I redesigned and simplified and camera bracket, then drilled holes in the projector plate and bolted everything together.

One thing I noticed immediately is that the glass between the camera and the film was dirty and scratched. As far as I can tell, I don’t actually need it — it was there to protect the film from the (very bright and hot) lamp and the spinning shutter. So I removed it entirely.

After some adjusting of the lens, I got my first real capture!

I’ve included the “raw” capture, which is actually a  JPEG at 2592×1944 pixels. You will note that the image does not take up the entire  frame. I believe this is an unavoidable limitation of this approach.

While I’m excited to have this subsystem working, it definitely appears that my lens is pretty poor. Once I get the other subsystems working, I may do more research into decent optics for this project.

Update: Out of curiosity, I digitized the same film on my Canon T2i digital SLR. The resulting frame is a little better, I think, but not hugely so. What you can’t see from a comparison of two still frames is how dang flickery the resulting video is. Even if the individual frames end up being slightly worse from the telecine, there should be far less flicker, since it will capture individual frames.