16mm film scanning - latest tech? information?

[Stephen Perera]

So many labs offering scanning of film using different scanners. Im interested in 2K scans. Anyone care to share views on particular machines that perhaps have changed over time and 'improvements' of hardware/software.

Talk to me about Spirit; Scanity; Arriscan; Cintel scanner.....

[Robert Houllahan]

The Spirit is mostly used for archives or smaller shops keeping them running now it is old.

The Scannity is a top performer for new film as is the Arriscan and Arriscan XT and LaserGraphics Director, all true RGB scanners.

The Cintel scanner is a noisy piece of junk that scans 16mm ant sub HD rez and that is pretty useless for anything but 35mm and not the best for that.

Most labs have replaced the Spirit with LaserGraphics Scan Station scanners which offer excellent and fast scans.

There are the Xena FilmFabriek and Kinetta scanners which offer different ranges of quality speed and cost.

Most modern scanners have benefited from new sensors and fast GPUs allowing for much lower cost and much faster scan speeds.

The best scanners still do true RGB scans and to do that fast requires more complex systems like line scan (Scannity) or will be slower like the Arriscan XT but you get true 16bit and better color fidelity than a scanner with a color sensor.

 

[Stephen Perera]

very helpful thank you @Robert Houllahan

[Jack Jin]

On 10/21/2024 at 5:55 AM, Stephen Perera said:

So many labs offering scanning of film using different scanners. Im interested in 2K scans. Anyone care to share views on particular machines that perhaps have changed over time and 'improvements' of hardware/software.

Talk to me about Spirit; Scanity; Arriscan; Cintel scanner.....

To add on top of what Rob said, the scan station 6.5k with HDR is probably the most cost effective and high quality scanning option you'd have, the imager is excellent with minimal noise and no FPN, with the two flash HDR it does get incredibly close to the other true RGB options on the market at a fraction of the price, with even better range for positive/print film. The negative space does 2k HDR scans down sampled from the full 6.5k readout for only 0.20usd per foot for 16mm, and the 4k/6.5k option is only 0.25 USD/ft as well. Their 35mm scans are even cheaper. Highly recommend their scans

 

[Robert Houllahan]

11 hours ago, Jack Jin said:

To add on top of what Rob said, the scan station 6.5k with HDR is probably the most cost effective and high quality scanning option you'd have, the imager is excellent with minimal noise and no FPN, with the two flash HDR it does get incredibly close to the other true RGB options on the market at a fraction of the price, with even better range for positive/print film. The negative space does 2k HDR scans down sampled from the full 6.5k readout for only 0.20usd per foot for 16mm, and the 4k/6.5k option is only 0.25 USD/ft as well. Their 35mm scans are even cheaper. Highly recommend their scans

 

It is a great machine and any Scan Station with a newer Sony sensor and 2-flash will make pretty consistent scans it has largely become the "New Spirit" with everyone having one making a certain high level of quality scans into more or less a commodity.

Scan Station still uses an off the shelf Sony color sensor camera and CFA scanners have allot of color channel cross talk which has to be dealt with in math / color matrix etc under the hood and they have separation issues especially in very dense negatives. The Sony Pregius IMX342 does have FPN if you look close enough and the 2-flash primarily gets rid of the noise in certain aspects like very dense negative.

The Arriscan Director and other scanners which are RGB and don't have the color filter array and debayer issues and make allot more accurate color through the density range.

 

 

[Ludwig Hagelstein]

On 10/21/2024 at 7:34 PM, Robert Houllahan said:

The Spirit is mostly used for archives or smaller shops keeping them running now it is old.

The Scannity is a top performer for new film as is the Arriscan and Arriscan XT and LaserGraphics Director, all true RGB scanners.

The Cintel scanner is a noisy piece of junk that scans 16mm ant sub HD rez and that is pretty useless for anything but 35mm and not the best for that.

Most labs have replaced the Spirit with LaserGraphics Scan Station scanners which offer excellent and fast scans.

There are the Xena FilmFabriek and Kinetta scanners which offer different ranges of quality speed and cost.

Most modern scanners have benefited from new sensors and fast GPUs allowing for much lower cost and much faster scan speeds.

The best scanners still do true RGB scans and to do that fast requires more complex systems like line scan (Scannity) or will be slower like the Arriscan XT but you get true 16bit and better color fidelity than a scanner with a color sensor.

 

I second Robert here. 

If you can, get a SCANITY or ARRISCAN Scan - for Super16 Scanity is the better choice, for Normal 16 Arriscan, since the latter can correct the pitch and maximise the image area for N16 film. 

Scanstation is a good allrounder - but has crosstalk and a Bayer sensor... and yes, stay away from the Black Magic Cintel - for 16mm even more than for 35mm. 

[Stephen Perera]

When you speak of the Cintel are you referring to the 'NEW' Cintel Scanner G3 HDR+

https://www.blackmagicdesign.com/products/cintel

 

Edited October 25, 2024 by Stephen Perera

[Ludwig Hagelstein]

45 minutes ago, Stephen Perera said:

When you speak of the Cintel are you referring to the 'NEW' Cintel Scanner G3 HDR+

https://www.blackmagicdesign.com/products/cintel

 

yes.... not a scanner to take seriously.

[Daniel D. Teoli Jr.]

Now, how is the financial health of the companies making the scanners?

Any financial issues?

Retroscan was a big loss for many when it went belly up. I bring this up because from what I can tell, film is not a growing industry.

<><><><>

 

Press photo of President and Jacqueline Kennedy greeting the Shaw and Empress of Iran - 1962

Selection from The Kennedy Files artist book by D.D.Teoli Jr.

Daniel D. Teoli Jr. Archival Collection
Daniel D. Teoli Jr. Small Gauge Film Archive
Daniel D. Teoli Jr. Advertising Archive
Daniel D. Teoli Jr. VHS Video Archive
Daniel D. Teoli Jr. Popular Culture Archive
Daniel D. Teoli Jr. Audio Archive
Daniel D. Teoli Jr. Social Documentary Photography

[Brian Drysdale]

There's a large back catalogue of films, which is being scanned at ever higher resolutions.

[Robert Houllahan]

10 hours ago, Stephen Perera said:

When you speak of the Cintel are you referring to the 'NEW' Cintel Scanner G3 HDR+

https://www.blackmagicdesign.com/products/cintel

 

People who buy these will use confirmation bias to sell themselves on their purchase and into thinking it is a better scan than it is, already people sell 16mm scans as "2K" from this and it scans the full width of 16mm at about 2K but not the picture area,

Also you have to run the film through twice to do "HDR" it is not a 2-flash scanner nor does it have GPU-Machine vision Perf Stabilization.

I suppose it is ok for 35mm or for TikTok and Instagram vids but not for real work.

 

Effective Resolutions

3840 x 2880 - Super 35

3390 x 2465 - Standard 35

3390 x 2865 - Anamorphic 35

1903 x 1143 - Super 16

1581 x 1154 - Standard 16

892 x 638 - Super 8

752 x 567 - Standard 8

[Ludwig Hagelstein]

11 hours ago, Robert Houllahan said:

People who buy these will use confirmation bias to sell themselves on their purchase and into thinking it is a better scan than it is, already people sell 16mm scans as "2K" from this and it scans the full width of 16mm at about 2K but not the picture area,

Also you have to run the film through twice to do "HDR" it is not a 2-flash scanner nor does it have GPU-Machine vision Perf Stabilization.

I suppose it is ok for 35mm or for TikTok and Instagram vids but not for real work.

 

Effective Resolutions

3840 x 2880 - Super 35

3390 x 2465 - Standard 35

3390 x 2865 - Anamorphic 35

1903 x 1143 - Super 16

1581 x 1154 - Standard 16

892 x 638 - Super 8

752 x 567 - Standard 8

not even DCI 4K in the picture area for 35mm...

[Stephen Perera]

Wow pretty bad reviews for the Cintel and a company that makes great products that being Blackmagicdesign

[Robert Houllahan]

On 10/26/2024 at 5:37 AM, Stephen Perera said:

Wow pretty bad reviews for the Cintel and a company that makes great products that being Blackmagicdesign

If BMD put a better sensor into the Cintel then it would be different but they have stuck with their old old URSA sensor that has allot of FPN and makes sub rez scans.

[Tyler Purcell]

Rumors around the mill, not just from me talking to the right people, but also others communicating to me, is that BMD do have a new imager, but there is something not right, which is why it's been delayed. I have this funny feeling, it's going to be a "Cintel Pro" or something of that nature, which will be more money, but obviously be made out of the same metal bits, just with a new internal computer. 

The Cintel does everything localized in the scanner. So the drive control system, debayer, stabilization and framing, is all done in scanner. The software simply tells the hardware box what to do. This means, the load on the computer side is basically non-existent. Clever for sure, but it means that fancy box they built, needs to be all-new from scratch, which is very costly. I can't imagine them using the standard moniker for this clearly all-new machine, when they JUST came out with the Cintel 3 few months ago.

Another side note; BMD do not have a global shutter imager, which is required to do the kind of work they are trying to achieve in this scanner. Nor would they ever use their 12k imager in this thing, I can't imagine them trying. So whatever imager they use, it will be a purchased imager, not something in house. That's another side note of perhaps why it's taking such a long time.

In the past, BMD have not liked to compete, they've made whatever the competition doesn't make. Now, for the first time, they're directly competing in the camera industry. They have a real cinema camera, something they haven't made until today. They have real accessories and a fantastic commercial workflow. If this is successful, maybe it's time for BMD to step out of the shadows and onto the playing field and dominate with a sub $50k scanner that does everything a Scan Station does? They already have the 8mm, 16mm and 35mm gates and sprocketless drive system. They already do optical audio. They already have great software. I mean, the only thing missing is a fancy imager. 

Edited October 28, 2024 by Tyler Purcell

[Thomas Aschenbach]

I have a Cintel scanner we use for one of our film analyzers. We don't use it for film scanning, just live for timing because it has an API. The debayer is not done in the scanner. It has the capability to do so on the hdmi preview output, but the data that comes over thunderbolt is bayer. The stabilization information is stored as x y offsets in the header of the frame data, same with framing, color masking, etc. Field correction / FPN is about the only thing baked in, the image that the scanner transmits is just the 12 bit raw from the sensor.

Edited October 29, 2024 by Thomas Aschenbach

[Stephen Perera]

10 minutes ago, Thomas Aschenbach said:

I have a Cintel scanner we use for one of our film analyzers. We don't use it for film scanning, just live for timing because it has an API. The debayer is not done in the scanner. It has the capability to do so on the hdmi preview output, but the data that comes over thunderbolt is bayer. The stabilization information is stored as x y offsets in the header of the frame data, same with framing, color masking, etc. Field correction / FPN is about the only thing baked in, the image that the scanner transmits is just the 12 bit raw from the sensor.

Thanks for coming in, and excuse my ignorance but can you explain all this as I don't understand any of it haha

[Thomas Aschenbach]

The Cintel scanner would be great if it had a better sensor and higher resolution. It has an SDK which allows for writing software that can utilize the scanner and its image data output. The Cintel scanner unit itself analyzes the frame to determine the stabilization translation values but doesn't actually apply it. Each frame the scanner puts out has metadata to tell the host computer how to handle the sensor data including stabilization, and colorimetry data determined by BMD. For our application as an input device for a film analyzer it works well because noise and resolution do not matter.

Any scanner passes image data from the sensor or sensors and then either the machine or the host computer corrects that data for the known characteristics of the device. Flat field correction, fixed pattern noise, color masking, response linearization, etc. Some of these are characteristics are unique to the individual machine and some to the manufacturers whole fleet. Flat field correction and fixed pattern noise correction are really the only two characteristics that have both spatial and depth components and are unique to the individual machine. They are corrected far upstream so that correction is baked into what could be considered the corrected "raw" sensor output. From there everything else is values for a math function without a spatial component. This is all similar to the way digital cinema cameras operate. The storage space / bandwidth savings are significant. I would hope this technique is used more in the future by other film scanner manufacturers because the raw sensor data and profiled metadata can be utilized by software whose purpose is color science and image manipulation. This is currently not possible because most bayer sensor scanners and some current mono ones do not have objectively measured standards, if they did their default outputs would all look the same for a given piece of film and they don't. This is most apparent in color films.

[Robert Hart]

On 10/26/2024 at 5:42 AM, Robert Houllahan said:

People who buy these will use confirmation bias to sell themselves on their purchase and into thinking it is a better scan than it is, already people sell 16mm scans as "2K" from this and it scans the full width of 16mm at about 2K but not the picture area,

Also you have to run the film through twice to do "HDR" it is not a 2-flash scanner nor does it have GPU-Machine vision Perf Stabilization.

I suppose it is ok for 35mm or for TikTok and Instagram vids but not for real work.

 

Effective Resolutions

3840 x 2880 - Super 35

3390 x 2465 - Standard 35

3390 x 2865 - Anamorphic 35

1903 x 1143 - Super 16

1581 x 1154 - Standard 16

892 x 638 - Super 8

752 x 567 - Standard 8

Confirmation bias or buyer's remorse?? 

[Tyler Purcell]

6 hours ago, Thomas Aschenbach said:

The debayer is not done in the scanner. It has the capability to do so on the hdmi preview output, but the data that comes over thunderbolt is bayer.

Are you sure? I was told by the BMD guys, the little secret is that they debayer in the magic box and the software simply controls that box with a "raw" video feed, similar to BRAW, but it's post debayer. 

[Robert Houllahan]

8 hours ago, Tyler Purcell said:

Are you sure? I was told by the BMD guys, the little secret is that they debayer in the magic box and the software simply controls that box with a "raw" video feed, similar to BRAW, but it's post debayer. 

Until they put a better sensor into the thing it really does not matter, any little secret is overrun by the FPN and sub rez.

[Thomas Aschenbach]

19 hours ago, Tyler Purcell said:

Are you sure? I was told by the BMD guys, the little secret is that they debayer in the magic box and the software simply controls that box with a "raw" video feed, similar to BRAW, but it's post debayer. 

Yes I am sure. The two pixel formats the scanner outputs is CRAW in bmdFormat12BitRAWJPEG or bmdFormat12BitRAWGRBG. bmdFormat12BitRAWJPEG is a jpeg compressed bmdFormat12BitRAWGRBG. 

 

[Tyler Purcell]

12 hours ago, Robert Houllahan said:

Until they put a better sensor into the thing it really does not matter, any little secret is overrun by the FPN and sub rez.

Absolutely, 100%