Preserve Your Old 8mm and 16mm Films
07 December 2011
If you are like most people, you probably have a few 8mm and 16mm films around your home that were taken years ago and which serve as the only record of happy family occasions. Though you may not take them out very frequently these days, it is probably a comfort to you to think that they are always waiting in case there is a day when you want to be able to sit and relax and remember times when you were happy and more innocent. If this is how you have been thinking, however, you should seriously consider getting someone to do film transference so that your old films are securely in a digital format.
Most people who have committed many happy memories to film do not realize that this form of recording degrades over time. This can initially just mean that the quality of the picture and the audio is slightly less sharp, but over time the colors will be incorrect and eventually the picture can degrade so badly that it is impossible to distinguish what you are seeing at all. If you have any of these films and they are precious to you, it is important that you have professionals do an 8mm film or 16mm film transfer to a digital format so that your memories will be secure.
You should choose carefully when you decide who you are going to entrust with this work. There are some people who will claim that they are doing a transfer for you, when all they are actually doing is projecting your film against a wall and recording it at the same time with a digital camera. A really good company, in contrast, will use a frame-by-frame transfer process and even offer to use imaging software to clean up the results and restore them to the original beauty that they had when they were first recorded.
If you have any 8mm or 16mm films in your home, you should keep in mind that they are constantly in the process of degrading. Take action and get them changed into a more permanent format before they are so far gone that they can not be saved.