Daniel D. Teoli Jr. Posted January 20, 2022 Author Share Posted January 20, 2022 (edited) On 1/9/2022 at 10:02 PM, Todd Ruel said: The mod that the Retroscan really needs is a 4K camera. Do you know of anyone who has modified a MKII with a better camera/sensor? I had inquired about adding a 4K cam with the manufacturer, but they showed no interest. But concur, 4K would be nice. Edited January 20, 2022 by Daniel D. Teoli Jr. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Daniel D. Teoli Jr. Posted January 20, 2022 Author Share Posted January 20, 2022 On 1/10/2022 at 1:36 AM, Robert Houllahan said: As with all digital technology the main component costs of building a good film scanner have come down considerably, especially the camera. The new Sony Pregius line of Global Shutter CMOS sensors are very good and 4K/5K is very attainable for the hobbyist in their 3.45micron and 2.75micron pixel sensors. The trick is building a film transport and really good LED Lamp and then the software to glue it all together. I can tell you that the high end R,G,B,IR LEDs used in the Xena scanners I helped co-develop cost about $900.00 in just LED parts but that is designed to be a high end lamp. I would imagine an enthusiast could run a acceptable LED lamp which costs 1/10 that and other middle market scanners probably fall somewhere in the middle for those parts. Good, Cheap,Fast pick two they say but film scanners inevitably will become higher res and fast enough and the costs will be pushed down. YMMV Fast is not that big a deal to me. Good and cheap are along with sound. Fast would be important to commercial scanning companies. Generally, everyone likes fast, but you know the deal...beggars can't be choosers. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Daniel D. Teoli Jr. Posted January 20, 2022 Author Share Posted January 20, 2022 On 1/10/2022 at 3:59 AM, Phil Rhodes said: Is there some reason people go for LEDs rather than incandescent, which I'd view as stabler and with better colour quality? I guess you can change colours quicker on the LEDs rather than a mechanical filter assembly. In the USA incandescent bulbs are outlawed. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Daniel D. Teoli Jr. Posted January 20, 2022 Author Share Posted January 20, 2022 (edited) On 12/16/2021 at 8:13 PM, Dan Baxter said: The only "cheap" scanner that is within reach/affordable for consumers and still decent quality which I'm aware of is the Pictor Pro: The only other decent "low budget" option (assuming you're not building the entire scanner from scratch) would be to buy a Retroscan Universal MkII and modify it, in my estimation you'll need to budget for around $14K if you want a decent quality dual-format scanner. The hardest part is adding gates to it to get the film perfectly flat, but there should be a commercial product available soon (aftermarket gates) that you can buy for the Universal MkII, but be aware they won't work with the older Moviestuff machines since they had a different design. If anyone has a Universal MkII please send me a private message, my mate who designed the gates may want to get others to test them before fully going to market with them to ensure they'll work with other machines besides his one. Forgot to mention... If you want to make a go of it and sell scanner upgrades...sell them on eBay. Make a YT video demonstrating them. You will sell some as long as price is not crazy. The people that go for Retroscan are generally not rich. Or if you are on a tight budget, list something small to sell on eBay and you can advertise the other items and users will contact you. There seems to be a good amount of Retroscan users out there for the earlier models. They are hungry for any Retroscan related items, and they sell pretty good on eBay. Edited January 20, 2022 by Daniel D. Teoli Jr. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Daniel D. Teoli Jr. Posted January 20, 2022 Author Share Posted January 20, 2022 On 1/10/2022 at 6:35 AM, Phil Rhodes said: Sure, but you can mount the light somewhere away from the film. It'll necessarily be somewhat distant anyway, given the need for a variable RGB colour filtration box. That's how it was always done. I'm catching up slow, so you may have already answered this... But what is it? And send in more photos related to it or put it up a the I.A. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Daniel D. Teoli Jr. Posted January 20, 2022 Author Share Posted January 20, 2022 On 1/10/2022 at 9:04 AM, Perry Paolantonio said: You don't necessarily need the filtration if you choose LEDs with the right spectral characteristics. Any variance from the target peak wavelengths can be compensated for in the color processing pipeline (in scanner, before anything is written to disk). This is how almost all of the high end scanners work these days. Incandescents also tend to dim over time. For example, the lamp in a Northlight has to be periodically replaced (every 1000 hours they say) because it will eventually dim to about 50% of its initial brightness. It gets to the point where the scanner can't compensate for the shift, in software. LEDs tend to be more stable over longer periods of time. Lasergraphics, for example, states an estimated 100,000 hour lifetime for their LED lamphouse. Without the need for all that filtration, you can make a much more compact lamphouse, too. Essentially, some LEDs pointed into an integrating sphere. That doesn't take up much space, so it brings down manufacturing complexity and cost. Northlight? If they use propriety bulbs and they go out of biz and you will be shopping on eBay for used bulb from Ukraine. I've only used LED in the scanner, so no experience with incandescent. On the scanner, I'm happy with it. I use incandescent in the projectors and hate them. Some guy on eBay mods Zeiss film viewers to run on quartz bulbs. It is a big improvemnt. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Perry Paolantonio Posted January 20, 2022 Share Posted January 20, 2022 Just now, Daniel D. Teoli Jr. said: If they use propriety bulbs and they go out of biz and you will be shopping on eBay for used bulb from Ukraine. you can buy them on Amazon. nothing special. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Daniel D. Teoli Jr. Posted January 20, 2022 Author Share Posted January 20, 2022 On 1/10/2022 at 1:31 PM, Robert Houllahan said: The Spirit uses a 750W Xenon lamp with an ingenious mechanism for removing the heat from it's output the is capable of putting out allot more light than the LED lamps in modern scanners and this combined with the very large photo-sites on the CCD line arrays gives it great ability to scan dense negatives and prints in real-time with good results and low noise. The electronic ballast and lamp plus the filter array and other optics like the heat dissipation system are hella expensive and complex. The "newer" Imagica ImagerXE had a Xenon lamp and a (I assume hella expensive) large fibre optic tube to send the light to the gate from the bulb. Today's LEDs are really good and keep getting better and if you use the right R,G,B,IR LEDs and enough of them in an integration sphere with some of the new holographic diffusion you get a lamp with excellent variability in color to match the film stock characteristics and the big added bonus of diffuse light to help conceal scratches. The LED lamp will far outlast the Xenon one (or another lesser capable hot lamp) by a huge margin. The LED lamp is very compact and as they are typically pulsed to match the film frame / camera taking shutter timing they don't need a huge heat-sink and the power draw is minimal. Did they use a fan for cooling? Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Perry Paolantonio Posted January 20, 2022 Share Posted January 20, 2022 (edited) 2 minutes ago, Daniel D. Teoli Jr. said: Did they use a fan for cooling? Most of these machines require serious ventilation - the northlight uses a 4" clothes dryer exhaust port, and will overheat if you don't get the hot air away from the machine. The Spirit is more intense, I think. Edited January 20, 2022 by Perry Paolantonio Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Daniel D. Teoli Jr. Posted January 20, 2022 Author Share Posted January 20, 2022 (edited) On 1/10/2022 at 4:49 PM, Dan Baxter said: I feel you can add "versatility" to that adage: Good/Cheap/Fast/Versatile. That's what you're compromising on. The example I showed is with a white light as mentioned, a true RGB light will improve the results and will also give greater versatility to recover faded film. You're also compromising on the speed of the workflow with the example I uploaded (4K on a Retroscan) as you have to capture to camera raw then debayer and then convert that to Prores. That example also hasn't been stabilised in post. A Lasergraphics will go straight to Prores and stabilise the film in the scan. Now, for any of you commercial scanning companies that want to do an interesting comparison test of scanning warped film with various scanners... I have an old 16mm Castle film called Belles of the South Seas. (One of the early 'native' nudie cuties.) It is terrible warped. I overscanned it to get the sprockets in. I did it just as an experiment to see how the Retroscan handled badly warped film. I still have to put it online. It is a poor quality scan. It needs a warped film gate which the Retroscan does not have. If you like, you can have the film to scan and show your warped scanning capability. (Just send me your finished scan and send the film back to me or to anyone here that wants to test their scanner with it.) Although this is not it, it is something like this. You can use my scan in your advertising that I will eventually put up at the I.A. to show the comparison. Edited January 20, 2022 by Daniel D. Teoli Jr. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Dan Baxter Posted January 20, 2022 Share Posted January 20, 2022 9 hours ago, Daniel D. Teoli Jr. said: I'd be worried about Filmfabriek because they are a European company that is does not seem to be represented well in the USA as far as mainstream distributors. Filmfabriek is a good reputable company. 6 hours ago, Daniel D. Teoli Jr. said: If you want to make a go of it and sell scanner upgrades...sell them on eBay. Make a YT video demonstrating them. You will sell some as long as price is not crazy. The people that go for Retroscan are generally not rich. Or if you are on a tight budget, list something small to sell on eBay and you can advertise the other items and users will contact you. I'm aware of that. I also don't think there's too much point in chasing the full quality of a more expensive scanner as most of the users won't really be able to tell the difference anyway and it'll just increase the price until you may as well just buy a Filmfabriek HDS+ which comes with support etc (once you make mods to the Retroscan I don't think Moviestuff will give you any support). Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Site Sponsor Robert Houllahan Posted January 21, 2022 Site Sponsor Share Posted January 21, 2022 7 hours ago, Perry Paolantonio said: Most of these machines require serious ventilation - the northlight uses a 4" clothes dryer exhaust port, and will overheat if you don't get the hot air away from the machine. The Spirit is more intense, I think. The last version of the Spirit (HD 2K 4K) series has allot of fans and moves air through the machine with filters on the bottom, it also has allot less electronics (1 rack) than earlier machines and it does not really require any ventilation, just a reasonably climate controlled environment. The two I run are 3-phase but can be run in 220v and they really draw less power than one would expect. They are loud but in the lab everything is loud and compared to the (silenced as best as possible) ring compressor based air knives in film processors the fan noise of the Spirits the Scan Station the Xenas and the San stuff it is reasonable or even not that noticeable. Of course in a post house they live in silenced machine rooms as not to disturb the hard work being done in color suites on cat food commercials... Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Site Sponsor Robert Houllahan Posted January 21, 2022 Site Sponsor Share Posted January 21, 2022 7 hours ago, Daniel D. Teoli Jr. said: Now, for any of you commercial scanning companies that want to do an interesting comparison test of scanning warped film with various scanners... I have an old 16mm Castle film called Belles of the South Seas. (One of the early 'native' nudie cuties.) It is terrible warped. I overscanned it to get the sprockets in. I did it just as an experiment to see how the Retroscan handled badly warped film. I still have to put it online. It is a poor quality scan. It needs a warped film gate which the Retroscan does not have. If you like, you can have the film to scan and show your warped scanning capability. (Just send me your finished scan and send the film back to me or to anyone here that wants to test their scanner with it.) Although this is not it, it is something like this. You can use my scan in your advertising that I will eventually put up at the I.A. to show the comparison. That is not even comparatively that bad I have scanned much worse. Also that would be prepped to try to get it a bit flatter before going onto the scanner. And while scanning turning the speed down and stopping the lens down for better field of focus with more lamp time works pretty well. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Perry Paolantonio Posted January 21, 2022 Share Posted January 21, 2022 I was down in the basement looking for some parts and I stumbled across the Imagica 3000V's lamp house. When we got the scanner it was all rusted out like this, but we never intended to use it, so it was just yanked and put in a box. 1 Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Perry Paolantonio Posted January 21, 2022 Share Posted January 21, 2022 And here are some shots of the fiber optic light pipe 1 Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Daniel D. Teoli Jr. Posted January 24, 2022 Author Share Posted January 24, 2022 How reliable has your scanner been? What sort of repairs if any have you had to make to them? If repairs were needed, were you able to complete them yourself or did you need to import a tech? Were there issues getting parts? Although my use of the Retroscan is limited, I have had no problems with it. (Early model) Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
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