Daniel D. Teoli Jr. Posted February 24 Author Share Posted February 24 On 2/12/2024 at 3:58 PM, Perry Paolantonio said: This is a terrible idea. Alcohol will destroy the roller. And don't soak them, just wash them. Use lukewarm water and a gentle dish soap like Dawn. well if you clean them with alcohol they won't last. We still have the original pair that came on our ScanStation and they're in perfectly good condition. When the rollers on the scanner get dirty we rotate in clean ones and then wash the dirty ones. Once dry, they're good to go again. In the mean time you can use a little packing tape to remove dust. We rotate through a half dozen or so of these and millions of feet of film have passed through our scanner. PTRs that aren't kept in the right climate will eventually break down. We found some of the small 1.5" rollers in a box when we moved. They came in an auction lot and we had no use for them. When we were packing things we discovered that they had turned to liquid goop. Probably they were stored near too much heat before we got them, or were really, really old. Fully loaded, it has been around that price point since the 5k model came out, that's nothing new. I guess you are pretty safe with Lasergraphics. But if your scan company goes out of biz and you need the PTR rollers, you will be dead in the water. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Daniel D. Teoli Jr. Posted February 24 Author Share Posted February 24 On 2/14/2024 at 9:09 PM, Geffen Avraham said: That's an awful story to hear, it's a shame to hear a beautiful machine like that being destroyed. Thanks for telling us about this scanner. That said, $5000 still seems like a good price, given that one can build a pretty good "second per frame" scanner from a mirrorless camera and an Arriflex body for about the same cost. It would not have the heat and 240v issues though. I wonder if the guy's design below could be improved by using a Leica Q2 Monochrom and a switching RGB light source instead of a Bayer sensor. That could give you an 8K RGB scan. I might build it if I ever find a broken Arriflex for sale - I'd hate to cannibalize a working one. Amazing what people come up with. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Daniel D. Teoli Jr. Posted February 24 Author Share Posted February 24 On 2/18/2024 at 7:07 AM, John Rizzo said: INTERESTING AND NEW? HOW ABOUT THIS: https://scan2screen.com/#about Sorry, forum closed me down for too many likes today...but thanks! That is pretty impressive. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Daniel D. Teoli Jr. Posted February 24 Author Share Posted February 24 On 2/19/2024 at 6:05 PM, Robert Houllahan said: Vague at best. "Multi Spectral" i.e. sequential RGB? that is "multi spectral" as in red green and blue. The example on their web site I actually prefer the look of the "other" system and think it will grade to finish better than their example. Looks like academics designed it. Academics like big words. Not being an academic or intellectual I just look at the pictures...or in this case the scanning output. Have you seen any output from their scanner Robert? Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Daniel D. Teoli Jr. Posted February 24 Author Share Posted February 24 On 2/23/2024 at 5:23 AM, Dan Baxter said: The issue was that paper was that some of the operators were inexperienced with print and the types of film they were testing. At the same time though, it did expose the truth in the sense that two different operators with different levels of experience and expertise can produce two entirely different results, even off the very same machine (or identical model machines). Yes, that is why I've said the scanner companies should make videos showing how to operate their machines and the range of the scanner's abilities. Even offer standardized film with it to scan and compare to their scans. But this seems to be too much to ask for in the breastfeeding dept in this day and age. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Daniel D. Teoli Jr. Posted February 24 Author Share Posted February 24 (edited) On 2/23/2024 at 5:23 AM, Dan Baxter said: The issue was that paper was that some of the operators were inexperienced with print and the types of film they were testing. At the same time though, it did expose the truth in the sense that two different operators with different levels of experience and expertise can produce two entirely different results, even off the very same machine (or identical model machines). Back in the day, people would always ask if photography was an art. If there are judgments to be made and the outcome is uncertain...there is art in the process. This art can be of a creative nature or a technical nature, but either way, there is art involved. Edited February 24 by Daniel D. Teoli Jr. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Dan Baxter Posted February 24 Share Posted February 24 7 hours ago, Daniel D. Teoli Jr. said: Wow, business must be booming for them! Didn't you start out with Retroscan Dan? That's a very different takeaway compared to how I saw it! Moviestuff laid off most of their staff, and they have unfulfilled orders older than 12 months... 6 hours ago, Daniel D. Teoli Jr. said: Yes, that is why I've said the scanner companies should make videos showing how to operate their machines and the range of the scanner's abilities. Even offer standardized film with it to scan and compare to their scans. It won't matter if they do, the settings mean nothing to the customer. A lot of the settings are locked-down by the scanning manufacturer as well and to change them you need a tech/developer to change the hidden settings for you. Even off functionally the same machine, you'll have different levels of quality control. 1 Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Perry Paolantonio Posted February 25 Share Posted February 25 15 hours ago, Daniel D. Teoli Jr. said: I guess you are pretty safe with Lasergraphics. But if your scan company goes out of biz and you need the PTR rollers, you will be dead in the water. you can buy them from Kodak. this is not an issue. 2 Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Perry Paolantonio Posted February 25 Share Posted February 25 16 hours ago, Daniel D. Teoli Jr. said: Looks like a lot of extra work go into your scans Perry, with cleaning rollers. So, it is not just running films through the scanner as fast as you can load them. it takes about 10 seconds between reels to clean the dust off the roller with some packing tape. It takes about 5 minutes to wash them, which we do periodically, but not after every job. PTRs are not silicone. And they're not rubber. They're made of urethane. You can't make a blanket statement about them compared to phone cases or rollers in other environments. Different materials. And yes, alcohol will ruin rubber over time too. 1 1 Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Daniel D. Teoli Jr. Posted March 1 Author Share Posted March 1 On 2/24/2024 at 6:52 PM, Dan Baxter said: That's a very different takeaway compared to how I saw it! Moviestuff laid off most of their staff, and they have unfulfilled orders older than 12 months... It won't matter if they do, the settings mean nothing to the customer. A lot of the settings are locked-down by the scanning manufacturer as well and to change them you need a tech/developer to change the hidden settings for you. Even off functionally the same machine, you'll have different levels of quality control. Thanks Dan! That is something about Moviestuff. Too bad as it filled a niche for the broke film scanner. It sounds like the scanning companies are making the scanners dummied down and not much control then. I've only used the Retroscan. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Daniel D. Teoli Jr. Posted March 1 Author Share Posted March 1 On 2/25/2024 at 2:49 AM, Perry Paolantonio said: you can buy them from Kodak. this is not an issue. I'm surprised Kodak sells much of anything nowadays. They have really gone to hell, at least with their film products and chemicals. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Site Sponsor Robert Houllahan Posted March 1 Site Sponsor Share Posted March 1 4 hours ago, Daniel D. Teoli Jr. said: I'm surprised Kodak sells much of anything nowadays. They have really gone to hell, at least with their film products and chemicals. This is a clearly uninformed statement. Kodak film products and photo chemistry are excellent in quality and in plentiful supply, labs are busy. 1 Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Premium Member Tyler Purcell Posted March 2 Premium Member Share Posted March 2 1 hour ago, Robert Houllahan said: This is a clearly uninformed statement. Kodak film products and photo chemistry are excellent in quality and in plentiful supply, labs are busy. From my understanding, there is zero competition. Once Fuji stopped, that was the end of that. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Daniel D. Teoli Jr. Posted March 2 Author Share Posted March 2 (edited) 4 hours ago, Robert Houllahan said: This is a clearly uninformed statement. Kodak film products and photo chemistry are excellent in quality and in plentiful supply, labs are busy. No, nothing like the old Kodak in its heyday. A shadow of its former self Robert. I started using Kodak from the late 1960s. Their graphic arts division is pretty much gone and dye transfer division is extinct, Robert...just to name a few. And their graphic arts division was huge! Edited March 2 by Daniel D. Teoli Jr. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Daniel D. Teoli Jr. Posted March 2 Author Share Posted March 2 (edited) 2 hours ago, Tyler Purcell said: From my understanding, there is zero competition. Once Fuji stopped, that was the end of that. OK, agreed, but film is not what it used to be as far as sales. If it was, do you think Fuji would have bowed out? Kodak has gone through so many down cycles it is pitiful. I don't keep up with the day-to-day affairs of Kodak, but the amount of product, chemicals, equipment and media they used to produce was staggering Tyler. Edited March 2 by Daniel D. Teoli Jr. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Daniel D. Teoli Jr. Posted March 2 Author Share Posted March 2 (edited) Now, getting back to this Retroscan issue with people waiting 12 months and the company seemingly stopping production, per Dan's earlier post. Has anyone ever been burnt buying a film scanner (Non-Retroscan) or have major problems with the company? Edited March 2 by Daniel D. Teoli Jr. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Dan Baxter Posted March 2 Share Posted March 2 (edited) 11 hours ago, Daniel D. Teoli Jr. said: Thanks Dan! That is something about Moviestuff. Too bad as it filled a niche for the broke film scanner. You need to just buy Filmfabrieks, they fill that niche now. They have something coming this year that's cheaper for 16mm. 11 hours ago, Daniel D. Teoli Jr. said: It sounds like the scanning companies are making the scanners dummied down and not much control then. I've only used the Retroscan. MovieStuff does it too. You need to abandon the MovieStuff software entirely to get the most out of it, and you need to remove their light and build your own light. Even with the cameras they come with this will improve the output, and then you can capture to camera-raw and avoid the 8bit compression forced by MovieStuff's host software. The reason why LG and others lock-down those settings is because they're mostly calibration related, so end-users shouldn't need to fiddle with them. If you really want to change them you can, you can either get LG to change them, or you can get the tools that they use to change them so long as you sign an NDA. Even I don't know more than that and exactly how they work, but I know enough to know they exist because every major scanner manufacturer has tools for editing the "hidden settings" whether they let the user have them or not (usually not - and that's not a bad thing as people would just break something and need support if they had them). 10 hours ago, Daniel D. Teoli Jr. said: I'm surprised Kodak sells much of anything nowadays. They have really gone to hell, at least with their film products and chemicals. Perry was simply explain PTR rollers can be purchased directly from Kodak - they're a standard product that anyone can buy. Matt from Kinograph was working on making their own so that you don't have to purchase them from Kodak as well. 4 hours ago, Tyler Purcell said: From my understanding, there is zero competition. 5:34 in the video: Why not just email Matt and bring that product to market? Edited March 2 by Dan Baxter 1 Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Premium Member Tyler Purcell Posted March 2 Premium Member Share Posted March 2 14 hours ago, Daniel D. Teoli Jr. said: OK, agreed, but film is not what it used to be as far as sales. If it was, do you think Fuji would have bowed out? Kodak has gone through so many down cycles it is pitiful. I don't keep up with the day-to-day affairs of Kodak, but the amount of product, chemicals, equipment and media they used to produce was staggering Tyler. I mean, right now Kodak is making film 24/7 using a staff of several hundred full time employees. They are so busy, they had to wake up and start using perforating machines they hadn't been using for years. So sure, we're not talking volumes of the pre-digital age, but remember Kodak use to make their still film over seas. So now that ALL film is coming from the single plant in Rochester, it's a lot more work. Why did Fuji die? I'm shocked you asked that question because it seems that everyone knows. Kodak has non-competition agreements with all the studios. They physically were not allowed to shoot Fuji film, period. Fuji was literally denied access to the largest productions, not because of the filmmakers or the quality of product, but because the studios agreed to keep Kodak a float. This is also not a new thing, this isn't post bankruptcy, oh no. This has been going on for decades. Similar to how studio's had non-competition agreements with technicolor prior. Fuji was used by many high profile films. However, if you actually research the funding, you'd see many were independently funded, even though studio distributed. Obviously anything non-studio could have been shot on Fuji. Today if they were around, I bet they'd do very well honestly. Especially with their Reversal stocks which have a very beautiful and unique look. Everyone is after that look today and when they closed down their factory at the end of 2011, people were outraged. New Fuji stock is just re-badged Kodak FYI. Fuji does not make any film products. They had kept their black and white coating line running for a few years after they killed the color line, but they eventually closed that as well once separation's weren't done as frequently. I absolutely blame the rise in lab costs to the lack of another brand. One COULD spend a billion dollars and make a new photochemical company. It would be easy to poach engineers and pay for the Fuji patents to bring the stock back. However, who would want to do such a thing? 1 Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Daniel D. Teoli Jr. Posted March 3 Author Share Posted March 3 (edited) 7 hours ago, Tyler Purcell said: I mean, right now Kodak is making film 24/7 using a staff of several hundred full time employees. They are so busy, they had to wake up and start using perforating machines they hadn't been using for years. So sure, we're not talking volumes of the pre-digital age, but remember Kodak use to make their still film over seas. So now that ALL film is coming from the single plant in Rochester, it's a lot more work. Why did Fuji die? I'm shocked you asked that question because it seems that everyone knows. Kodak has non-competition agreements with all the studios. They physically were not allowed to shoot Fuji film, period. Fuji was literally denied access to the largest productions, not because of the filmmakers or the quality of product, but because the studios agreed to keep Kodak a float. This is also not a new thing, this isn't post bankruptcy, oh no. This has been going on for decades. Similar to how studio's had non-competition agreements with technicolor prior. Fuji was used by many high profile films. However, if you actually research the funding, you'd see many were independently funded, even though studio distributed. Obviously anything non-studio could have been shot on Fuji. Today if they were around, I bet they'd do very well honestly. Especially with their Reversal stocks which have a very beautiful and unique look. Everyone is after that look today and when they closed down their factory at the end of 2011, people were outraged. New Fuji stock is just re-badged Kodak FYI. Fuji does not make any film products. They had kept their black and white coating line running for a few years after they killed the color line, but they eventually closed that as well once separation's weren't done as frequently. I absolutely blame the rise in lab costs to the lack of another brand. One COULD spend a billion dollars and make a new photochemical company. It would be easy to poach engineers and pay for the Fuji patents to bring the stock back. However, who would want to do such a thing? Thanks for the rundown, Tyler. I just look at the charts. I don't study film much. I'm around film all the time...in the Archive. For my own use I'm 100% digital. So, I'm an outsider, Tyler. In the old days, I was 100% film. From the charts, film does not look like a booming business. To me it looks like Kodak is 'just' surviving. Or are the charts misleading, Tyler? Kodak film spooling operation 1945 Infrared flash photo taken in the dark. DDTJRAC - Kodak Archive Edited March 3 by Daniel D. Teoli Jr. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Premium Member Tyler Purcell Posted March 3 Premium Member Share Posted March 3 1 hour ago, Daniel D. Teoli Jr. said: Or are the charts misleading, Tyler? Very. 60 theatrically bound feature films were released in 2023 that were shot on film. Thats the most we've had in a single year in over a decade. Forget about the released on film movies to boot, which we had a few of in 2023 as well. Heck Dune II is being released in over a dozen theaters on 70mm. That's pretty impressive for a time period where every major theater is digital only. Anyway, the charts are discussing still photography. To which in Los Angeles alone, there are a dozen still labs. So still photography is, nowhere near dead. Big brand stores like Walmart and Target, still sell film. Heck, drug store chains like CVS and Walgreens do as well. You can even drop off film at those stores for processing in some locations. That's pretty incredible and frankly, I don't find working with still film today, to be any more tricky than the 90's. The only "got ya" is getting prints same day. That doesn't happen anymore. Back when I was a kid, you could drive up to a same day lab and get them back in a few hours. Eh, long gone. But ya know, it's pretty fast. Most stills labs are few days max. 1 Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Daniel D. Teoli Jr. Posted March 6 Author Share Posted March 6 Thanks, Tyler! Oh, I know film is not dead. Our Walmart has a handful or two of boxes of film on the shelves. That is pretty impressive about the movies shot on film. We need to get charts showing film production and not sales. Charts that just show the dollar sales are not comparable to charts from back in the day when film was a lot cheaper. It would be good to see charts of film being sold in feet or rolls produced then vs now. <><><><> 'Cornered' 1973 Hollywood, CA Selection from 'Peering into the World of 1970's Hollywood & L.A.' 2012 by D.D.Teoli Jr. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
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