Modding the Kodak Reels 8mm Film Digitizer (Firmware Hack)

[0dan0]

No stabilization needed, you just need a locking ring:

My Type C has the 12mm lens at 26mm, so the 8mm lens at 18mm, for a very similar resolution gain.

Compression at a high bit-rate solves most of the image quality issues (with a new lens, or a moved lens.) JPEG is also a compression format, so that will not solve all the issues either. H.264 (the .MP4s) is a just a more modern from of JPEG (very crudely.)

 

[0dan0]

Type B is finally working fully (matching C.)

The upgrade is significant.

 

[eyeidea]

@0dan0 Wow, that looks amazing! Is the Type B v6.2 image sample above with the factory lens?

 

[0dan0]

@0dan0 Wow, that looks amazing! Is the Type B v6.2 image sample above with the factory lens?

This is with the replacement 12mm lens, although it should help the stock lens a tad. As thjakob discovered, you might be able to move the stock lens closer for similar results.

 

[0dan0]

Here is Kodak Vision 3 negative (home developed) through my modified Reels scanner. Not too bad. The white balance was changed to 1,1,1.75 to remove the orange cast of the negative film.

I spent a few hours trying to find the color matrix or some way the invert in the scanner, but that might be unnecessary, as post inversion is easy.

The main issue remaining you can see from the histogram, the negative image is very low contrast. This wouldn't be so much an issue for a professional scanner outputting 10 to 16 bits, but for 8-bit scanner you want a wider histogram. The sensor readout is likely 12-bit (might be 10), so if I can find the black offset, I can get more contrast in 8-bit. Any ideas on where that might be?

 

[ReelyReelPerson]

Hey. I made an account, just to follow the progress of these efforts. It's incredible.

I've already installed 0dan0's latest firmware hack and I can see the benefits immediately, but now I want to improve the lens.

I have these in my cart and I'm ready to check out, but first I'm here to ask for some guidance.

M12 Lens 12mm F2.8

Scorpion Vision M12 Lens with a Focal Length of 12mm, F Number of F2.8 and a format of 2/3" with a resolution of 10MP. The Back Focus is 4.78mm and the HFOV is 35.3°.

shop.scorpion.vision

M12 Extension Rings (5mm)

Add a 5mm spacer between the lens mount and the lens to shorten the working distance or increase magnification.

shop.scorpion.vision

I have removed the cover over the camera, and this is where I'm nervous. I don't know anything about hardware modification. What do I do at this point, and do I need anything else to hold this new lens in place? I don't have access to a 3D Printer.

This thread has very excellent detailed instructions for all the software side of this, maybe it's worth a write-up for the hardware side too!

Thanks!