An old film reel at Family Scans in Cape Coral. PROVIDED

Looking to preserve precious family memories, history or restore and convert old footage into modern technology?

Family Scans and Archive 16, owned by Cape Coral resident Christopher Specht, brings old memories and moments in time to life. 

Family Scans gives the ability for customers to digitize and enhance photos from yesteryear to be enjoyed for generations to come. Specht has the ability to edit and restore images of the original album pages repairing tears, wrinkles and digitally replace faded captions, notes and headlines.

The technology Specht concocted for Archive 16 allows for transferral of 8mm, Super8 and 16mm movies to hi-res digital files. All transfers are done on sprocket-less machinery and all captures are true 4k scans.

Specht is just one of a handful of individuals throughout the country who are able to perform these transferrals that truly preserve memories. His image files are of such high quality standards that some of his films and digitizing work is part of the permanent collection of multiple museums, including a Smithsonian Associate Museum, among other museums nationally and internationally. 

An original photo before being restored by Family Scans. PROVIDED

Specht was always a lover of photography, having developed his first roll of black and white film at the age of 9. At 13, he was developing his own color slides and prints at home. 

Roughly four years ago, Specht created Family Scans and Archive 16 after pulling out his mother’s old family movies. He came across some videos that were put on tape in the ’80s of previous Christmas gatherings that were very low in quality. 

Specht has now converted 16mm film dating back to his mother’s first Christmas in the ’30s, up until the ’60s when he was a child. 

“It’s better clarity, color and resolution than the camcorders of the 2000s,” Specht said.  

With a tagline of “running a rescue shelter for memories,” Specht provides a way to bring times of a bygone era back to life. 

The same photo restored and enhanced by Family Scans. PROVIDED

“There’s so much history and so many black holes that I go down — I’ll see a street corner in New York and I’ll end up going back to see what it looks like today as compared to 1950,” he said. “There’s so much war time history and social history, and so much of it is going bad because, film goes bad.”

Specht meticulously goes through film, no matter what the condition is, and treats and cleans it to digitize in the best way possible at the highest resolution.

“I will clean and save a lot of these previously unsaveable tapes,” he said. “A lot of times, (different services) try to go with the smallest file which loses a lot of color information and detail. My captures are a lot slower. Real time is 24 frames per second. I’m at about eight frames per second. The quality difference is just unbelievable.”

Specht built his own Super8 and 16mm machines himself (named after his beloved cats), which took years to accomplish with trial and error. 

“Mine is actually individual images of every frame on the roll,” he said. 

Family Scans can work with 35mm negatives, Polaroid prints, glass negatives, 35mm slides, audio cassettes, VHS and more. 

Specht has restored three movies for the Cape Coral Museum of History, which gives insight to the early days of a city that not too long ago celebrated 50 years of incorporation. 

Specht was even recommended and referred to a presidential library and museum to digitize 3 million feet of newsreel footage that had been donated, and he hopes to be able to complete that service for them in the near future. 

“It would be an honor to do that,” he said. 

An example of how Specht’s services can provide a human connection to the past comes from his former employment at a camera shop in the late ’80s. He was told to clean out the basement and throw away dusty, old, abandoned items. 

In doing so, he came across some old negatives of military/shipping photos. 

“I thought I’d hold on to these, and I did,” Specht said. 

About three or four years ago, Specht pulled them out while he was playing with a new scanner. He took out a negative of a ship being pushed by a tugboat. 

“And on the bow of the ship, you could see somebody was waiving, and halfway down the side of the ship was the tugboat, and you could see there was a person on the bow of the tugboat,” he recalled. “So I zoomed way, way in, and I got the picture of the guy on the bow and the guy on the tugboat, and the name of the tugboat.”

Specht went down a rabbit hole of the history of the ship and the tugboat, finding out the time frame was between 1948 and 1953 taken in the New York/New Jersey area. 

Specht posted the photo in a social media group titled, “I love tugboats,” and a few hours after the photo was up, those with ties to the ship started reaching out. 

“I get a post on there, ‘That’s my dad,'” Specht said. “And then somebody else goes, ‘And my dad or uncle was the captain of the tugboat. I used to spend a couple weeks every summer on that tugboat.'”

Specht, blown away by this, sent a copy of the photo to all on the post who shared a connection with each vessel. 

“What are the odds of a picture taken in the ’50s, abandoned by a newspaper, and then literally 70 years later some guy pulls it out, plays with his scanner, zeroes in on a couple of these little grains of silver hairline, posts it on the vast internet and within a couple of hours (gets the response I did)?” Specht said. “The odds have to be astronomical.”

Specht works out of his house, and it gives him great joy to be able to provide this rare service to individuals around the country. 

“I’m a straight-shooter,” he said. “I’m a no-surprises kind of business.

“Unfortunately with the digital age, we’re going to end up in an information black hole because so much is accidentally deleted or lost or the data has died. Yet, here I am taking films that are 100 years old and bringing them to high quality viewing. A lot of people have history deteriorating in their garages and attics. It’s a call to action. It might not be special to you, but your kids and great-grandchildren will love it.”

For more information on Family Scans, including services and pricing, visit familyscans.com.

For more information on Archive 16, visit archive16.com.