I would be curious to see how well a dslr with a remote trigger and a nema stepper motor could capture an 8MM reel. The quality would be really incredible if done right.
I setup something like this for a friend, except it was a rig for doing stacked focus photography.
The rig is basically a stepper motor, driver, arduino, and IR LED. Most cameras have remote controls and you can program the arduino to send camera trigger signals with the IR LED.
It shouldn't be much modification to get it to turn a reel and take a photo.
Yup - I (and lots of other people : ) have considered that option, but equipment isn't readily available, so it's a bit of DIY needed there, and when working with old, brittle film, this adds to the risk. I suspect the process would be very time-consuming, and generate huge amounts of data.
An easier / cheaper way that seems fairly popular is to buy an old projector, set it up square to a good screen / wall in a very dark room, and just record that. The quality loss is probably going to be modest, given the low-quality of the original material in any case.
