Trust our award-winning quality to save your precious memories. ScanCafe converts your 16mm and Super 16 film into digital video, transferred in-house in the USA by dedicated, trained technicians.
3500+ Reviews20+ YearsDigitized in the USA
16mm film has captured family memories, archives and productions for a hundred years, and the reels you have are only getting older. Digitizing your 16mm film sooner rather than later is the best way to preserve it. Here's what you get when you convert 16mm film to digital with us.
Color correction and dust and scratch reduction are included when we convert your 16mm film to digital.
Every reel is cleaned and scanned in-house at our Indianapolis lab, never outsourced, and we guarantee the safe handling of your films. Your original film always goes back to you, on its original spools.
Your film is spot cleaned, and simple repairs like bad splices are handled for you at no additional charge.
We've designed the whole process
to be as pain-free as possible.
Place your order online with an estimate of your film, then pack your reels in a sturdy box and send them to us.
Our technicians clean, view, scan and edit each reel at our Indianapolis lab.
Get your digital movies by download, Kinoke app, or on a USB drive for editing. Your original film comes back too.
Your 16mm film collects dust and debris over time, which can leave visible specks and imperfections in your digitized movies.
Every reel we process includes professional cleaning and restoration to help bring your films back to life:
Physical cleaning to remove surface dirt and debris
Digital cleanup to remove visible dust and specks
Minor film repairs to fix damaged splices
Scene-by-scene color correction for more natural, consistent colorsWhen our highly skilled technicians convert film to digital, they use cutting-edge tools to transform faded celluloid memories into forever digital formats. These include a German-made MWA machine, Swiss Agiscan software, and a Mac computer to convert analog to digital.
An autocolor feature is utilized for frame-by-frame color correction, and Adobe Premiere Pro is used for cropping and in/out edits. Whether your film has magnetic or optical sound, our sophisticated technology enables capturing and digitizing the audio.
But equipment is only half the story. Before any reel goes onto our machines, a technician cleans, repairs and splices it by hand and adds a leader.
Digitize Now
Choose the digitizing option that works best for your collection.
À la carte pricing
Flat-rate pricing
Have other photos, film reels, or videotapes you'd like to preserve? Explore our other digitizing services to find the right solution for your old media.
Kodak introduced 16mm film in 1923 for the Cine-Kodak camera. Its frame is one-fourth the size of 35mm film, and because it was made of noncombustible acetate, it was called "safety film". It was a direct reversal film, so no negative-to-positive step was needed, and it could be loaded in daylight. Kodak even ran a rental and sales collection of films.
16mm is the most common format in archive, library and museum collections, and it's likely one of the formats behind your family films too. Convert 16mm film to digital soon to preserve it. ScanCafe does the work in-house in the USA, never outsourced, with dedicated, trained technicians.
16mm film is twice the width of 8mm. Silent 16mm film has sprocket holes on both sides, and 16mm film with sound has them on one side. 8mm film has sprocket holes on one side, whether it's silent or has sound. 16mm reels are also much larger, and a big one can be the size of an extra-large pizza.
Yes, both physically and electronically. Your film is spot cleaned, and simple repairs like bad splices are handled for you at no additional charge. We also include color correction and dust and scratch reduction.
Estimate your film length with this formula: total run time in minutes x 16.67 gives you the feet of film. When you place your order, our film calculator gives you a ballpark estimate.
Leave your film in its original packaging, and group and label your reels inside the box. Keep labels short. You can also fill out the online titles worksheet, matching it to your reel labels, because those titles become your USB chapter titles.
It doesn't matter. 8mm, Super 8, 16mm and 35mm film are all priced the same, by the foot. If your film is on a reel with sprocket holes, we can likely scan it.
Use a box, not an envelope. Choose a sturdy, double-walled box, like the kind used for shipping books, and avoid flimsy department store garment boxes and padded envelopes. Make sure your box is filled, even if you need to pad it, with bubble wrap, foam peanuts or crumpled newspaper so your film can't slide around.
Film digitization starts at $0.34 per foot, including cleaning, scanning, and digitizing. Your total cost depends on the amount of film you send and your chosen delivery option. Prices are subject to change, so please visit our pricing page for the most up-to-date rates.
Friendly, first-class service. My most recent project involving the scanning of a few hundred photos, many over 75 years old, was fantastic. The finished qualit...
When I started this process I was skeptical. How can I just pack up all my precious pictures and send them off somewhere? As it turned out this was the best thi...
I sent about 130 pictures in to be put on a USB stick, and very pleased with the result. Digital images look great, and I shared with my family. Very happy with...
ScanCafe was a great place to have my photo negatives turned into digital images. The images came out great and the negatives came back to me in perfect conditi...
I just finished downloading the digital files from a dozen old 16MM family films that I submitted. All of them were shot in the mid to late 1950's and were sure...
Scancafe delivered high quality 35 mm slide scan as promised. Customer service was effecient. Important memories were rescued :)
Helpful staff, careful treatment of our slides, great care with keeping slides in order, and packaging them for posting. Highly recommend
I have trusted ScanCafe (nee GoPhoto) with many, many treasured photographs over the years. They are always returned exactly the way I sent them and I am absolu...
Great service and quality wrt digitizing some of my APS film.
