Cine Film to Digital (5-Inch Reel)

A 5-inch reel holds approximately 200 feet of film, which translates to roughly 12 to 16 minutes of footage at standard Super 8 speeds. These medium-sized reels often contain longer recordings: extended holiday footage, school events filmed from beginning to end, or multiple shorter clips spliced together onto a single reel. They represent the middle ground of home cine: long enough to capture substantial events, but still manageable to store and handle.

Many 5-inch reels you will come across were compiled by keen amateur filmmakers who edited their footage by physically cutting and splicing the film. You may notice tape joins where separate clips have been connected, or sections where the exposure changes abruptly. These splices need careful attention during scanning, because old cement splices can become brittle and crack, while adhesive tape joins can leave sticky residue that attracts dust and debris.

The film on a 5-inch reel may be Super 8 or Standard 8, and can be colour or black and white. Colour film from the 1960s and 1970s is particularly prone to fading, with the red/magenta dyes outlasting blue and yellow, producing that distinctive warm-tinted look. Black and white film, by contrast, is remarkably stable and often looks surprisingly crisp even after half a century.

Our frame-by-frame scanning captures each image at high resolution, and we apply careful colour correction to restore the natural balance as closely as possible. Where splices are fragile, we reinforce them before scanning to prevent breakage. The finished digital file preserves the character and charm of the original footage while making it easy to watch, share, and keep safe indefinitely.