Buy, Process and Scan 8mm and Super 8 film, London, UK

Buy, Process and Scan. 8mm, Super 8 and 16mm Film

We are a dedicated team of filmmakers and technicians supplying a much-needed resource for 8mm and 16mm film making, based in London, UK.

Our core services are Super 8 and 16mm film sales, with additional processing and HD scanning, priced very competitively.

Our 8mm and 16mm film transfers are done at a minimum resolution of 1.5K (1504 x 1080 px), and far as 4K (4096 x 3000 px) using genuine frame by frame scanning to an output format of your choice, including Apple Pro Res HQ, 4444, uncompressed 24 bit image sequences or DPX output. Our most popular scan is the 2.6K best light over-scan at a resolution of 2640 x 2048 px.

We are official resellers of Kahl Films and a service provider for Frame 24, who are the official resellers of Kodak motion picture films in the UK.

Motion Picture Film Lab London UK

Our lab can process the following films gauges:

> Super 8 film
> 16mm film
> Standard 8 film
> Double Super 8 film
> Vintage 8mm film

We process colour negative, black and white negative, black and white reversal and colour reversal.

All new film stocks are machine processed by skilled technicians with incredible attention to detail. Vintage film stocks are hand processed by a specialist lab. For this reason, vintage film processing is more expensive than new film emulsion processing and often has unpredictable results.

We process on a weekly basis. Films are sent to the lab every Friday at 10 am, processed the following Wednesday / Thursday and back with us on the Friday. Scanning of films takes place thereafter. For customers paying for our 3 – 6 working day rush service we will scan your films as soon as they are back from the lab and aim to deliver all rush films over the course of the Thursday and Friday of the week. Non-rush customers are generally scanned within 5 business days of receiving the films back from the lab, with delivery via MyAirBridge thereafter. However, please note that timings may vary according to how busy we are. If you need to find out our current capacity, please get in touch.

For more details on our turn-around times and rush services available, please visit this page.

HD and UHD Scanning of Super 8, Standard 8, 16mm and 9.5mm Film

Our most popular scanning service is our 2.6k 8mm film transfer, scanning at 2640 x 2048 resolution, delivering an overscan in Apple Pro Res HQ format (or uncompressed 24 bit tiff sequence). We’ve broken down our scanning services into categories, which we feel offer a comprehensive offering to both individuals and production companies alike. Please see the costs section above for more details.

Analogue film is beautiful and truly unique. Film is a truly evocative way to record our lives and entertainment, and much like the vinyl record, its fragility and temperamental nature is an apt metaphor for our lives. Why do we engage with these analogue formats and why do we try so hard to emulate them in the digital realm, rather than settle for the raw perfection of digital formats?

We believe that by definition, 8mm and 16mm film presents a true analogue of the memories and emotions that make us human. There is an immediate emotive response to the colours, grain, saturation and clarity captured in film that digital struggles to emulate.

Video Tape Transfers to Full HD

Video Tape Capture to Digital File. Standard Definition to Full HD. Tape Remastering and Restoration Upon Special Request

Vintage video tape recordings have a unique and highly evocative aesthetic, being as they are the bedrock of most home movies and lower budget films and music videos made throughout the 80s, 90s and early noughties. There were a wide variety of cameras, formats and standards, including the ubiquitous VHS and VHSC (invented by JVC in the mid 1970s). A VHS VCR (video cassette recorder) was pretty much what most TV watching households had, prior to the advent of DVD.

VHS however was not the most portable or even the highest quality format. From the early 70s through to the early noughties Sony released a bewildering array of formats and standards, many of which were both more portable and higher quality than VHS . These included Betamax, Betacam SP, Digi Beta, U-matic, Video 8, Hi 8 and Digital 8. Add to this a few later generation digital video formats developed from the mid 90s onwards, including DVCAM and Mini DV and we’re dealing with a smorgasbord of formats for both professional and domestic markets.

At On8mil we’ve invested in a completely bespoke video transfer rig, handling all of the major video formats, utilising broadcast quality timebase correction (TBC), video noise reduction, sharpening and outline smoothing to deliver the highest possible quality tape transfer. Standard definition analogue and digital video tapes are captured using broadcast quality equipment with optional upscaling to full HD. Noise reduction and enhancement on poor / degraded recordings are deployed at no extra cost.

Multiple tape formats and standards supported, including:

• VHS, S-VHS and VHSC (PAL, SECAM and NTSC)
• Betacam SP (PAL only)
• Digi Beta (PAL only)
• Betamax (PAL only)
• Video 8, Hi8 and Digital 8 (PAL and NTSC)
• U-matic – high band (PAL only)
• U-matic – low band (PAL, SECAM and NTSC)
• DVCAM (PAL only)
• Mini DV (PAL and NTSC)

On8mil Film Scanning – a Little Bit Extra…

8mm film transfers
Frame by frame capture

8mm film transfers

8mm Film Scan and Beyond…

At On8mil our passion is for analogue (analog) movie film. Especially the 8mm and 16mm varieties, although 9.5mm is also quite a hoot too.

So, we started this company, Analogue Image Ltd, (trading as On8mil), built some movie film scanners and got to work. Our first scanners were developed in late 2014 and scan 8mm, 9.5mm and 16mm film at up to 4K resolution. 4K is, of course, amazing but takes extra time (not to mention extra budget).

2.6K 8mm Film Scan = Bags of Resolution in 1080p

By far our most popular service is the 8mm film scan (super 8 and standard 8) at 2.6K resolution. What’s nice about this transfer is, that as many editors are working very comfortably in 1080p (1920 x 1080), the 2.6K scan (coming in at 2640 x 2048) sits in the 1080p edit with bags of ‘pan and scan’ space to play with. In fact to view the full 4:3 super 8 image you’ll need to scale it down by around 65%.

So unlike your typical 1080p 8mm film scan, where the film sits pillar box in the middle of the screen with two black blocks either side, our 2.6K scan fills the whole 1080p screen… and then some.

Good eh!

Frame by frame capture

Frame by Frame capture of 8mm, 9.5mm and 16mm film.

In commissioning the design and build of our films scanners (from MMT telecine), we needed units that could capture each and every frame of the film, uncompressed.

MMT have a very simple but elegant telecine design, that runs the film between 1 – 20 frames per second. Attached to the transport is a machine vision camera, mounted on an XYZ platform. As each frame passes the film gate an electrical trigger is sent to the camera, which then takes a photo of the film frame and either stacks it as massive uncompressed image sequence or builds and uncompressed video file, from which we build our movie timelines.

Simple innit? Well, sort of a bit complex to get right actually.

Our cameras of choice are manufactured by Point Grey. On8mil currently uses two cameras for it’s 8mm, 9.5m and 16mm movie film scans – the ‘Grasshopper 3’ and the ‘Flea 3’. The Grasshopper captures in up to 2.5 K (2448 x 2048) resolution, (as it was essential for us that we could scan at higher resolution than 1080p). The ‘Flea’ captures in full uncompressed 4K! The results continue to amaze us. It’s a tad slow, but entirely worth the extra effort.