Quote:
Originally Posted by GoldenAge50s
GREAT stuff David! You did a super job putting that all together!
I have a box w/ 15-20 REELS of family 16mm from about 1950 thru '55. I'm afraid to look at it as I fear it's so brittle.
Can anything be done w/ it like you did?
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Fred: We had the film transferred to video tape about 15 years ago and even that started to degrade to the point it was quivering and jumpy and virtually unwatchable. I took the original reels of 16mm film to a tech guy in Honolulu who was able to examine it and determine that it was transferrable to a digital format. He sent the reels to a lab in San Francisco which used a high-speed, frame-by-frame scanning technique to make a digital file. That cost a bit over a thousand bucks but worth every penny to me and perhaps to McDonalds yet to be born. I was very fortunate that the film hadn't gone to vinegar - my family's precious footage would have been toast. If your film is brittle it might still be scannable. Since you have quite a bit more film than I did you might want to triage out what is most important and give it a shot, keeping in mind that the clock is ticking on the film's lifespan.
Edited to add: the budding Benny Goodman in the first frame makes 60 today. Happy Birthday, little brother Dan!
