Fun with a gang synchronizer

[Konton]

I have this motorized gang sync from super8sound. I thought it could be used some way to do telecine transfers. He's a video on my own little tests with a Canon T2i.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oeRJL3LngZg

Thoughts appreciated, Lens suggestions would be great!

[nikonr10]

I have this motorized gang sync from super8sound. I thought it could be used some way to do telecine transfers. He's a video on my own little tests with a Canon T2i.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oeRJL3LngZg

Thoughts appreciated, Lens suggestions would be great!

Hello Konton really nice bit of kit there , like the part where the film runs through your hands ,

[chrisgavin]

Great stuff! I've seen these Pic-syncs for larger formats but never a Super8 one before.
I think you could make some really interesting 'experimental' work with this as is, showing the actual film strips going through in real time.

But, If you specifically want to use your Canon DSLR to shoot the full frame of the Super 8 I can suggest a couple of ways I've been experimenting with.
I've got a Canon 600D and have also been trying to 're-photograph' these tiny frames too.

MACRO extension tubes.
I use an old 50mm Manual Pentax mount lens, an EOS to M42 converter ring and some SLR macro extension tubes, this can get you to a good scale. If you're shooting video (not stills) you can use the 3X digital zoom to get your crop even closer with fewer tubes required.

MACRO reverse lens technique.
I've got another old M42 lens, a 21mm wide angle. I've found if I use a 'macro lens reverser adapter ' on this, I can mount the old lens backwards on my 600D and pretty much fill the frame with the s8 frame.

Method 1 seems to rob more light than method 2, but both ways could give you the macro you need without needing expensive Macro optics.

Good luck, with this, would love to see more about it.

Chris

[carllooper]

I was playing with a 4 channel 16mm gang the other day - having the film come out of one channel and then loop back around and feed into the second channel, to loop back over again into the third and fourth channel before being spliced back onto itself again. I attached a motor to the normally hand driven wheel and watched the film endlessly cycle through the gangs.

The smoothness of the wheels, as it turns, impresses me. While weighty it just glides (when taken off click stops). Once the motor got going, it just spun effortlessly along without a care in the world.

No practical value as such - but kept me entertained for a a good many hours.

C

On a completely different tack (or perhaps not) I heard Ken Loach the other day, on the BBC, talking about film and a particular problem he had:
http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/entertainment-arts-24724693

[Konton]

Thanks everyone. It was just a test really. It's hard to know what Super 8 equipment syncs perfectly with things you can buy today. Honestly though I'm probably going to just connect everything to a Raspberry Pi once I can figure out how. All the lens stuff is just too confusing for me and the bigger the camera, the more expensive. But having a Raspberry Pi with a camera module make it's easy and cheap to install the system directly into whatever the equipment is and record to hard drive or preview on a monitor. Talking about it here has gotten me to look into it again. I had the equipment in the house since this summer, but only now looked into the macro options and testing it.

Here's the Raspberry Pi connected to a Fuji Splicer just to see if I can get the right focus for the full Super8 Frame

http://youtu.be/RpxTdsSlNdE

Bummer this youtube embed option doesn't work here.

[chrisgavin]

Hi Konton,
Another really interesting test there...

For my DIY scanning efforts, I'm now messing about with stepper motors and an Arduino microcontroller to control everything.
I've only had the Arduino for a few weeks, but I have already separately made it flash LEDS, control the stepper motors and trigger DSLR a stills camera too. (I've not had much success with getting it to trigger my old Sumix machine vision camera yet though : ( )
It should be possible to get the lights,motors and camera elements together to get some automation into the system I hope.
It's slow progress, because there's new mechanics/optics/coding aspects to the project and it's a steep learning curve for me along the way.

I had been wondering how good that new Raspberry Pi camera module could be and I've got a few questions about that if you're happy to offer up any more info about it...
It looks like you've got it shooting macro, is that with some special lenses on the RPi camera board, or is possible with the camera just as it comes? Also, do you think it would be possible to get an in focus picture of the whole S8 frame plus one sprocket hole?
If you can get the desired framing, I guess you'd capture stills from the Raspberry Pi camera... on paper these should have plenty high enough resolution, but do they actually look any good?
It would be amazing if this works out well, and I'd be really keen to read more about it along the way.

good luck!
Chris

[carllooper]

Thanks everyone. It was just a test really. It's hard to know what Super 8 equipment syncs perfectly with things you can buy today. Honestly though I'm probably going to just connect everything to a Raspberry Pi once I can figure out how. All the lens stuff is just too confusing for me and the bigger the camera, the more expensive. But having a Raspberry Pi with a camera module make it's easy and cheap to install the system directly into whatever the equipment is and record to hard drive or preview on a monitor. Talking about it here has gotten me to look into it again. I had the equipment in the house since this summer, but only now looked into the macro options and testing it.

Here's the Raspberry Pi connected to a Fuji Splicer just to see if I can get the right focus for the full Super8 Frame

http://youtu.be/RpxTdsSlNdE

Bummer this youtube embed option doesn't work here.

The work you're doing is great. What is cool is how you've syncronised the gang with the camera. That's really quite beautiful.

With respect to lenses it's worth looking into in terms of the additional quality you can get. In simple terms, if you turn a lens back to front (some lenses are better than others at this) you can position it in front of your camera sensor in such a way as to get a much larger image on your sensor, ie. have the Super8 frame magnified up to the size of the sensor, ie. as you've otherwise done by changing the focal length of the small lens.

From there the remaining issues are just how you would mount such a back to front lens to your camera sensor. That's where discussions on bellows and adapters, etc. comes in. They are just ways of mounting the reversed lens to your camera, and adjusting the lens (moving it in and out) in order to get the magnification you need and in focus. You also need to move the entire camera + lens forward and backward as well. But in the interim period you can just experiment with pieces of wood, gaffer tape, g-clamps etc. to get a working test going.

For my work I just use an enlarger lens with the front part of the lens facing the camera sensor, and the back part of the lens facing the film. In relation to the original purpose of an enlarger lens, it's doing exactly the same thing (oriented in exactly the same way), but instead of projecting an image onto photographic paper, it's projecting the image onto a camera sensor. I use a Canon DSLR with bellows and custom mounts but my first tests were done simply using the aforementioned pieces of wood, g-clamps and gaffer tape - with beautiful results. It was only after that I got more particular about the setup.

C

[James E]

Very cool trick. Long time no chat!...
Cheers,