Pendell

A lot of the Digital8 tapes I am currently capturing were recorded on the Dreaded Sony Metal Evaporate tapes. named so because the metal strip fucking evaporates (onto your video heads) after a couple years or something. Ironically Sony, the company primarily behind the 8mm tape format, is known to have produced some of the most unreliable tapes in the format's history, their ME tapes being notably historically atrocious for shedding.

Fortunately for me the person who sent me these tapes also sent me a Hi8 cleaning cassette (which are unbelievably overpriced on eBay right now) so I can just run that for like 20 seconds rather than having to disassemble the camcorder and run the video heads against alcohol-soaked paper for 5 minutes.

But yeah. If you want to get into 8mm tape formats. Don't buy Sony ME tapes. They shed. They've always shedded.

given that they're working with standard definition analog videotape from the 70s - granted it was high-end professional stuff, it was still videotape - the amount of detail and quality they're able to pull out of them, while not overdoing it on the HD upscaling, is a masterful tightrope walk that I think they've nailed. (the fringing around edges was I think inherent to the vidicon tubes they were filmed on, and are not, i believe, artifacts of oversharpening)