Light sources of film scanners (Spirit, Kinetta, etc.)

[Virgiliu Braescu]

Anyone can look into their film scanner and tell me what light source they are using? Seems like the Spirit Datacines and the Kinettas use either a short-ark Xenon lamp or an RGB tri-LED. But who manufactures these lamps? What are their models?

 

Please help!

[Perry Paolantonio]

The Kinetta and most other modern scanners use LEDs. So do the Lasergraphics scanners.

 

Couldn't say who manufactures them myself, I think most of these are highly customized by the scanner manufacturer - at least, the LEDs in our ScanStation are not off-the-shelf, as far as I know.

[Phil Rhodes]

It's not that difficult to do. LEDs will typically require active temperature control and optical monitoring, as otherwise their output alters too much with temperature. This is not difficult given modern microcontroller technology - even something as elementary as an Arduino could do it. I assume it's probably been done.

 

P

[Virgiliu Braescu]

The Kinetta and most other modern scanners use LEDs. So do the Lasergraphics scanners.

 

Couldn't say who manufactures them myself, I think most of these are highly customized by the scanner manufacturer - at least, the LEDs in our ScanStation are not off-the-shelf, as far as I know.

 

Perry, would you mind taking a photo of that area with the LEDs? Any reasonable mobile phone should be good enough.

 

Sorry for asking but in my country there is no lab at all.

[Perry Paolantonio]

I could take a shot of the surface of the LED itself, but the bulk of it is enclosed in a box that I don't believe is easily opened so I don't think it will be terribly instructive.

 

I'll be back in the office on Thursday, after the holiday, so I'll take a look at it then.

 

-perry

[Phil Rhodes]

I tend to agree that a photo of the hardware isn't likely to be that enlightening. You might try reading this, which includes lots of information on setting up LEDs as a film scanner backlight with temperature profiling and other refinements.

 

http://www.cine2digits.co.uk/

 

P