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What is verdict on Cintel 2 scanner for 16mm?


Daniel D. Teoli Jr.

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4 hours ago, Perry Paolantonio said:

If they're still charging $1M for it (they were last I checked), then I'd say it's about $750,000 overpriced. Honestly - it's not that good a machine. We've had several scans we graded and restored that were scanned elsewhere on the Scanity, and there's less dynamic range than the ScanStation 6.5k and the image weaves all over the place. 

As with all digital things scanning motion picture film was technically complex and expensive and with newer progression of tech like sensors and GPUs scanning is largely becoming a commodity with minor differences between new scanners. The Scannity can make a good scan but it is locked into the older linear CCDs from Dalsa and machines like Scan Station, Xena, Kinetta etc. can just pop out the older area scan camera and drop in the newest sensor for relatively little cost.

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what resolution did you scan at? I watched it on my 43 inch TCK UHD panel and it looks great. Definitely grainy and  it was a 1080 video being scaled, but looked good. Is there a 4k version out there? I would be curious to see a 4k Youtube or Vimeo version of s16 from the same scanner. 

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On 3/27/2021 at 7:39 PM, Chris Burke said:

what resolution did you scan at? I watched it on my 43 inch TCK UHD panel and it looks great. Definitely grainy and  it was a 1080 video being scaled, but looked good. Is there a 4k version out there? I would be curious to see a 4k Youtube or Vimeo version of s16 from the same scanner. 

This video is 2K I don't think they finish many music videos in 4K in general they requested a 2K scan.

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On 3/27/2021 at 4:39 PM, Chris Burke said:

what resolution did you scan at? I watched it on my 43 inch TCK UHD panel and it looks great. Definitely grainy and  it was a 1080 video being scaled, but looked good. Is there a 4k version out there? I would be curious to see a 4k Youtube or Vimeo version of s16 from the same scanner. 

I did a test on a 100' roll of 50D for a K3 I am selling. It was processed and scanned at Cinelab on Xena hdr at 4K. It is posted on Youtube at 4K here. All handheld though, so pretty shaky. 

 

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39 minutes ago, Raymond Zananiri said:

I did a test on a 100' roll of 50D for a K3 I am selling. It was processed and scanned at Cinelab on Xena hdr at 4K. It is posted on Youtube at 4K here. All handheld though, so pretty shaky. 

 

No fair, making me miss NAB!

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15 hours ago, Raymond Zananiri said:

I did a test on a 100' roll of 50D for a K3 I am selling. It was processed and scanned at Cinelab on Xena hdr at 4K. It is posted on Youtube at 4K here. All handheld though, so pretty shaky. 

 

What's with the slight but persistent flicker to the footage?  It almost looks more like a scanning artifact than a trait of the camera, but hard to say for sure.  Good camera test though!

 

Duncan

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5 hours ago, Duncan Brown said:

What's with the slight but persistent flicker to the footage?  It almost looks more like a scanning artifact than a trait of the camera, but hard to say for sure.  Good camera test though!

 

Duncan

You mean the orange flicker in the beginning of each shot? That is the camera. Something is leaking light but it only happens in the beginning of each shot (the film gets exposed to light when it's not moving I think). Because all the shots are so short it seems very frequent but it only happens once per shot. I think the K3 has this problem. 

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6 hours ago, Raymond Zananiri said:

You mean the orange flicker in the beginning of each shot? That is the camera. Something is leaking light but it only happens in the beginning of each shot (the film gets exposed to light when it's not moving I think). Because all the shots are so short it seems very frequent but it only happens once per shot. I think the K3 has this problem. 

No, that's understandable.  No, I mean there's this overall slight flicker effect on most shots - like the one you get when shooting with LED lights and a bad frame rate...but of course these are all out in daylight so that's not it.  Or like when someone captures a movie by filming it off a projection screen.  Am I the only one seeing this?  Maybe the problem is in my brain, heh.

Duncan

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11 hours ago, Duncan Brown said:

Am I the only one seeing this?  Maybe the problem is in my brain, heh.

No, I see it too. It's not the transfer, it's the camera. I used to call it the "K3 Flutter" and sometimes I got it on the Canon Scoopic. A camera tech will probably define the issue better...on pro cameras it can be adjusted but there's simply not enough control of the film path on an inexpensive 16mm camera to get rid of it. At least that was what I was told. ?

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1 hour ago, Will Montgomery said:

No, I see it too. It's not the transfer, it's the camera. I used to call it the "K3 Flutter" and sometimes I got it on the Canon Scoopic. A camera tech will probably define the issue better...on pro cameras it can be adjusted but there's simply not enough control of the film path on an inexpensive 16mm camera to get rid of it. At least that was what I was told. ?

The K3 is pretty adjustable actually. Mine doesn't have a flutter issue at all. All the K3's suffer from the film not being held in the gate properly. I'm thinking about buying a gate and modifying it to hold the film properly and seeing if it fixes the problems, I think it will. 

 

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The first camera I bought after NYU was a K3

I still have it, I used to shoot with it but it really has some issues, the advantage is it's a cheap spinning shutter reflex camera and the disadvantage is it's a cheap spinning shutter reflex camera.

I don't remember when we developed scanned that but I have seen some "fluttery" stuff from K3's over the many years.

It cold be a good-ish camera with some fixes but man I doubt it will ever load as nice as a Rex.

The CJ Vid was shot with a Arri SR3HS.

And I own a XTRprod which has always been rock solid flicker wise...

Edited by Robert Houllahan
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2 hours ago, Robert Houllahan said:

It cold be a good-ish camera with some fixes but man I doubt it will ever load as nice as a Rex.

The problem is that buying a working REX with glass is $2k or more these days. I've been trying to buy another one because I want to muck around with making it super 16 and such, but holy crap the prices have gone crazy. You can still get a K3 for $250 bux any day of the week. So sadly I have to recommend them because they are the cheapest introductory to 16mm filmmaking. 

But yes... umm, the K3 will never get close to the Bolex. They have some magic in that camera. 

Edited by Tyler Purcell
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19 hours ago, Duncan Brown said:

No, that's understandable.  No, I mean there's this overall slight flicker effect on most shots - like the one you get when shooting with LED lights and a bad frame rate...but of course these are all out in daylight so that's not it.  Or like when someone captures a movie by filming it off a projection screen.  Am I the only one seeing this?  Maybe the problem is in my brain, heh.

Duncan

Now I'm very curious to know what that is, but I'm still confused. Flicker usually implies a shift in luminance. Something becomes more or less bright from frame to frame. Is that what you mean? Or, is it a change is place? Something moves abruptly from frame to frame. The Meteor lens does not cover s16 on the wide end so I had to shoot higher than 40mm or 50mm handheld. Maybe that is it?

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15 hours ago, Raymond Zananiri said:

Now I'm very curious to know what that is, but I'm still confused. Flicker usually implies a shift in luminance. Something becomes more or less bright from frame to frame. Is that what you mean? Or, is it a change is place? Something moves abruptly from frame to frame. The Meteor lens does not cover s16 on the wide end so I had to shoot higher than 40mm or 50mm handheld. Maybe that is it?

Was the lens re-centered? I ask because I used to own a S16 K3 that was re-centered and at 17mm, no vignetting. That zoom lens isn't so bad. 

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I think the K3 can be made into a good camera it just is variably built from the factory and needs to be post manufacturing finished into a working camera. The Autoload will never work properly though, it is no Rex.

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On 4/1/2021 at 3:10 PM, Chris Burke said:

Was the lens re-centered? I ask because I used to own a S16 K3 that was re-centered and at 17mm, no vignetting. That zoom lens isn't so bad. 

The camera came with two m42 mounts. One mounted and one spare. I replaced the one that was already mounted with the spare one because its threads were rough. I think I replaced the one made for s16 with the 16mm one. I'll have to switch them back. Thank you for telling me. 

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  • 1 year later...

The flicker is consistent with a spring driven camera's centrifugal governor hunting for correct speed while the power of the spring diminishes as it winds down. It is also consistent with a LED flicker artifact introduced by the scanner. However that may be unlikely in a professional level machine. My money would be on the camera's governor. If it is a bell type centrifugal governor, then the friction pads might have become a little sticky if camera lube has crept in. Light fractions in the camera's lube oil might have gassed off over time leaving the remaining lube thicker or even dry. A service by a proper camera tech would not hurt. Those who know all the wrinkles that Bolexes and K3s throw up might be scarce by now.

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