Hacking the Kodak Reels 8mm Film Digitizer (New Thread)

mattiazze said:

Hello, I'm new to the forum, bought a European D version and am very impressed with the work with the modded software. Everything is better except for the bad auto exposure that I had major problems with, have tested version D 272 and the auto exposure behaves exactly as in the original software, it gets light / dark every two seconds, especially at parts with light sky. According to some posts here, the modded version would have that feature turned off, but not that I can see. Is it possible to turn that off in the modded software? If it could be turned off, everything would be perfect. Is it something that could perhaps be implemented in the future perhaps?

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1. A short clip (~10s) where the pumping is clearly visible, recorded with FW 272, ideally the bright-sky part.
2. The Exp: and Gain: values on screen while it pumps: roughly the lowest and highest you see, and how fast it swings back and forth. A short phone video of the screen works well for this.

melw said:

Hi @mattiazze! And welcome, glad the mod works well for you otherwise!

You're right: the Type D builds (270–272) don't change the auto exposure. It works exactly as in stock firmware, so the pumping on bright skies is Kodak's own auto exposure. The Type D mod only reads the exposure value (the Exp: number on screen). It doesn't control it.

What you probably read about is 0dan0's mods for Types A–C. Those replace Kodak's auto exposure with a custom one and add an exposure lock. That code was never ported to Type D, because the D firmware is laid out differently and the A–C code doesn't work on it as such.

I'll have a look at whether it can be ported. No promises on if or when, but the first step is clear: Check that the mod can control the exposure at all on Type D. I can test that on my own unit.

Tuning the auto exposure needs real film with the problem, though, and I don't have any reels currently to test with. That's where you could help:

1. A short clip (~10s) where the pumping is clearly visible, recorded with FW 272, ideally the bright-sky part.
2. The Exp: and Gain: values on screen while it pumps: roughly the lowest and highest you see, and how fast it swings back and forth. A short phone video of the screen works well for this.

Click to expand...