A method and apparatus for producing and storing a digital image that electronically represents an image on a filmstrip, wherein the image recording medium is scanned to produce digital pixel data representative of the image content of successive scan lines of the medium, and the digital pixel data from successive scan lines are written to a circular buffer. The location of respective image frames contained in the digital pixel data written to the buffer is detected by analyzing the data written to the buffer using predetermined algorithms, and then the digital pixel data representative of detected image frames is copied into frame buffers before the data on the circular buffer of image frames already copied into image buffers is overwritten with digital pixel data representative of the contents of subsequent scan lines of the image recording medium.