Most of our customers add the color correction and grain elimination technology. Those looking for the very best will do all three restoration services which includes image stabilization.
Color correction is very important for amateur film because we will be able to recover more footage that was shot too dark or has darkened as part of the aging process. Most 8mm and Super 8 film will shift blue while most 16mm and 35mm film will shift red. The scanner monitors the light and color balance and will change it based on pre-determined algorithms. So, it will adjust the amount of light going through the film and will also adjust the color balance. In addition, after the scan, an editor will go through the footage looking at key references like skin tone or the color of grass/sky to make sure it looks correct from a human stand point. See example images below.
Film grain is on all types of film. These hundreds of little dots per frame muddy up the image and take away from the content you are most about. Look at the example before and after below. The after picture is what you really want to see. We do recommend grain elimination on all film.
Most amateur films have some stabilization issues just because of the way the film was shot. It was all shot without a tripod. This means the camera is constantly moving up/down or side to side or both. Our stabilization is limited to about 10% because we don’t want to crop out too much image area. So, we see stabilization as a nice to have but not required. if you can afford to do it then we would recommend it. If it pushes you outside your budget then we would just recommend the Color and Grain restoration.