Owen A. Davies Posted April 6 Posted April 6 I have got a pretty dense film print that I am looking to have digitized, and I wanted to take advantage of the LaserGraphics Director "3-flash HDR" feature to extract as much visual fidelity from print as I possibly can. I don’t believe I have seen many labs or post-production studios which offer will-call or consumer scanning services. Anybody here know of a place which scans with the Director that is currently accepting non-studio requests for scanning services? Thank you.
Robin Phillips Posted April 6 Posted April 6 Roundabout has a director, I think its the older 10k model https://www.roundabout.com/restoration-remastering also Cinelab Boston's xena scanner can do the same sort of thing. I did some s16mm tests a few years ago with them, and the range that was extractable was insane, especially on 50D negative. Cinelab does consumer, hobbiest, and professional scanning. I dont know if Fotokem has added to their scanner line up or not, but its been my experience that as long as you can afford their rate they wont say no to money. I think thats generally the attitude with any of the labs these days to be honest. though Im sure some have a minimum charge. 1
Owen A. Davies Posted April 6 Author Posted April 6 7 minutes ago, Robin Phillips said: Roundabout has a director, I think its the older 10k model https://www.roundabout.com/restoration-remastering also Cinelab Boston's xena scanner can do the same sort of thing. I did some s16mm tests a few years ago with them, and the range that was extractable was insane, especially on 50D negative. Cinelab does consumer, hobbiest, and professional scanning. I dont know if Fotokem has added to their scanner line up or not, but its been my experience that as long as you can afford their rate they wont say no to money. I think thats generally the attitude with any of the labs these days to be honest. though Im sure some have a minimum charge. Thanks for the information. Do you have any more details about the Xena 9.4k as a scanner? I can't seem to find very much information at all about this scanner online.
Site Sponsor Robert Houllahan Posted April 6 Site Sponsor Posted April 6 HI For true RGB scanning we currently offer the Arriscan 6K HDR. I am working on a 14K RGB-IR +HDR Xena build and we have most of the parts including the 14K camera, this should be available this summer as DCS integrates the 14K camera into Xena. The 9.4K sensor camera Xena is a CFA color sensor camera scanner like our Scan Station scanners and that system is almost done having that camera integrated. I don't know of anyone who has a 10K or 13.5K Director available as a machine that anyone outside a studio can access in the USA I know Cinelab Romania has a Director 10K and metro Post has a older 4K Director. 2
Site Sponsor Perry Paolantonio Posted April 7 Site Sponsor Posted April 7 Metropolis Post in NY has a 4k Director. To be honest, I'm not sure you're going to see that much difference with a third flash, but I'd be curious if you do some tests if you could post the difference between 2 and 3-flash scans on that machine of your footage. 1
Premium Member Tyler Purcell Posted April 8 Premium Member Posted April 8 Fotokem has a 13k Director. 1
Site Sponsor Robert Houllahan Posted April 9 Site Sponsor Posted April 9 I think the 3rd flash on the Director is so that it is true 16bit RGB scanning, as it uses the 6.5K 12bit monochrome Sony Pregius sensor with a piezo stage like the Arriscan. So 12bit +2bit +2bit = 16bit precision per color. If you have a color print just about any 2-flash scanner should be able to scan the full density range. 1
Owen A. Davies Posted April 9 Author Posted April 9 16 hours ago, Robert Houllahan said: I think the 3rd flash on the Director is so that it is true 16bit RGB scanning, as it uses the 6.5K 12bit monochrome Sony Pregius sensor with a piezo stage like the Arriscan. So 12bit +2bit +2bit = 16bit precision per color. If you have a color print just about any 2-flash scanner should be able to scan the full density range. Do you know if the Director 4k also uses the true RGB monochrome sensor? Or do only the 10k and 13k have that feature built in?
Site Sponsor Robert Houllahan Posted April 10 Site Sponsor Posted April 10 (edited) 4 hours ago, Owen A. Davies said: Do you know if the Director 4k also uses the true RGB monochrome sensor? Or do only the 10k and 13k have that feature built in? All Directors use a monochrome sensor with sequential RGB scanning. The Director 4K uses mechanical pin registration with a ACME movement and a monochrome Kodak 4K CCD. The Director 10K and 13K use machine vision with the 5K or 6.5K CMOS monochrome cameras from CMOSIS and Sony and a pixel shift to make 10K and 13K scans. Edited April 10 by Robert Houllahan
Daniel D. Teoli Jr. Posted April 11 Posted April 11 It would be interesting to see pixel shift compared to true K.
Owen A. Davies Posted April 12 Author Posted April 12 On 4/9/2025 at 8:25 PM, Robert Houllahan said: All Directors use a monochrome sensor with sequential RGB scanning. The Director 4K uses mechanical pin registration with a ACME movement and a monochrome Kodak 4K CCD. The Director 10K and 13K use machine vision with the 5K or 6.5K CMOS monochrome cameras from CMOSIS and Sony and a pixel shift to make 10K and 13K scans. Would you say there's any significant gap in quality between the 4k Director and the 10/13k Director? I always thought pumping a gratuitous amount of extra resolution into scans to be unnecessary and counterproductive. In my experience, all it really does at 10k is serve to sharpen and exemplify the film's grain structure without really adding any increase to the resolvable detail in the image.
Dan Baxter Posted April 18 Posted April 18 The 4K Director is CCD so it's different tech entirely. The new ones are CMOS which make them much faster. Company3 has Arris I think. 2 flash on an Arri is as good as it gets in terms of dynamic range. Prints rarely have 4K resolution in them, but as you say they are much denser than negatives. When you say you have a "pretty dense" print - do you mean more dense than you'd normally expect in a projection print?
Premium Member Tyler Purcell Posted April 18 Premium Member Posted April 18 On 4/12/2025 at 4:01 PM, Owen A. Davies said: Would you say there's any significant gap in quality between the 4k Director and the 10/13k Director? I always thought pumping a gratuitous amount of extra resolution into scans to be unnecessary and counterproductive. In my experience, all it really does at 10k is serve to sharpen and exemplify the film's grain structure without really adding any increase to the resolvable detail in the image. As Dan said, they're entirely different imagers, so yea, there is a significant gap. Nobody is scanning vertical 35mm in 10k anyway, the point of the high resolution scanner is for VistaVision and 65mm formats like 5 perf and IMAX.
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