Best workflow for scanning a 16mm film

[Tyler Purcell]

1 hour ago, Robert Houllahan said:

Plus it was extremely slow by today's or even ten years ago standards.

 

Horribly slow

[Dan Baxter]

On 6/15/2021 at 11:45 PM, Robert Houllahan said:

I think the Arriscan II is $850K

There's a pricing sheet here with all of Arri's products on it including Arriscan XT. It's €284.000.

Some of the other info - there's many different model Arri's it changed a lot over time, that's also true of the Lasergraphics Director and the Scanstations. The HDR comparisons on the Lasergraphics site are way out of date they look like they were done about 10 years ago, the benefits to multi-flash HDR scanning will be different now to what they were then.

On 6/15/2021 at 2:23 AM, Tyler Purcell said:

Sadly only the 6.5k Scan Station is worth buying and that imager is 10k alone! So it's a very expensive solution.

I think the camera + lens is about $8K retail. But there's also the newer Sony Pregius S IMX530 5.3K cameras and they're a bit cheaper. You are right though, even with exactly the same camera in another machine like a XENA it seems it's difficult to match the quality and performance of the current Scanstations. Also what they charge to upgrade the older models is outrageous really, a lot of companies and archives will have spent an awful lot on their scanners and just not have it in the budget to upgrade the camera modules for what they ask.

[Robert Houllahan]

On 8/22/2021 at 7:39 PM, Dan Baxter said:

There's a pricing sheet here with all of Arri's products on it including Arriscan XT. It's €284.000.

Some of the other info - there's many different model Arri's it changed a lot over time, that's also true of the Lasergraphics Director and the Scanstations. The HDR comparisons on the Lasergraphics site are way out of date they look like they were done about 10 years ago, the benefits to multi-flash HDR scanning will be different now to what they were then.

I think the camera + lens is about $8K retail. But there's also the newer Sony Pregius S IMX530 5.3K cameras and they're a bit cheaper. You are right though, even with exactly the same camera in another machine like a XENA it seems it's difficult to match the quality and performance of the current Scanstations. Also what they charge to upgrade the older models is outrageous really, a lot of companies and archives will have spent an awful lot on their scanners and just not have it in the budget to upgrade the camera modules for what they ask.

I paid about $9K for the 6.5K camera and a CoaXpress frame grabber. the 5.3K Pregius is the same pixel as the 6.5K and the 4K ones in that line so results should be similar but fewer pixels.

I thought the ArriXT was more and I see there is a "reasonable" price for an update to the original machine, it is a great scanner and a true RGB scan with the excellent ALEV sensor.

A two flash HDR on a 12-bit sensor based scanner gets 14bit precision not 16bit but some of the latest Pregius and Starion Sony sensors are 16bit A to D now and likely have good noise so realistic 16bits being obtained, the 14K rolling shutter Sony is 16bits for example.

[Dan Baxter]

5 minutes ago, Robert Houllahan said:

I paid about $9K for the 6.5K camera and a CoaXpress frame grabber. the 5.3K Pregius is the same pixel as the 6.5K and the 4K ones in that line so results should be similar but fewer pixels.

It's the newer generation - 4th gen/Pregius S. But from all the specs it looks like it should perform essentially the same as the 6.5K one it will depend on the camera model of course and the required cooling etc. It's about $5K retail from Emergent, or there's also one with dual-gain HDR now and that's $8K. Someone I know has experimented with the dual-gain camera in a XENA and said it brings a little bit of extra detail in the dense areas when dual-gain is enabled. Let me see... MC245CG-SY-UB-HDR (that's the USB3 version so will be slower) $7,605 and MX245CG-SY-X2G2-FL-HDR is $7,800 (PCIe version) those are the models Emergent has with the Pregius S IMX530 imager and dual-gain HDR.

The Arri's are just 35/16mm so I think that probably has a lot to do with the price being less when compared to similar scanners that do more formats.

13 minutes ago, Robert Houllahan said:

A two flash HDR on a 12-bit sensor based scanner gets 14bit precision not 16bit but some of the latest Pregius and Starion Sony sensors are 16bit A to D now and likely have good noise so realistic 16bits being obtained, the 14K rolling shutter Sony is 16bits for example.

I think that film has between 13-14 stops of dynamic range in it according to Kodak? Capturing the most out of the film's dynamic range and getting the full detail out of the dense areas in the film is the main benefit as I understand it for the newer machines with the modern sensors doing HDR scanning.

[Robert Houllahan]

13 hours ago, Dan Baxter said:

I think that film has between 13-14 stops of dynamic range in it according to Kodak? Capturing the most out of the film's dynamic range and getting the full detail out of the dense areas in the film is the main benefit as I understand it for the newer machines with the modern sensors doing HDR scanning.

I know Kodak had stated it was as high as 16 stops at one point and I think it sort of depends on stops over grey vs. under and you can overexpose negative quite a bit and still get something from those hilites, but that does present a challenge to digital scanning as the hilites in a negative tend to intersect with the shadows in a digital sensor and that is where digital sensors tend to have the most noise.

One of the nice things about the Spirit 4K is that is has a very bright 800W Xenon lamp (which has an elaborate system to remove the heat) and a valve on it so you can really put allot more light through the film than most LED lamp sources on newer scanners. I have had work in that was intentionally overexposed 5+ stops for the look and been able to get some really nice and unique looking scans from that on the Spirit.

[Tyler Purcell]

14 hours ago, Dan Baxter said:

I think that film has between 13-14 stops of dynamic range in it according to Kodak? Capturing the most out of the film's dynamic range and getting the full detail out of the dense areas in the film is the main benefit as I understand it for the newer machines with the modern sensors doing HDR scanning.

I mistakenly shot something all the way open F2.8 and it needed to be F16 and with my scanner, it came out fine. I was going to fix it in-scanner, but didn't want to stop it and restart it, so I just let it run through. 

Film has around 9-10 stop of latitude above middle gray (depending on the stock), that's it's strong point and why so many people use it. Where it lacks is below middle gray, which at best is 6 stops. Kodaks Vision 3 500T 19' for instance, is an incredible stock, you can push it very hard in both directions and it will work. I have yet to shoot anything on digital that holds a candle to film, mostly because digital cinema cameras sweet spot is so limited, you're rarely in the proper ISO range. With a film camera, I can literally do a shot from indoors to outdoors, with no altering of the stop and still retain detail in the highest of highlights. You simply can't do that with a digital camera, there will be nothing there unless again, you're at optimal ISO and filtering the living crap out of the lens, which then again, won't work indoors in a dark environment. Where digital shines is under controlled conditions, under middle gray. Where film shines is in uncontrolled conditions, above middle gray. 

Most commercial scanners can deliver a pretty wide dynamic range, but only in HDR mode. In SDR mode, I find there to be some lacking in the dynamic range, unless you correct for issues IN scanner. 

[Stephen Perera]

12 hours ago, Tyler Purcell said:

I mistakenly shot something all the way open F2.8 and it needed to be F16 and with my scanner, it came out fine. I was going to fix it in-scanner, but didn't want to stop it and restart it, so I just let it run through. 

I cant see how this is possible at all.....f2.8 compared to f16 is a huge difference in everything that a lens gives us.....obv. Im thinking of film photography as my main experience....could you explain....

[Tyler Purcell]

10 hours ago, Stephen Perera said:

I cant see how this is possible at all.....f2.8 compared to f16 is a huge difference in everything that a lens gives us.....obv. Im thinking of film photography as my main experience....could you explain....

I probably didn't have it exactly at 2.8, I grabbed the zoom lever and with my finger accidentally moved the IRIS, happened to me many times when the camera was running, but this shot it happened when I was lining up this shot and never noticed it. When I lined the camera up for the next shot, I noticed it was nearly all the way open. I figured I whacked it, running down the street to catch the next thing, but after seeing my dailies, turns out I hit it much earlier. Luckily both shots that were heavily over-exposed, were able to be fixed in the scan. Probably because we had some cloud cover for a bit and it reduced the amount of light just enough to help.

This is the before and after. This is what it looked like off my one-light first pass on the scanner. For the record, I did do a slightly darker scan than normal, to try and retain some detail in the highlights. In Resolve, I was able to clean it up and make it work. You can see there is PLENTY of detail in the original image, it was just washed out. 


 

 

Edited August 25, 2021 by Tyler Purcell

[Heikki Repo]

On 8/25/2021 at 10:13 AM, Stephen Perera said:

I cant see how this is possible at all.....f2.8 compared to f16 is a huge difference in everything that a lens gives us.....obv. Im thinking of film photography as my main experience....could you explain....

Perhaps Vision3 is weaker in this respect compared to Portra 400, but at least Portra can handle six stops of overexposure quite well:

https://petapixel.com/2015/08/10/how-much-can-you-overexpose-negative-film-have-a-look/

Might Arriscan handle such densities?

[Daniel D. Teoli Jr.]

On 8/25/2021 at 3:13 AM, Stephen Perera said:

I cant see how this is possible at all.....f2.8 compared to f16 is a huge difference in everything that a lens gives us.....obv. Im thinking of film photography as my main experience....could you explain....

Yes, sounds too wide a mistake for digital anyway.