Purchase a BMD Cintel 2, or burn the money in scanning services? What films are actually scanned with the Cintel 2?

sines · April 28, 2021

As I reach out for scanning quotes, scour the internet for deals on old scan stations, read and weep about Kinograph, and calculate the bust/"break even" threshold of owning vs. renting a scanner, I am interested in knowing what productions have been scanned with the Blackmagic Cintel Scanner.

There have been many posts on Cinematography.com that suggests the quality is far inferior to the LaserGraphics ScanStation, Arriscan III, etc.
https://cinematography.com/index.php?/topic/63228-blackmagic-cintel-film-scanner/page/4/
https://cinematography.com/index.php?/topic/81428-new-scanner-from-moviestuff/&tab=comments#comment-517078
"Until BMD loses the Sprockets and the bad 4K sensor with fixed pattern noise I would not call the BMD Cintel really a "professional" scanner. Also it is very much less than 2K for 16mm."

This is from the owner of Cinelab in MA.
"Ohh and the Blackmagic Cintel is professional in every way BUT the imager. It's 90% there... a very simple imager update will solve all the problems, now that they have a sprocketless version. “

The site says that for 35mm, the resolution is limited to UHD (3840x2160). Given that BMD create 12K cameras, I would hope that the sensor is upgradeable.

I am shooting film on my feature and I fear that purchasing the Cintel 2 for scanning will be a $30K boat anchor, if the quality is garbage like the above people say.

For what it’s worth, I own a Moviecam SL MKI, Arri IIC, Arritechno 35-90, Arri Alexa XT, a PL mount modified Pocket Cinema Camera 6K, Davinci Micro Panel, plus had an URSA, URSA 4.6K EF, and a few of the original Micro and Pocket Cameras. I have been pretty loyal to BMD, despite being stuck with some dead end cameras [hello, OG Ursa!] I edit absolutely everything in Davinci Resolve.

Thank you,

Todd

Daniel D. Teoli Jr. · April 29, 2021

Don't know. I was interested in a Cintel, but was told they do poorly with warped film, so lost interest. Some scanner makers will give you a sample scan. See if Cintel will do that.

I suggest you check out Lasergraphics Archivist. A lot cheaper if it will work for you.

Archivist 8mm and 16mm Film Scanner (lasergraphics.com)

They have financing.

What is wrong with Kinograph? They are a group of nerdy brainiacs that like to build their own scanners. Some people do. I talked with a guy on eBay that built a 4K scanner. He does commercial scans. (I'm no brainiac, so I have to buy and not build.)

The scanning is the sickening part of dealing with lots of cine' film. (unless you are rich.)

How much film do you need scanned? I got upwards of a million feet that needs scanning. At .30 a foot that is $300K. Some of the films I have in my Archive, the commercial scanning companies wont scan, so I still need to scan my own, even if I had the $300K.

Good luck figuring it all out.

Edited April 29, 2021 by Daniel D. Teoli Jr.

Tyler Purcell · May 1, 2021

I'm actually doing a pretty in-depth video about the Blackmagic Cintel II, releasing soon.

The machine and software are very professional, but the imager is pretty poor. They know it, but the person who developed the hardware/software interface died. I'm not sure if they've replaced them and are working on something new OR they've given up. I'd hate for them to give up because I really like the machine, all they'd need to do is update the imager to the 6k or something like that and it would be fine.

It's not for 16mm, so forget that. If you want a 16mm scanner, there are lots of other options. But it does work ok for 35mm, but I'd wait until the next version comes out.

I have done A LOT of scanning with the Cintel II, it was my main 35mm scanner for 2 years or so. If you want some samples, here ya go:

HDR gate:

My last short: https://vimeo.com/492761431/de288c8683

Edited May 1, 2021 by Tyler Purcell

Daniel D. Teoli Jr. · May 2, 2021

Nice video review!

Tyler Purcell · May 2, 2021

9 minutes ago, Daniel D. Teoli Jr. said:

Nice video review!

Thanks, we'll have a more in-depth review coming out soon on my new YouTube channel

YouTube.com/cinemarepository

Check the "Workbench" series for more on that.

sines · May 4, 2021

Thanks for the responses @Daniel D. Teoli Jr.+ @Tyler Purcell. Just subscribed to your channel with 5+ accounts ?

I posted the same question to BMD's forum here, and so far, you're the only one who's chimed in with a link to footage actually scanned on the Cintel II, aside from the samples posted on their site.

I spoke to a tech at the Burbank BMD office yesterday, and while not clueless, he couldn't give me much information about it. He said that I should just try to find a lab or another user that's purchased it and ask about their experiences. He couldn't give me a list of productions using the Cintel, aside from saying that people like ESPN, NFL, and the Library of Congress have the Cintel, but listed no studios, etc. with it

I ask for real-world examples, because I found a Cintel II for around $24K, and I've got at a minimum of 4-6 features to shoot, ideally all on 35mm — 3 + 4 perf, no audio. I am not scanning archival footage, not dealing with warped, old film or trying to extract audio — but having a keykode scanner would be great. I relegate my digital cameras for tests or commercial work, but I'm use the Moviecam and Arri IIC + Arritechno cameras for features and special projects.

When I do the math on scans of vs. buying a scanner, the later makes more sense, but I don't want to also waste time nor money on something inferior. The Cintel is within my budget; the ScanStation, even at the Archivist level, it's tipping the scale [unless Steve from Galileo Digital comes back with an offer I can't refuse].

The Kinograph, while cheaper, seems way too fiddly at this stage for it to be a viable option. I mean — most of my stuff isn't even written yet, but I still think I'd be tweaking out on building the Kinograph by the time my 6th film is shot. The Retroscan Universal Mark-II seems to be limited by resolution, and also is geared towards the home movie / archival transfer cottage industry. Not quite what I'm after.

@Tyler Purcell— would love to talk to you offline about your experiences with it if you prefer.

Robert Houllahan · May 4, 2021

Like others have said if BMD puts a decent sensor in a Cintel3 it could be competitive with other scanners like the Scan Station for 35mm. As it is a fixed lens and camera 16mm will always be lower res. As they are now fixed pattern noise will show badly in dense negative like skies for example. Also the Cintel is sprocket drive (both 1 and 2) so poor for archives and it does not have machine vision perf "pin registration" like Scan Station, Kinetta, Xena etc.

The new Archivist is 16mm/8mm only they dropped the possibility of a 35mm capable version. I have a Scan Station "personal" (dumb name) with the 5K sensor which also has fixed pattern noise issues so I mostly use it for 16mm and 35mm prints. I have asked LG about an update to the machine to get rid of the JAI 5K and replace it with a Sony 5K which is much better but LG seems not to care about supporting it.

Scanning is rapidly becoming a commodity with more and more people owning scanners and I expect scan prices to be driven down due to all the Scan Station machines out there.

Tyler Purcell · May 4, 2021

5 hours ago, sines said:

would love to talk to you offline about your experiences with it if you prefer.

Hit me up anytime tye1138 at mac.com

I'll produce the Cintel review video soon.

Also, Robert's information above is 100% spot on. If you wanna know about scanners, he's one of the best guys to talk to and a blessing to have on this group.

Edited May 4, 2021 by Tyler Purcell

Daniel D. Teoli Jr. · May 4, 2021

$24K is a good price Sines. I think the Cintel 1 was $30K at B&H a while back.

Isn't it sad the low level customer service you get from some of these companies? Some of them seem to work hard to not make the sale.

I was talking with a RV dealer. He said he dropped a line of travel trailers he carried for 24 years. The kids took over the company and quality went to hell. He said they never contacted him when he left. They didn't even care they lost the account.

When I first contacted Lasergraphics years ago to get some info, they never replied even after multiple contacts. They did get better at replies more recently. Maybe it is as you said Robert, more scanners around and they have to work a little harder to place them.

In any case, there is not nearly enough competition with film scanners. When they were not so hungry Lasergraphics wanted $7,500 for set up and a short training. Don't know if it is the corrosive virus or just trying to lower the costs, but now they offer cheaper zoom training and setup.

I contacted another scan company for a ultra large format Versascan flatbed scanner.

SMA's Versascan - Google Search

And also for some info from Kaiser Fototechnik. Nothing. No replies from either of them after numerous times.

No one seems to give a S anymore. I'm pretty well set for things other than a hi-quality film scanner. So I am happy I don't have to deal with many companies other than buy basic staples for my work. It is sickening how incompetent some of these companies are. Now with inflation skyrocketing, even the stapes can be a problem. Printable 100GB M-discs went from $241 per 25 discs to $298.

Edited May 4, 2021 by Daniel D. Teoli Jr.

Tyler Purcell · May 4, 2021

43 minutes ago, Daniel D. Teoli Jr. said:

When I first contacted Lasergraphics years ago to get some info, they never replied even after multiple contacts. They did get better at replies more recently. Maybe it is as you said Robert, more scanners around and they have to work a little harder to place them.

Yea Lasergraphics never responded to our calls either in the past. Today they're doing a lot better, they've realized to sell models the need to answer the phone.

Blackmagic is a consumer company with a broadcast arm. They do make some amazing mid/high tier products for Broadcasting, but reality is, the Cintel is not really one of them. It can't compete at the higher level of their other products, it just can't.

When it goes down for instance, who do you call? There are so few people at the company who know anything about it.

Peter Andrews · November 22, 2022

I know this is an old topic, but we have an Archivist, a Cintel V2 sprocketless and an Arriscan. Happy to create some samples of the same film on each if someone wants to send in a test film. The Cintel V2 still has fixed pattern noise, and isn't as sharp as the Arri, and is low resolution on 16mm. The Archivist does 5.5K on 16mm overscanned, and the Arri up to 6.5K, the scans on the Arri and and Archivist are noticeably better than on the Cintel. The sound module on the Cintel is however very good, both for optical and mag and is adjustable. One thing to note,. we have been informed by our French clients that the Cintel is not allowed to be used as the basis for any restoration projects that the CNC (The National Centre for Cinema and the Moving Image) funds as they consider the image quality not of a high enough standard.

Perry Paolantonio · November 22, 2022

8 hours ago, Peter Andrews said:

The sound module on the Cintel is however very good, both for optical

The cintel sound module uses a light and a photocell, like a projector, and requires manual focusing/adjustment to dial it in, doesn't it? The ScanStation optical module (not the software extraction) is *far* superior to this method, automatically aligning the track image and steadying it, then imaging the track at a very high sample rate, removing the film grain (hiss) and then converting it to an audio file. Once we've moved into our new office (hopefully January) we'll have a blog post up about this. I'd love to add the Cintel into the test pool but haven't found anyone in the states who has the optical module. They all use software soundtrack extraction, it seems.

Interesting about the CNC barring the Cintel from restoration use. In our experience the noise was beyond unacceptable - even at NAB demo presentations you could see it, but they didn't seem to notice, which was concerning.

Tyler Purcell · November 22, 2022

FYI rumors are, a new Cintel is around the corner. It's been worked on for the last few years. Their new light source was the first update in a while and now it's looking like an all-new machine could be out within the next year. Not sure on the resolution, but one would assume, whatever they do, will fix the issues.

Dan Baxter · November 23, 2022

19 hours ago, Peter Andrews said:

I know this is an old topic, but we have an Archivist, a Cintel V2 sprocketless and an Arriscan.

Hey Pete, good to see you back! Yeah we've discovered some new stuff with the ScanStation that I know you'll be interested in (it pertains to a problem you literally told me about in person haha). ? I'll shoot you an email and fill you in on some other interesting things I know you'll be interested in.

Pertaining to the OP's original question - Kodak's NYC lab has recently replaced their Cintel with a ScanStation for dailies.

Philip Pritchard · April 12

I was at NAB this last week and saw the Cintel Scanner Demonstrated. Looked quite nice and had a 'scratch reduction' setting. How does this thread feel about the Cintel quality these days? I think the new version spoken about above is now out right? Tx

Perry Paolantonio · April 12

Scratch reduction has no business happening *during* the scan. It's an inherently destructive process, no matter what algorithm is used and it will leave artifacts. Presumably, they're drawing on the IP for the Cintel Oliver, which did real time scratch reduction and dustbusting - very poorly, I might add - in hardware.

Even the best high end restoration software can't completely get rid of all scratches without significant manual intervention, and those are using much more powerful desktop computers, not just any old mac you can plug into the scanner. And those systems can't do it in real time.

I didn't go to NAB this year, but if it looked good on the show floor, odds are they demonstrated a best case scenario. I remember when the BMD Cintel first came out, I pointed out all the FPN in the scans on the show floor at NAB to their engineers. The next day they were using a different reel of film.

Philip Pritchard · Monday at 11:45 PM

Interesting. Tx. This scratch reduction has to do with the angle of the light passing through the film being modified and thereby simply not even picking up many 'superficial scratches' that did not impact the detail embedded deeper in the film... and could be easily switched on or off.

Perry Paolantonio · Tuesday at 12:10 AM

This is more a function of a diffuse light source, which most modern film scanners can do.

https://lasergraphics.com/scanstation.html

If you scroll down to "Stable Diffuse Light Source" it's explained how this works. It negates the need for a wet gate in most cases, because a wet gate does effectively the same thing for superficial scratches, but only if the light source is collimated. I don't think the BMD Cintel has ever had a collimated light source, so this probably isn't a new feature, but maybe a feature they decided to show off at the show?

Tyler Purcell · Tuesday at 02:17 AM

The Cintel has not been updated for NAB 2025.

They made a slight alteration to the magnifying optic, which allows them to use the full imager for S16mm formats. They then made a slight change to the software which allows a crop-in for 8mm formats. It's not a new scanner at all, zero major changes made.

The diffuse HDR light source is not a recent addition, it's been around for at least 3 years. The 8mm gates debuted last year FYI. They did this to increase the speed of scanning with a SINGLE pass HDR mode. This was one of the biggest slowdowns in the older generation scanners, having to re-scan for HDR.

With AI tools, scratch removal is easy, PFClean does it without an human intervention. The updated versions of DRS Nova do as well. PFClean has the benefit of working native with Apple Silicon and utilizing it's massive AI potential to render in real time. This is a breakthrough for people who don't want to invest in huge workstations that are sheer horsepower to crack this nut. The lower cost solutions are getting substantially better and PFClean is a very cost effective monthly license for people who actually would use it.

Edited Tuesday at 05:59 PM by Tyler Purcell

Robert Houllahan · Tuesday at 05:43 AM

5 hours ago, Perry Paolantonio said:

If you scroll down to "Stable Diffuse Light Source" it's explained how this works. It negates the need for a wet gate in most cases, because a wet gate does effectively the same thing for superficial scratches, but only if the light source is collimated.

Hmmm but also no.

A real full immersion liquid gate with a liquid like Perc can actually fill in all (and significant) base scratches which are still quite visible on a non liquid gate scan no matter the light source. Perc or other liquids like used on the Arri XT are basically liquid "base" and match the refractive index of the base of the film.

This can instantly eliminate allot of the damage and leave the digital restoration more time to work on damage to emulsion. Obviously the costs for a real liquid gate system are large and or the facility has to be arraigned for the use of chemicals.

Perry Paolantonio · Tuesday at 01:28 PM

A full immersion wet gate won't fill in the really deep scratches but absolutely will conceal most of the others. Scratches are visible because photons directed in a straight line (collimated) hit the edge of the scratch and refract, which reveals the scratch on the imaging sensor on the other side of the film. This is why Perc and other liquids with the same refractive index work well with collimated light sources in liquid gates: they fill the scratch and allow the photons to pass straight through as if the edge of the scratch was never there. But if the scratch is very deep, and a lot of scratches are, you're still going to see them even with a liquid gate. They will be reduced in severity, yes, but it's not going to eliminate them. And of course, as you point out, this only works on the base side, not the emulsion, and you need to use the right liquid, not something like Isopropyl alcohol as some "wet gate" scanners do.

Really diffuse light goes a long way towards concealing superficial scratches, as I said above. Way back I scanned some film on our Northlight, which wasn't particularly diffuse lighting, and on the ScanStation which uses diffuse lighting, and the flurry of superficial base scratches disappeared on the scanstation but were plainly visible on the northlight scans. Not sure if I still have those files but if I can find them I'll post them. It was like 10 years ago when I did that test.

Back to this thread though: the BMD Cintel doesn't use a collimated light source. In fact, I can't think of any recent commercially available scanners that do - they're all diffuse now, I think, so they all do a decent job of masking light scratches, though I'm sure some better than others.

Daniel D. Teoli Jr. · Friday at 12:19 AM

From what I gather, Cintel keeps beating a dead horse. Cintel needs to make a copy of the Lasergraphics Archivist. They need to offer sprocket less transport and digital registration. They need to offer a warped film gate. They need to make it in China or Taiwan to keep costs low. (But I guess that option has drawn to a close with the recent developments in D.C.) It needs to be 6.5K and offer top shelf sharpness and dynamic range. It needs to sell for $29,995.00. It needs to come with comprehensive video instructions on DVD or a thumb drive. It needs to come with a standard film sample so the customer can achieve what the engineers show as best scan examples.

Then they would have something. And if you want 3 image HDR, then add $12,500 to the price.

Never go by sample scans a scanner company offers in the sales pitch. Always try to get sample scans of your films. An old gal down the street used to work as a secretary in a commodity trading broker, now she is retired. She said it was a common sales gimmick for the brokers to show clients a successful account or to only show them successful time periods in example accounts in order to get their biz. The customer never saw all the losing accounts. Same thing with the old miners selling their mine claims. But only after they had 'salted' the mine.

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Example of tape damage on 16mm film can.

DDTJRAC Museum Studies Archive

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

Edited Friday at 12:22 AM by Daniel D. Teoli Jr.

Dan Baxter · Friday at 06:36 AM

2 hours ago, Daniel D. Teoli Jr. said:

From what I gather, Cintel keeps beating a dead horse. Cintel needs to make a copy of the Lasergraphics Archivist. They need to offer sprocket less transport and digital registration. They need to offer a warped film gate. They need to make it in China or Taiwan to keep costs low. (But I guess that option has drawn to a close with the recent developments in D.C.) It needs to be 6.5K and offer top shelf sharpness and dynamic range. It needs to sell for $29,995.00. It needs to come with comprehensive video instructions on DVD or a thumb drive. It needs to come with a standard film sample so the customer can achieve what the engineers show as best scan examples.

All these unrealistic expectations. Blackmagic have just increased the base price from $32K to $35K, the hardware audio reader adds $4K to that price. I don't see them going back to $30K.

They already have "sproketless transport" and what you're calling "digital registration".

As for doing everything else a LaserGraphics can do - that's unrealistic, and you can already buy an Archivist so what's the point? If Blackmagic produced a product that does everything an Archivist can do it would surely have to cost $100,000 retail not ~$40K which is significantly more than the Archivist.

They have great documentation, there's no problem there at all.

On 4/15/2025 at 12:17 PM, Tyler Purcell said:

They made a slight alteration to the magnifying optic, which allows them to use the full imager for S16mm formats. They then made a slight change to the software which allows a crop-in for 8mm formats. It's not a new scanner at all, zero major changes made.

There's obviously a bit more to it than simply changing the optics as the 8/16 model drops support for 35mm entirely. If it was as simple as offering a second optics module to put into an existing scanner then they wouldn't need to sell it as a separate product.

Also they're not actually using the "full imager" for 16mm either. If they were then 16mm would work the way that 35mm works on the 35mm Cintels where only half the perfs are visible:

The only reason not to do this would be if the 16mm optical perf registration doesn't work, meaning that it relies on seeing the full perforation for 16mm optical pin registration. You'd expect that'd be the case for the 35mm scanner, but there's no reason for it to be the case for a 16/8 scanner that is truly designed for 16mm.

As you say, there isn't any major changes made to accommodate this, and I suspect the reason why is that the 16mm and 8mm optical perf registration use the same logic and the R&D budget doesn't allow them to do it differently just for the 16/8 model.

Tyler Purcell · Friday at 06:34 PM

11 hours ago, Dan Baxter said:

There's obviously a bit more to it than simply changing the optics as the 8/16 model drops support for 35mm entirely. If it was as simple as offering a second optics module to put into an existing scanner then they wouldn't need to sell it as a separate product.

Actually, it's literally just switching the optics. The reason why they can't have users do the swap, is because there is calibration involved and supposedly it's "burred" in the scanner, so they don't think it's something users can swap. I had a lengthy talk with their engineer at NAB 2024 about this, as it was already done and working at that point. It's saw it running at NAB 2024.

11 hours ago, Dan Baxter said:

Also they're not actually using the "full imager" for 16mm either. If they were then 16mm would work the way that 35mm works on the 35mm Cintels where only half the perfs are visible:

Yea, they're using the full imager, they're just shooting the perforations, so the usable image area is of course less. The scanner works no different in S8 mode then 35mm mode, it's using ML to stabilize using the imager's data. It does this IN HARDWARE, not on the GPU of the client system like many scanners do. This way, they send a pre-stabilized image to the client system, which then dumps it to a drive. All of the corrections and adjustments the user makes, is done to the actual scanners hardware in real time, the stream off the scanner is fixed. This way of doing things, where brilliantly simple, also leads to major issues when you want to upgrade or change anything. This is the reason why BMD have been delayed on their new imager scanner. I have been told YET AGAIN, the new imager is on its way, but not to expect it anytime soon. They're now expecting 2 year lead time.

Dan Baxter · 2025-04-19T04:51:59Z

7 hours ago, Tyler Purcell said:

Actually, it's literally just switching the optics. The reason why they can't have users do the swap, is because there is calibration involved and supposedly it's "burred" in the scanner, so they don't think it's something users can swap. I had a lengthy talk with their engineer at NAB 2024 about this, as it was already done and working at that point. It's saw it running at NAB 2024.

Well of course there's optical calibration involved when the optics are changed, but are you saying they don't have a simple piece of software to recalibrate the machine? What happens if your scanner can't focus correctly at the moment and requires recalibration - surely the user can contact support and be talked through how to recalibrate their machine's optics?

7 hours ago, Tyler Purcell said:

Yea, they're using the full imager, they're just shooting the perforations, so the usable image area is of course less. The scanner works no different in S8 mode then 35mm mode, it's using ML to stabilize using the imager's data. It does this IN HARDWARE, not on the GPU of the client system like many scanners do. This way, they send a pre-stabilized image to the client system, which then dumps it to a drive. All of the corrections and adjustments the user makes, is done to the actual scanners hardware in real time, the stream off the scanner is fixed. This way of doing things, where brilliantly simple, also leads to major issues when you want to upgrade or change anything. This is the reason why BMD have been delayed on their new imager scanner. I have been told YET AGAIN, the new imager is on its way, but not to expect it anytime soon. They're now expecting 2 year lead time.

That's my understanding too, but "in hardware" is still software in a chip on a logic board that can be updated when necessary.

I do not think they can support any other camera with the existing hardware, if they change the camera they change more than just the software on the logic boards which means you're buying a new scanner.

7 hours ago, Tyler Purcell said:

This way of doing things, where brilliantly simple, also leads to major issues when you want to upgrade or change anything. This is the reason why BMD have been delayed on their new imager scanner. I have been told YET AGAIN, the new imager is on its way, but not to expect it anytime soon. They're now expecting 2 year lead time.

I wouldn't say that approach is "simple", I would say that bypassing a stack of logic boards and having a beefy host PC take over most of the computational tasks simplifies a lot of the design. The only thing the hardware needs to do is protect the film and its own hardware if the host computer crashes or does something unexpected. The preference now with most of the other machines is to do the complicated computational tasks in the PC.

I think that from Blackmagic's POV there's a certain amount of the computational tasks need to be done inside the machine in order to lower the hardware requirements to that of an average PC. A big selling point was that the customer can plug it into a Macbook. I doubt there's any appetite to take what already works inside the machine outside of it and give it to the host computer if they don't have to. Any additional CPU and GPU resources can be spent doing other things.