Convert 16mm Film to Digital

You’ll be lucky to have some of this fabulous film format in your family. Your parents or moreover grandparents would have been able to afford a 16mm camera in the first case. It was the high-tech gadget of its time. A 16mm film transfer project is always one that we love to undertake.

Well filmed and stored, it comes out beautifully. It was shown on projectors and had a width of 16mm as you might have suspected. No one in that period probably imagined that you’d be looking for 16mm cine film transfers now.

First introduced to the public in 1923, 16mm was seen as the low-budget, less bulky alternative to 35mm film without a zoom lens. Back then, Eastman Kodak sold the complete kit – comprising camera, tripod, projector, screen and splicer— for $335 (equivalent to a whopping £5000 today). Suddenly, more people could be film-makers. 

Now advertised as ‘the choice of professionals and amateurs alike’, 16mm has proved perfect for TV series such as The Walking Dead and theatrical releases such as mid-90s and Leaving Las Vegas. Pushed to its limits, the format works well on the big screen. Gritty and grungy but polished enough to be watchable, 16mm feels timeless with a character all of its own, full of vintage, grainy, lo-fi charm.

You can’t beat some of the footage that was shot on 16mm in the early part of the last century. Old black & white film from the 1920s and 1930s provides great insight into people’s lives. For example, there’s powerful footage of workers in the North of England leaving a factory at the end of a shift, cyclists in the Tour de France setting out on another long journey, and old threshing machines beating their way across the English countryside. 

Later, with its fantastic ability to capture colour, 16mm became the favoured film stock for superior home movies. Enthusiasts travelled the world and brought back footage of what they came across: the Grand Canyon in all its glory, gondolas on the canals of Venice or the fabulous neon lights of New York in the 1960s. That footage still has a special glow.

These days, though, few of us have 16mm projectors and the old film splicer, so all too many treasured memories lie hidden away and forgotten, just gathering dust in the attic in footage that has been neglected for decades and is fast beginning to fade away which is where our 16mm film scanning service comes in! 

There’s only one way to rescue your precious memories and bring the past back for future generations to enjoy. It’s time to contact Supaphoto and have them digitise your old 16mm to DVD or digital video files such as MP4 before it’s too late.