I can sometimes be my own worst enemy.

We were in the Studio on Saturday. It was an active day with customers streaming in throughout the morning and afternoon. We had a Brazilian couple stop by with a box of memories: Film, slides, and videotapes. After a bit of small talk, the husband wanted to get an idea of cost.

So I started looking at the film.  And I was counting aloud as I handled each reel.  “400… 500… 900… 1200…” I caught a glimpse of my wife in the corner of the room. She was animatedly pointing to the client. So I turned in his direction.

I think the proper expression is bug-eyed. I had to stop what I was doing and address his obvious distress. “Is there something wrong?”

He looked at the film and said, “This is going to cost over $1200.00?”

I was puzzled at first and then I realized why he was thinking it might.  “No!” I quickly exclaimed. “I’m just counting how many feet of film you have here.  Our prices are based on how many feet you tender to us so I need to get a count of how many feet of film you have in order to tell you how much its going to cost.  It looks like you have 1350 feet of film.  Based on that, I can now give you an accurate price to transfer that much film to a digital format.”

His sigh of relief could be heard counties away.

Michael Ondrasik and Home Video Studio specialize in the preservation of family memories through the digitalization of film, videotapes, audio recordings, photos, negatives and slides. For more information, call 352-735-8550 or visit our website.