Rachael Sandlin spends her days in other people’s lives, preserving the memory of loved ones who have passed and restoring faded, cracked or sometimes inaccessible memories.

“I call them the last memory on the face of the earth,” she says, holding up a box full of 8mm film. It is the footage of a client’s deceased mother from her wedding day. Sandlin has transferred the 8mm film to a digital file that can be played on a DVD player or a computer, and she has taken “snapshots” from the film to give her client new digital photos of his mother.

Sandlin’s company, Vintage 2 Digital, offers clients the opportunity to regain treasured films and photos that might otherwise be lost, either to the damage that time inflicts on film or to the progression of technology.

Some clients come in with 8mm film or VHS footage that is not damaged but worthless nevertheless because they can no longer view it – not many people are hanging onto their 8mm projectors or VCRs these days.

“For whatever reason, they have a barrier to viewing and enjoying the memory,” Sandlin explains. “I transfer the 8mm or VHS to digital. The original remains unchanged and you get your original back exactly the way it was. It’s called ‘digital restoration.’”

In some instances, Sandelin does minor repair work to the vintage film.

In addition to 8mm and VHS footage, Sandelin also preserves old photos and digitizes slides. In fact, she says her favorite part of her job is working with old black and white photos.

With photographs, she does quite a bit more than simply transferring them from prints to digital. After scanning photos, Sandlin can repair them – removing scratches and dust, even repairing photos that have cracks. Also, she is able to bring out detail in old photos that cannot be seen in the original prints.

Her office is a little unique.

Sandlin, a 2001 graduate of Oconee County High School, lives with her mother in the home where she grew up. Amid her doll collection and photos from high school and college, in the corner of her bedroom, is her office: a couple of computers, a VCR, boxes of 8mm reels, an old 8mm projector – the other tools of her trade. But a plaque declaring her a member of the Oconee County Chamber of Commerce hangs on her bedroom door, making her bedroom an official office.

Sandlin herself is a little unique, too. A project she took on in college for purely personal reasons has turned into a vocation. And though her eyesight is imperative to her work, Sandlin continues to battle a progressive vision loss.

Her vision started going bad in college. She had an unsuccessful surgery that made it worse. But, she says, her vision problem involves depth perception.

“Everything I work with is two dimensional,” she points out, “and so depth perception really isn’t an aspect of it. This is kind of a niche for me, because it uses my strength.”

Sandlin also compensates by increasing the size of the images she works with on her computer screen, giving her an attention to the smallest detail that others in her profession might not have.

Most of Sandlin’s competition in the business is mail order.

“The clients I work with have usually been holding onto the photos or film for a long time, and they are uncomfortable dropping that in the mail,” she said.

Something else that sets her apart from her through-the-mail competitors is the personal touch that Sandelin offers her customers.

She can organize photos and film into family documentaries and provide other personal touches.

“I spend time with the client to learn about them, to learn what makes this media special to them,” Sandlin says. “I enjoy just getting the chance to help people connect with these memories. I offer an individualized experience for them. These are customized, personalized projects.”

Sandlin graduated from Georgia College and State University in 2007. Her degree was in psychology, and the skills she utilizes at Vintage 2 Digital are entirely self taught.

“My sophomore year my dad was diagnosed with cancer,” she recalls. “We did not expect him to live, and I was looking for a way of preserving memories.”

What began as a Power Point presentation became a digital movie memorial to her father. Sandlin’s father recovered and the cancer is in remission, but one of her college professors suggested that perhaps she had found a career.

“I promptly sat on the idea for three years,” she laughs. But eventually she started offering her services to customers, picking up her first client while she was still in Milledgeville.

When she returned to Oconee County, an area newspaper wrote a story featuring Sandlin’s work restoring old photographs and digitizing old VHS movies. The story, though, carried an inaccuracy that she also had the ability to put 8mm film into a digital format.

“Twelve people in one day called me and asked me to work on their 8mm film,” Sandlin recalls. “The first couple of calls, I told them I didn’t know how to do that. But then I realized I needed to learn.”

Sandlin taps resources at the UGA library’s archives department to help her research about restoring old film. She also does skill building on the internet and uses the internet to research the history of the media she works with.

Though she says she took no interest in history in college, Sandlin loves the history involved in the work she does. Through her clients’ old slides and photos from family vacations, she gets to see historic locations around the world.

In the old films and photos, she says, people were much more discriminating about what they captured on film.

“Now, you just pick up a digital camera and take picture after picture, but back then they really planned what they were going to do,” Sandlin says. “8mm has more character to it. You would be amazed what you could pack into a 5-minute reel. I’ve seen a whole wedding packed into five minutes. What it is, they would pick the key moments.”

Sandlin can be contacted through her company’s website at www.vintage2digital.net.

Rob Peecher is editor of The Oconee Leader. He can be reached at 706-310-1104 or by email at This e-mail address is being protected from spam bots, you need JavaScript enabled to view it

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