Digitise your collection
Everyone has film, video, tapes or photos tucked away at home. Family outings at the beach, holidays, Christmases, christenings and birthdays. As time goes on it becomes more difficult to view or playback this content. Eventually, it will be impossible to recover information from an 8mm film or open reel tape. Migrating this material to a digital format is the only way to prolong its life.
We digitise all kinds of material, however for our archive we are interested in Maltese memories at home and in the Maltese diaspora. We encounter a great deal of photographs and film which were taken abroad on holidays, or audio and video recordings featuring copyrighted material. We cannot use this type of material in our projects and so do not usually digitise it – although we do recognise its value to you.
Tell us what you have and we’ll see what we can do for you!
Donate your content to Magna Żmien
If you wish to donate a copy of the content of your collection to Magna Żmien, we can digitise your collection for free. Once digitised we return your collection along with a digital copy. We keep these digital files on our server and make them available to use by artists and researchers – we do not re-license your material for commercial use. See our Events Archive to learn more about the kinds of projects we produce.
- Ideally you drop off your collection at our studio, or else we can pick it up from you for €10
- We return your collection to you via download (free), but we can also provide it to you on a USB (€15) or CD/DVD (€2 per disc)
As stated above, not everything is suitable for our archive. Holidays abroad (unless captured in the Maltese diaspora) and copyrighted material such as TV and radio broadcasts, plays, etc, can’t be re-used in our projects, so we can’t digitise these for free. If we find these in your donated collection we will let you decide whether you want us to transfer these at a cost.
Private digitisation
Perhaps you have photographs or recordings that you want to preserve for the future, but which you don’t want to donate to the Magna Żmien project? We can help! We can digitise your audio-visual memories using the same high quality equipment and to the same high standard that we’ve applied to all of the collections we’ve worked on since 2018.
By having us digitise your collection you can retrieve your memories from obsolete formats whilst also directly supporting our community archive. As a Voluntary Organisation we rely on public funds and on private services such as this to operate. All funds we receive go directly to costs such as paying our engineers to make and edit the transfers, equipment maintenance, studio rent, and web hosting.
Formats
We digitise a range of legacy analogue image, sound, and moving image formats that were common in Maltese households throughout the twentieth century.
- Print photographs range in size from contact prints or passport sized images up to large format. The quality and resolution of printed photographs can vary considerably depending on their size and the type of the print. If your images are in books or in frames we will attempt to remove them for a better scan, if possible, but otherwise we can use a DSLR if this is not possible.
- Film negatives are typically found as 35mm film, but sometimes as less common formats such as 110 Instamatic, or 120 Medium Format. The image of a negative is inverted, so it cannot be viewed properly until it’s digitised (or processed into prints, which a professional photo studio can do for you). If stored under good environmental conditions, negatives will typically contain a great deal more detail than print photographs and can be ‘blown up’ larger. The earliest film negatives date to the early 1900s.
- Glass negatives were a common means of fixing a reproducible image through the nineteenth century up until the 1930s. These objects are extremely delicate and susceptible to scratches and peeling of the photographic layer due to humidity (and time). They can come in various sizes and can be digitised at a very high resolution.
- Slides are usually found as 35mm transparencies, mounted in a cardboard or plastic frame. These were used in slide projectors and typically contain a high resolution colour image. These can be digitised in their mounts – which may contain handwritten text indicating the content, or sometimes the date when they were printed by the developer.
- 8mm film can be found as ‘regular’ or ‘normal’ 8mm, appearing in the 1930s and becoming increasingly popular until the 1960s, when it was replaced by the higher resolution variant Super 8 (which could also record sound) that quickly became the standard 8mm format through to the 1980s. Both formats are essentially the same, but Super 8 will typically have better quality due to its larger frames. Both silent and sound 8mm film can be digitised.
- VHS tape was a common video format from the late 1970s through to the 2000s, taking over from Super 8 as the favoured home user format. VHS is particularly susceptible to degradation over time. We can also digitise S-VHS (or Super VHS), which was introduced in the late 1980s as an improved version of the VHS format. We cannot currently digitise Betamax tape, which looks similar to VHS.
- Open reel audio tape appeared in the 1950s as a relatively cheap and high quality way to record at home or, with a portable machine, in public places. Up to four different tracks could be recorded on a typical quarter inch tape reel, which come in various lengths / recording times. Small reels (3″ diameter) were commonly used to send messages or music to friends and relatives abroad, whilst larger reels (5″–7″ diameter) could record uninterrupted for an hour or more, capturing radio broadcasts or whole għana spirtu pront sessions. Tapes from the 1950s–1960s are at particular risk of rapid degradation.
- Audiocassette tape was introduced in the mid 1960s as a miniaturised variant of the much larger open reel tapes. They were robust in their plastic cases and much easier to use and store, becoming a standard from the 1980s through the 1990s. Audiocassettes ran at a much slower speed and on a thinner tape composite than open reel, so their quality was typically inferior. Audiocassette tape is at high risk of degradation owing to these characteristics.
- Vinyl or gramophone discs typically contain commercial recordings, which we do not digitise. However, some 5″-6″ diameter ‘instant’ discs pressed on a cardboard base contain unique recordings of messages which were sent to friends and family abroad. We are also interested in unique Maltese recordings on vinyl or 78rpm gramophone discs.
Private Digitisation Rates
(All prices include VAT)
| 35mm slides | €1.50 per slide (2500dpi) €1.75 per slide (5000dpi) |
| 35mm negatives | €1.50 per image (2500dpi) – €7.20 per strip of 6 images €1.75 per slide (5000dpi) – €9 per strip of 6 images |
| Medium Format negatives | €3 per image (4800dpi) |
| Glass negatives | €3 per image (4800dpi) |
| Photographs | €0.75 per print (1200dpi) |
| 8mm film (Normal 8 / Super 8) | €30 – 50-150 feet / 3″ to 4” diameter (with / without sound) €35 – 200-400 feet / 5″ to 7″ diameter (with / without sound) |
| VHS / S-VHS / VHS-C | €20 per tape |
| Video 8 / Hi8 / Digital 8 | €20 per tape |
| Mini DV / DVCAM | €20 per tape |
| Open reel audio tape | €30 per reel |
| Audiocassette | €18 per cassette |
| Microcassette | €18 per cassette |
| Minidisc | €18 per disc |
| Vinyl / acetate records | €4 per 7″ / €14 per 12″ LP |
| Gramophone disc /other disc | €8 per disc |
| CD / DVD | €6 per disc |
35mm slides & 35mm negatives: 2500dpi / 5000dpi 24bit AdobeRGB TIFF; also provided in 24bit JPEG (Reflecta RPS 10M)
Medium Format negatives: 4800dpi 24bit AdobeRGB TIFF; also provided in 24bit JPEG (Epson V600)
Glass negatives: 4800dpi 24bit Adobe RGB TIFF; also provided in 24bit JPEG (Epson V600)
Print photographs: 1200dpi 24bit AdobeRGB TIFF; also provided in 24bit JPEG (Epson V600)
8mm / Super 8 film: ca. 1080p MP4 (custom Bauer T502, modified speed control, LED, and macro lens)
VHS / S-VHS / VHS-C: PAL 576i / NTSC 486i MP4 (JVC HR-S7965EK with Panasonic TBC)
Video 8 / Hi8 / Digital 8: PAL 576i MP4 (Sony TRV-355E with Panasonic TBC)
MiniDV / DVCAM: 720×576 DV with 16bit / 48kHz WAV sound (Sony DSR-11)
Open reel tape: 24bit / 96kHz WAV; also provided in 16bit / 44.1kHz WAV and 320kbps mp3 (Revox B77 mk1, Tandberg 3000X)
Audiocassette: 24bit / 96kHz WAV; also provided in 16bit / 44.1kHz WAV and 320kbps mp3 (Yamaha KX580SE, NAD 6240)
Microcassette: 24bit / 96kHz WAV; also provided in 16bit / 44.1kHz WAV and 320kbps mp3 (Genexxa Micro-22)
Minidisc: 24bit / 96kHz WAV; also provided in 16bit / 44.1kHz WAV and 320kbps mp3 (Tascam MD-801R mk2)
Vinyl / acetates: 24bit / 96kHz WAV; also provided in 16bit / 44.1kHz WAV and 320kbps mp3 (Technics SL1210 mk2, Stanton 505.V3 cart, Stanton N500S stylus)
Gramophone discs: 24bit / 96kHz WAV; also provided in 16bit / 44.1kHz WAV and 320kbps mp3 (Technics SL1210 mk2, Stanton 505.V3 cart, Rek-O-Kut styli pack)