Reflecta film scanner super 8/normal 8

I've been waiting so long for an affordable cine film scanner to become available, and now it's here!The quality of this unit is great. I've scanned over a thousand feet of super 8 film so far and all's well. I noticed early on that a couple of my films suffered from a jittering/jumping issue, but a second scan through fixed this. I have since spooled all my films back and forth a couple of times using my old cine film editor to 'loosen' the film a little, which seems to have solved it. The unit itself is solid, has vents on the back and barely gets warm during use.It takes approx. 30 minutes to scan a 50ft (3min) reel of film, scanning at 2 frames a second. It saves the resulting mp4 file to an SD card inserted into the unit which you can instantly play back, either through the small lcd screen or to a tv/monitor connected to the back of the unit.You can scan super 8 and normal 8mm film. Films are saved in mp4 format at a resolution of 1440x1080 at 30 frames per second. It's not quite 1080p but it's much better than some other similar units that only produce 960x720 resolution files. This is one of the main reasons I chose the Reflecta over one of the other brands.You can adjust the exposure amount. I found the default '0' to be way too high and completely washed out bright areas of the image. '-1.5' seems to work best for me. You can also adjust the frame area (left, right, up, down, zoom in, out) which is fantastic meaning you can scan the entire film frame, even the sprocket holes if you wish!The unit will only scan reels up to 200ft in size, so if you have any 400ft reels (like I do) you'll need to splice the film onto smaller reels. This is the only real downside to the unit and it's a pity they didn't add fold out spool arms.The box claims you don't need a computer to scan and watch your films, which is true to a point but you will need a computer if you want to watch them at the correct speed. 30fps is way too fast for cine films as most home made super 8 film is shot at 18fps. Not only will you need to adjust the film speed, but other settings will need tweaking such as brightness, contrast, exposure etc, to get it just right. I've only done a little editing so far as I'm still in the process of scanning but even at this early stage the results are stunning!If you have a stack of old cine films and don't want to pay out thousands to have them scanned I highly recommend this unit. It will take time and patience to get them all done, and you will need video editing software if you want them to look just right, but the resulting quality is fantastic. I can see detail in my films that I never noticed watching on a projector and being able to see the whole frame is a big plus as projectors crop the image considerably. 5 stars!

I had to send the first unit back as it kept crashing but Matthias of Schniebel quickly sent out a replacement with no fuss which worked great. I have now completed digitising about 50 x 3” reels. Great quality. Yes you have to be there watching each scan (to quickly address any issues such as sticky reels, misfeed or whatever) but this is what you do with old come reels. It’s not cheap but worth it for the memories it saves. Thanks Matthias.

The media could not be loaded. Very simple to set up, I basically plugged in and formatted a 16GB class 10 SD card, looped a film through the guides and started scanning.Films with damaged sprockets could stop, usually (but not always) causing the scanning to pause. I tugged the film on the right side of the scanner to help things along and scanning and feeding then continued. Rewinding worked ok if a little slowly.The 8MM films I was scanning were of variable quality and some had mechanical damage as mentioned above. The scanner coped well with variations in brightness and tone. I have enclosed a short sample which shows how a damaged film still gives an acceptable scan result. (Yes, I am in shot from 55+ years ago!)The memories that have now been saved for future generations are quite short but still greatly appreciated.An excellent product that I have no hesitation in recommending.

I will review this as received via Amazon. If I was reviewing the scanner/converter on the Reflecta site, I would probably give it a 4, even maybe a 5 except for a couple of very minor niggles which I will describe.The 3 rating I am giving is due to the condition in which it arrived. They say that you can judge the quality of a product by the way it is packaged, and I am afraid that the distributor let it down. It arrived in a box that was about 3" all round too big and packaged by a small ball of rolled up paper. As a result, the Reflecta box containing the scanner was rattling around and the outer box, itself made of a single corrugation, had been ripped in the corner. I was concerned that the scanner might have been damaged in transit but this has not seemed to be the case, I am pleased to report.To the actual scanner, the objective is to create a digitised (MP4) file from a Standard 8 or Super 8 film. To date, this has been very satisfactory, the output has been acceptably good. I set the exposure to -0.5 and used Magix MoviePro edit to carry out editing, including colour correction and scene deletion.Given its price, and the quality of the camera used in the original filming, I cannot fault the quality or the speed of conversion. One of my minor niggles is aligning the slot in the take up and feed spools with the spindles but this will improve with practice. The instructions provided with the package are straightforward as are the on screen menus and instructions.A more serious complaint that reduces this from a 5 to a 4 is that it was only supplied with a Euro plug, not including an UK adaptor. I had one in the cupboard so was able to use that.There are some very nice features of the product. It is very light and has a recess in the rear to carry it, so I have loaded some films and run them through at 2 frames per second while watching TV. I then carry it to the computer to upload the films via the enclosed mini_USB cable. My PC instantly recognised the USB output on the scanner and transfer was very quick.To load the film into the scanning frame, you have to open a holder that keeps the film close to the scanner. If you use this scanner, I recommend restraining the holder and opening it under control, as I think it is a bit fragile and may break eventually if simply allowing it to fly open via the <Open switch.I haven't yet used it for more than a dozen 50' reels, both standard and super 8 so I haven't tested how frustrating it might be trying to manipulate a 7" reel.As recommended by Reflecta, I have purchased some film cleaner and lint cloths, both of which arrived in much better packaging, also via Amazon. There was not a lot of dirt coming off the films when run SLOWLY through my 8mm editor but some yellow traces were found on the cloth from some of the standard 8 reels.Can I recommend? Yes, you are going to get an acceptable result from 8mm film,, depending on the quality of the camera and lens and various exposure settings on the original film, and with some post processing even some improvement.I hope that the packaging issue is sorted out, this item is well packed inside the Reflecta box, but unrestrained movement in transit is not a good thing for any fragile item, no matter how well packed inside.If I find any faults, I will add to this report.

When switched on, light briefly appears on and off. Can't adjust any settings. Can't change language (from German). Doesn't do what it is supposed to, ie. scan 8mm film.The instruction book (and youtube videos) make it appear simple to operate. Is this a faulty batch? Wasted my money