400'CINE SCANNER AND ITS CHINESE FOIBLES!

Wet weather, inside painting the hall, stairs and landing in addition to adding several new uploads to the shop which are thus downloads! A tiring day as painting now takes its toll on my shoulders and neck. I did carry on with some scanning on the new Chinese 400' capacity 'pro' machine. To some degree it must be pro as it actually works. Bus needless to say it wouldn't be Chinese if it didn't have laughable flaws. The first is that in action with a 400' reel the whole machine is top heavy and without support would topple over, not so good for a £400 machine, really £99 would be more realistic for what it does.

 The biggest calamity though is the three white tabs you have to place the film in to feed through. The former version had just two white tabs this one has greater traction on the film as it has tabs on the top and bottom. To get this set you need to realise that the white tabs aren't white, well ok one is and one only. The others are black against black structure in a fiddly position at the best of times. It takes a torch to locate them but the actually copying ability so far so good.  As a prop I use the pencil which formerly performed as a spindle on my home made take up spool for rewinding etc. Perhaps the machine needs to come with a free pencil.

I need to keep my eye on the weather forecasts for Wed, Thurs, Friday this week which will probably be my filming days, it is going warmer they promise but I wonder really if summer will just miss us altogether. The film I'm feeding through the scanner is of Birmingham buses in the 70s plus milk floats, yes an interesting combination, the milk flloats are a Roger de Boer speciality. To come though will be the Malta films and here is a taste of Malta in times past.