies taken by my father from 1936 through the mid-1970s, and some of the earlier footage had considerable historical value. While researching the overwhelming range of conversion services, I realized that the collection was large enough to justify buying my own system… so after obsessive research into professional tools, I acquired my first film machine in 2017, and in 2018 decided to set it up as a business.
I now have the tools to scan every detail of old home movies and convert them into digital form, ready for editing or sharing. Here is a marvelous example scanned a few years ago… New York City in 1948:
New York City in 1948 – film by Charlie Aton from Steven K Roberts.
I occasionally do a little post-production to stabilize old camera jitter and restore color balance; here is an 8mm moment of railroad geekery from our family vacation to Colorado in 1961 (when I was 8):
Rio Grande 5534 in Royal Gorge – 1961 from Steven K Roberts.
One of my favorite parts of working with old film is the stills… each 3-inch reel is a time capsule of 8,000 images including micro-expressions that are far more interesting than the frozen “say-cheese” snapshots of the era (when photos were expensive and getting the camera out was an event). I am collecting quite a library of moments… here are four frames from one of my father’s 1941 reels (regular 8 film):
My original intent was to offer this service only to clients here in the San Juan Islands, though I began accepting projects from afar and that now amounts to about half the business. Please get in touch if you have old movies or video tapes fading in storage and would like to preserve them for posterity. Turn-around time depends on the scope of the job… and delivery can be via thumb drive, external hard drive (including a loaner if you’re local to Friday Harbor), or cloud services.
Pricing
The most common home movies are 8mm (either Regular or Super 8) and 16mm, all of which we scan at 2K resolution and then export as MP4 or AVI video files that can be edited or shared). But there are LOTS of variables, including huge “numbered image sequences” that give you a separate file for every frame of the film. We’ll work with you to see what makes the most sense, and can deliver in different file formats if you prefer… including web-optimized for YouTube.
(We are occasionally asked about transferring to DVD, and can do so if needed… but that is a compromise I don’t recommend. Your files will be hard to extract later… and the downgrade to 480p video quality is not nearly as good as the files that play directly on your computer and already come free with the service. Optical disc drives are less common as the years pass, and most smart TVs have USB ports anyway. Rationale for DVD is decreasing, but if needed…)
The cost for digitizing is based on film length, which correlates with the time required to do the job including setup, cleaning if needed, occasional repair of old failed splices and fine-tuning (color, focus, contrast, tilt, exposure, framing, backlight) while the film is running… plus export and building the delivered filesystem. The nominal price for all that is 30¢/ft for 8mm, which works out to about $15 for the common 3-inch reel (including the export), with a discount for long reels with less handling overhead. For an additional fee based on human time, we can do post-processing of special footage… color grading, stabilization, titling, transitions, audio tracks, and so on.
Often included at no charge are still frames that catch my eye… this is fun for all concerned, and these time capsules of ancient film contain treasures in the form of fleeting smiles or captured moments. These images will be sent via email or Facebook as the scanning process is underway, giving you teasers to share with friends while awaiting your video files. They will also be included in a folder on your thumb drive, and can be printed as greeting cards. Some of them are marvelous… with rich tonal range and subjects that could never have been captured while posing stiffly for the still cameras of yesteryear.
The output will be delivered on whatever media is needed to hold the file size (usually a thumb drive, or external SSD for huge jobs)… or we can use media that you provide.
I will save your original files until we are sure that you have them safely backed up or shared with family (and for many months thereafter, just for added security). This makes it easy for us to export still frames from the original scans as you discover them, or generate additional thumbs if you don’t want to do it yourself (it’s easy).
For most 8mm jobs, that’s it — 30¢/ft charge plus media cost (and shipping if you’re not local), with a small copying fee if you want me to make additional copies for family members. There are lots of other options; please contact if you would like a current price list or rough estimate based on your project.
Audio, Video, & Stills
We can also take care of your old transparencies (35mm or 2-1/4), negatives, and prints. Sometimes the image quality of old photos is astounding, and we use a variety of tools to remove noise, adjust exposure, retouch, fix colors, and so on. Here is a scan of a 1970 slide, showing my father in his GE office:
Slide digitizing will yield an archive of your entire collection, making it available for online posting, prints, and historical research. We use a dedicated slide scanner for small jobs, and for large ones there is a streamlined workflow with tethered full-frame mirrorless camera on a copy stand, color calibration tools, and dedicated Lightroom machine. We can return the slides in archival sleeves with corresponding “contact sheet” images to serve as a cross reference, and also include the huge RAW files for future PhotoShop work with full dynamic range, as well as small convenient files for sharing on social media. (In the parlance of archivists, those three levels are Preservation, Mezzanine, and Access.)
In addition to all that, we handle most analog consumer video formats that have been in use over the past 40 years: VHS, VHS-C, Hi8, Digital 8, LaserDisc, miniDV, and Betamax as well as professional Betacam SP and U-matic (Y/C DUB via TBC). All these are routed via Tek/Sony monitors to video digitizers, with audio taking a side trip through the MOTU interface to allow EQ or filtering. The Time Base Corrector works wonders on analog video artifacts, and it is all processed as component signals. We can do the miniDV with a direct digital feed to Thunderbolt, eliminating analog conversion entirely, and can also extract files from DVD if needed. There is a significant per-hour discount for longer tapes.
Please get in touch via the Contact form if you have questions or would like to have some digitizing done, and we will advise the best way to proceed and give you an idea of costs. If you include your mailing address, I’ll send a quaint hardcopy brochure… as retro as movie film! I am setting up an online storefront to make this all simple, and it will have an associated blog with featured stills and videos, tech tips, storage advice, human-interest stories, and so on. (We take checks, plastic, PayPal, and cash.)
Over in the audio department, we can also do cassette and microcassette with direct-to-thumb MP3 digitizing, as well as DAT and reel-to-reel on a gorgeous Otari. And speaking of audio, all the sources diverge from their corresponding video feeds to be routed through the MOTU stack… this lets us add EQ, filter hiss or hum, and tweak levels as needed before the signals arrive at the digitizer.
In 2021, we moved to a new lab in town to provide more workspace… with dedicated workstations for slides/negs, movie film, audio/video, electronics, and business adulting… and then moved inland in 2023. You might enjoy my 2020 post, Digitizing Our Lives, which puts a personal twist on all this in the time of COVID-19.
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