Filmfabriek Pictor Pro

[Dan Baxter]

On 5/29/2024 at 7:27 AM, Daniel D. Teoli Jr. said:

$22K is not reasonable for a small tabletop 8mm scanner. It is very high as far as I'm concerned. No question it is not built well. But no matter high well built, for the limited use it provides, the price is just too much.

Well then you design and build a scanner for $10,000.

We already saw what happened with Moviestuff who's scanners were nowhere near the same quality. People can correct me if I'm wrong here, but Filmfabriek is hardly a profit-driven company: they've created the best they can for their price-point.

The fact that it is small and table-top is an advantage. Most scanners are big and heavy.

As Perry has said, the amount of work that goes into the R&D before the product is ready is high. Blackmagic released the Cintel-C Drive scanner in 2020 (the third version of the scanner and first that came with capstans instead of sprocket wheels) and only now in 2024 have they released an 8mm gate for it. To build a commercial scanner you need to create:

1. A transport module with a film gate to get the film flat.

2. An optical module.

3. A light module (backlight).

4. A frame detection system.

5. Capture software to control everything. And at this price it needs to run off an average computer too.

6. Product support for your clients.

All of that will take you at least two years of work, unless you at minimum purchase a working film-transport module from someone that you can manufacture yourself or source reliably.

And now you're entering an already competitive market too. If you already have a Blackmagic Cintel C-Drive of G3 scanner you can purchase the dual-8mm gate for just $1,265. You can purchase a refurbished TCS TVT-8 or TVT-S8 from Urbanski Film for $3,500. Going for a similar design to the TCS and Elmos, you can purchase Film-Digital Transferkit for €2,098 good to go. Dual-8 Ventura Images scanners are CAD $9,000 (about USD $6,600 samples here and they also sell a 16mm version).

For $22,000 for something that will produce professional quality work that's very reasonable. The next cheapest professional quality 8mm scanner is the HDS+ and after that the LaserGraphics Archivist and Baby Kinetta.

On 5/29/2024 at 7:50 AM, Samuel Preston said:

Perry, I don’t know why you continuously bother to entertain the reoccurring theme of everything being too expensive for Teoli. But props to you.

This has been the case for many years, it isn't just Mr Teoli. People have been saying this about almost every commercial scanning machine for years. Once you go above $5,000 hardly anyone can afford a scanner and the market for them drops off, especially individuals.

It's a bit surprising that people would say this about the FF Pictor given there are plenty of lower-cost alternatives as outlined above, but ever since the "cheap" scanners hit the market they made the professional scanning equipment look expensive. I actually think it's helpful that Mr Teoli asks these questions etc as it does help to clear up some misconceptions about all this stuff.

[Tyler Purcell]

Camera alone is gonna cost $5k. 

[Robert Houllahan]

22 hours ago, Tyler Purcell said:

Camera alone is gonna cost $5k. 

If you don't need speed you can find some used Kodak CCD cameras from Imperx or Vieworks or other Machine Vision camera companies.

The Ex-Kodak 5.5micron CCDs in 3.3K 4.8K and 6.6K are available as color or monochrome and make excellent scanner cameras if you can accept scans at between 1fps and 5fps run in single tap mode they are pretty flawless cameras.

Figure $450-$1500 for a Gig-E camera.

Lamp that can do RGB LED balance and lens and then a transport etc. you could put a basic slow scanner together for around $10K if you write the software to run it.

[Tyler Purcell]

2 hours ago, Robert Houllahan said:

If you don't need speed you can find some used Kodak CCD cameras from Imperx or Vieworks or other Machine Vision camera companies.

Huh interesting, I never thought about going CCD. 

So why are they so cheap compared to CMOS? Is it just down to imager size and tech? 

[Perry Paolantonio]

8 hours ago, Robert Houllahan said:

If you don't need speed you can find some used Kodak CCD cameras from Imperx or Vieworks or other Machine Vision camera companies.

I've got a Vieworks VN-16MC I'd be willing to sell - 14.5k with 9x pixelshift, 5k without. monochrome. Cameralink, with capture board and cabling. 

6 hours ago, Tyler Purcell said:

So why are they so cheap compared to CMOS? Is it just down to imager size and tech? 

It has nothing to do with CCD vs CMOS. They're "cheap" because they're 10+ years old. But they are great cameras. 

[Robert Houllahan]

21 hours ago, Tyler Purcell said:

Huh interesting, I never thought about going CCD. 

So why are they so cheap compared to CMOS? Is it just down to imager size and tech? 

As Perry said these are (relatively) older sensors and the speed is slow, the 6.6K OnSemi (Ex Kodak) 5.5micron CCD was made through 2019 or 2020 and especially in single tap (1-2fps) is virtually noiseles and without any tap balance or cmos tap grid artifacts issues.

They also made a 5K (4.8K) 7,4 micron CCD that is 14 bit which yeilds true 16 bit in 2-flash HDR mode and in single tap that is 2fps which in True RGB and HDR is about 0.33FPS

Edited June 6 by Robert Houllahan

[Tyler Purcell]

18 minutes ago, Robert Houllahan said:

As Perry said these are (relatively) older sensors and the speed is slow, the 6.6K OnSemi (Ex Kodak) 5.5micron CCD was made through 2019 or 2020 and especially in single tap (1-2fps) is virtually noiseles and without any tap balance or cmos tap grid artifacts issues.

So really it's just down to a bandwidth issue in terms of speed. Did anyone make something faster or was it just lower res? 

[Robert Houllahan]

14 hours ago, Tyler Purcell said:

So really it's just down to a bandwidth issue in terms of speed. Did anyone make something faster or was it just lower res? 

The speed is limited by the CCD sensor itself.

New CMOS Sensors have many more taps and they are balanced (pretty much) so they can move more sensor data off the sensor into the bus compared to a CCD.

These CCD sensors can be run faster in 2-tap or 4-tap mode but then you get tap balance issues and in film scanning you will see quadrants in the scan unless a ton of work is done to balance the sensor taps.

 

Edited June 6 by Robert Houllahan

[Tyler Purcell]

6 hours ago, Robert Houllahan said:

The speed is limited by the CCD sensor itself.

New CMOS Sensors have many more taps and they are balanced (pretty much) so they can move more sensor data off the sensor into the bus compared to a CCD.

These CCD sensors can be run faster in 2-tap or 4-tap mode but then you get tap balance issues and in film scanning you will see quadrants in the scan unless a ton of work is done to balance the sensor taps.

Oh interesting, I've seen this phenomena before. 

So they don't work like standard camera imagers then with a final combined output? 

[Robert Houllahan]

On 6/6/2024 at 8:48 PM, Tyler Purcell said:

Oh interesting, I've seen this phenomena before. 

So they don't work like standard camera imagers then with a final combined output? 

They work like any imager the data stream is the whole sensor or the ROI you select, the CCDs just have fewer taps than the CMOS cameras and the way CCDs work makes it harder to have all the taps perfectly balanced.

Since I have been building scanners in 2010 I ahve always run these and other CCD sensors in single tap mode as that is perfect and the scans come out flawless, just slowly.

[Dan Baxter]

On 6/4/2024 at 3:28 PM, Tyler Purcell said:

Camera alone is gonna cost $5k. 

The scanner manufacturers buy them wholesale not retail. 😛

But if you're building your own scanner from scratch, here 'ya go:

4K and same brand that LG uses. Or, Teledyne Flir $1,800 brand new retail price.

As I mentioned to Mr Teoli we all know what components go into a modern digital movie film scanner, it's hardly a secret and the designs are relatively simple requiring less in the way of complex engineering. The being said, they require engineering - they require maintenance, they require software development, they require technical support for the users. People don't seem to appreciate the amount of R&D that goes into these devices.

It took Blackmagic about 4 years to bring their Cintel scanner to market, and ever since then the pace of development has been glacial. They bought-out Rank Cintel so they started with industry knowledge and existing IP. Obviously they haven't just gone and used a Rank Cintel telecine transport module - but every part of it became Blackmagic's knowledge: film tensioning, roller/sproket designs, gate designs, etc. 2024, that's 8 years, is when they released a dual 8mm gate for them - and of course it will only work on the capstan model Cintels not the older pre-pandemic models that are sproket-driven.

What surprises me is that people are saying the Filmfabriek Pictor is too expensive. If that's the case what's stopping someone from buying something cheaper? Here's a Super-8 sound "transferkit" used by a Spanish university:

They only cost €2,000-€3,000 each and the kinds of users that would buy them are most likely replacing older projector-based 8mm/16mm transfer systems including filming the projection off a wall, Tobins, or Moviestuff equipment or even DIY equipment. Is it perfect? Of course not. Is it as good as a Pictor? No. To make them at that price compromises are made, and similarly compromises are made for usability.

On 6/6/2024 at 2:10 PM, Tyler Purcell said:

So really it's just down to a bandwidth issue in terms of speed. Did anyone make something faster or was it just lower res? 

Yes they did, the line-sensor CCDs are single-tap and speedy. Given the engineering costs involved in making line-sensor scanners as well as the other downsides, I don't see the point now.

[Tyler Purcell]

11 hours ago, Dan Baxter said:

The scanner manufacturers buy them wholesale not retail. 😛

But if you're building your own scanner from scratch, here 'ya go:

Interesting, yea I mean the camera we've been wanting to upgrade our scanner is $3500 USD. I think it's because the imager is physically larger than the cheaper cameras and for a reason; better dynamic range with larger pixels. 

I guess if the quality doesn't matter, then it doesn't matter.