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Anyone try the Lasergraphics Archivist scanner?


Daniel D. Teoli Jr.

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On 1/3/2022 at 9:35 AM, Perry Paolantonio said:

There is significantly more than realtime stabilization that makes it a far superior machine. The HDS+ is simply not in the same class as the scanstation/archivist machines. 

But the fact that you need to do stabilization afterwards means you've got a lot of extra work for yourself and that adds up. We will often scan 8000-10,000 feet of film in a day, and at the end of the day we're copying those files to the customer's drive and getting it ready to ship. If we had to do stabilization, we'd be tying up a couple Resolve or Phoenix stations to do that. (And resolve's stabilization isn't that reliable. We have had film that was given to us from another scanner, and we had to break it up and do the stabilization scene by scene because resolve would freak out at the scene breaks, or when the film went completely black or white. ) 

It's been a while since I used Diamant but when I did it was really pretty slow. How does it handle scene breaks when stabilizing? Do you need to run a scene break detection pass first? How long does that take?

The software Lasergraphics wrote for all of their scanners (it's shared with the Director on down to the Archivist), is incredibly stable and reliable. It is updated frequently, and as I said above, if you have an issue they not only address it quickly, they often send you a build of the software within days - sometimes hours. Most companies you'd have to wait until their next quarterly release for the fix.  

I have not personally done a side-by-side comparison with the HDS+, so I can't speak to the picture quality, but I'm willing to be the ScanStation/Archivist produce a much better image.

 

The bad things about Lasergraphics scanners are being repeated by a select few disgruntled users, and even some people who don't own the machine and are just repeating what they've heard from others. The fact is, if you talk to most owners, they may have some issues with how the company handles certain things, but they are happy with their machines. I'm in regular contact with at least a dozen ScanStation and Director owners/operators, and only one or two have issues. Of those only one has issues with the picture quality, and even at that, only some of the time. 

The support from Lasergraphics is excellent. It costs money, yes. But this has been addressed above. The support costs are in keeping with industry standard rates. The fact that you can get software fixes within 24-48 hours is remarkable, and can't really be stressed enough. Try to request that with just about any other manufacturer of high end gear, they'll probably laugh at you. 

 

 

Well, what are you paying Lasergraphics to talk to you Perry?

Scanning 10,000 feet a day? You should, be retired Perry...skiing the slopes in St. Moritz in winter and in sailing in Bermuda in summers!

Edited by Daniel D. Teoli Jr.
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On 1/3/2022 at 3:58 PM, Tyler Purcell said:

The scan station is fast enough to not let dust collect onto the film, which was my point. When you're scanning on a slow machine, it may take 5 minutes for a frame to get expose to the elements and then make it onto the take up reel where it will be safely covered by more film. 

But yes, we have humidifiers and air conditioners. 

 

Dust is not a big deal to me. It is a big deal for you scanners that are scanning new production films for filmmakers. A lot of the archival material I deal with has been duped and duped and duped. Dust is baked into the image.

That is a benefit of archival material. It is pretty crappy to start with, you have some flexibility as per the discussion on polishing a turd.

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On 1/3/2022 at 4:15 PM, Tyler Purcell said:

I have an HDS+, I've had it for almost a year. 

We went with the HDS over the Archivist for a few reasons. 

1) Wet gate... we really needed a wet gate so we didn't have to do as much post cleanup and it works! 
2) Extremely good imager, none of the FPN issues you see with the older imager in the Archivist. 
3) Completely manual adjustment for the camera, you put it wherever you want, which means I can scan anyway I want. 
4) Run your own computer, no reason to have a special system. 

Out of the box, it doesn't work however. It looks us a long time to figure out how to prevent it from scratching film. We heavily modified our main gate and have another gate they gave us, which we are in the process of finalizing the modifications soon. The scanner hates splices, it's a huge problem and it causes jumps in the film, which can't be corrected easily. The motor is also not smooth, so it can't capture audio without WOW and flutter, which is really depressing. The scanner is also not as fast as advertised, nor are the DPX files 12 bit, two things which are downers. They are fixing both of those things with a new machine, but currently nothing available for the older ones. 

Having scanned a few features, dozens of short films and music videos and nearly 200,000ft of old material, I have to say the HDS has held up well. It really works well with old shrunken print film, thats where it shines. On negative, it doesn't work well at all sadly. It takes a long time to get decent results and you really have to do a scene by scene correction to get it perfect. This is a lot more work than a scanner like a Scan Station, which can do a lot of these things completely automatically. HDS does not have an auto function for negative sadly and most of our work is negative of course.  

We don't post stabilize our film unless the client wants it. We've modified our gates so it's stable enough for 16mm. I've only had one show complain about the stability and I was able to correct it all in Resolve no problem at all. 

So was it a mistake? Hard to tell. We make plenty of money doing restoration with the HDS due to the wet gate. We get plenty of negative work and are just careful with it. The machine is expensive for what it is, but it DOES work if you're an engineer and can fix the problems. The imager does look great as well, no sharpening bullshit either, it makes film look smooth and pretty. So there are some positives within all the negatives and I think with the Archivist, we'd be dealing with FPN issues constantly and I'd rather have a scanner with an amazing imager, than one with a so-so imager. 

 

Well, I'm in no rush...mainly because I don't have the money. I hope FF fixes the issues if and when I get some money. Especially the sound. The scratching sounds terrible. 

Can't you easily move the camera on a LG?

What does FPN issues mean?

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On 1/3/2022 at 4:30 PM, Perry Paolantonio said:

That's a pretty long list of negatives, if you ask me!

It's not a wetgate. It's a wet gate. It uses Isopropyl alcohol so it doesn't do the same thing as a proper wet gate with perc or trichlor, which have the same refractive index as the film base, to fill scratches. And at that, with a diffuse light source like the HDS is using, a proper wetgate would be of minimal value because the light isn't collimated.

Does it clean the film right before it enters the gate? Probably yes. I mean, you can use 99.9% isopropyl to clean film and it works fine. Our Lipsner Smith Excel 1100 uses it. But is it performing the same function as a wet gate? It is not. 

The Archivist is a new machine, using a Sony IMX sensor and does not have the FPN problems that were in one model revision of the ScanStation and the Personal: the 5k CMOSIS sensor. That was noisy in some situations - if you weren't careful with the scan settings, or if you didn't have it perfectly dialed in, which admittedly, required some intervention from Lasergraphics. We were pretty happy with ours, but the IMX is a far superior sensor and even if you take the FPN problems out of the equation, we would have made that upgrade just for the additional dynamic range. 

For me, and I'm speaking as someone who has built his own PCs for 25 years, and who is building a film scanner from scratch including the software, this is not a positive feature in a production machine being used in an environment where the system has to perform in an expected way, day in and day out. You want it to operate reliably within fixed parameters so you know what you can and cannot do with it. I bet this makes support somewhat of a nightmare for filmfabriek. There is a reason companies like Apple do so well at what they do: there are guardrails  in place to keep things operating within specs so they can fine tune things to perform better, even on what is arguably inferior hardware (though Apple Silicon is pretty cool).

There is very little that I can think of that that I would like to override on the ScanStation. Part of what you're paying for is that someone has already worked out all the particular issues with the combination of hardware/software being used in the system, including the camera settings.  

As for the computer, with any system that's doing all the stuff the scanstation is doing, I don't want to be the one debugging some obscure timing issue related to CPU clock cycles, or RAM that's not fast enough, or a GPU that's just not powerful enough, or driver or firmware versions. When you buy a professional system, you expect a turnkey setup that works out of the box, not at all what you've described with the HDS.

I've talked to quite a few people at Lasergraphics about building our own system. We did it for the 5k upgrade a few years ago, but we did it to their spec, or they wouldn't support it, which is completely reasonable in my view. I'm talking down to the model of the DIMMs they used, the GPUs, everything to their spec. It saved us some money, but it's the same thing they sell. 

 

Well, you answer my question about cleaning film with alcohol.

And I see why you know so much about computers.

Too bad you don't run a scanner company, as I know you answer emails timely.

 

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On 1/3/2022 at 8:34 PM, Perry Paolantonio said:

And those issues are? 

 

This is incorrect. If you scan in CinemaDNG RAW you are getting the post-calibration raw image data. If you scan in Cinema DNG, you are getting the post-calibration/post-grading image data. But again, you keep referring to "your friends" who have this, and you're not basing this on firsthand knowledge. I'd like to know what the test is, I'd like to see the image and I'd like to see it scanned on a scanner you think is doing a better job. 

 

Sure. But it's doing very little if it's using alcohol - mostly it's cleaning the film. For scratches that are too deep to be handled by the diffuse light, a perc-based wetgate should help. 

Scanning is essentially printing. For it to work, the liquid has to have the same refractive index as the film's acetate base. Scanners that use proper wet gates, typically use perc for that reason. The Arriscan uses something different, I believe, but I'm not sure what it is. They just say "Specially developed"

 

You're correct. I should have specified that I was talking about typical scratching, not the really deep stuff. Though even that only works to a point. 

 

My understanding is that certain parts are the same, but quite a few things are different internally, and that the modules aren't interchangeable. 

 

 

 

 

I guess the only way to settle all this is to scan the same film on different machines. Then compare. The rest is opinion.

No one talks much about the Arriscan. I guess it is a $300k machine?

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On 1/3/2022 at 7:35 PM, Dan Baxter said:

The HDS+ is a very nice scanner. It doesn't have as many features as Lasergraphics, but it also doesn't have the issues with Lasergraphics.

That's not entirely true, the ScanStations force image processing, you cannot access the raw image data. This is one of the issues friends of mine are currently looking into because you get detail crushed due to this, even when using two-flash HDR.

The Archivist doesn't have an older imager. Lasergraphics just didn't make it clear to existing or potential customers what imager options they were using. The Archivist has no FPN issues.

As I've mentioned before, it's easy to add the same type of "wetgate" to a ScanStation and people have done it.

I know of two Archivists with a wet gate mod, this company advertises it on the website. Others have done the same thing with the Retroscans and other scanners.

I have to disagree with you here. Perc is the liquid for wetgate printing. For projection you'd typically use Film Guard and Neil Research Laboratories advertises the Film-O-Clean as performing wetgate projection. From what I've seen regarding scanning Perc seems to soften the image a lot more than other solvents when used for wetgate scanning, so there's a trade-off between having the liquid with the perfect refractive index for the job, and how much that liquid will soften the scanned image (that's without taking into account the fact that Tyler has his scanner in his house so he's certainly not going to be using a toxic chemical like Perc for that).

 

After 30 years in the darkroom, my lungs have had it. I don't want anything toxic. Wetgate scanning is the rage. But it hurts res. 

 

 

 

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On 1/3/2022 at 8:24 PM, Tyler Purcell said:

Yea they don't explain it, but there is a little plastic lens that focuses the light. 

Absolutely far from optimal, but it does a good job. 

I've had plenty of film come to me for cleanup after it went to a Scan Station first.

I have fixed film with scratches so deep, you could put a needle on it for a record player no problem. They're completely gone. 

Now obviously if it was damaged in camera, not much you can do, but most is damaged after camera. 

Got ya. I thought the Personal and Archivist were the same, just the Archivist doesn't do 35mm. 

Yea it could be our hardware, but again we've been talking to some top techs and engineers on my side and they all agree, Windows has a huge problem with buffer overrun with the standard SATA bus on normal motherboards. What you need is a special Raid card, with high speed caches, to help thwart that issue. Sadly we don't have enough available PCI lanes to run those, we would need to invest in an entire different chipset. We may gain 2fps and slight stability, but for another $3k or so investment. Not sure if it's worth it yet, but it's for sure on a short short list. We're hoping Intel will have a X series desktop processor out soon and release a motherboard with 64 lanes so we can run not only a 16x GPU, but also a 16x, 4 X 2TB NVME card to capture directly to and then an 8x RAID card for our 8 drive SSD raid as well. That's what we really need, but we need A LOT of lanes, more than the availability of anything but a thread ripper or older X series Intel. Considering we also use the machine for transcoding, our decision to use AMD Ryzen was focused on that rather than storage. We also have a 10G NAS and of course lots of internal spinning discs as well. It's a pretty beastly Ryzen, but we can't run the NVME OR Raid card currently, even tough I own both cards. It sucks. 

 

They need to get rid of Windows. I hate it. Why can't Perry invent a substitute?

Those problems you have with your computer sound bad. My old computer would probably blow up. I already run a house fan into it for extra air when I process video. It pumps out hot air like a blow dryer!

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On 1/3/2022 at 5:19 PM, Tyler Purcell said:

I mean I own the machine Perry, the wet gate is absolutely amazing. Where it's not perfect, the fact it even exists is something you can't say about the Scan Station or the Archivist. 

Mind you, I've corrected film that none of our other machines can correct. (Spirit 4k, Arri Scan XT, Imagica 4k, etc) 
 

I mean the lamp does have a lens and it can be moved forwards and backwards with an adjuster. If I had a way to measure that adjustment and the light, I'm sure it would be collimated close enough. 

It runs through PTR's first, then the wet gate sponges are right before the gate. The alcohol stays on the film just long enough for it to go through the gate wet. 

Oh I'm sorry, I was confusing the Personal with the Archivist as they appear to be identical. 

So what imager (model number) do they use in the Archivist? 

The FF machine only requires a special USB driver. The rest is stupid easy for anyone to figure out really. 

Oh agreed, but FF is a pretty new company and the HDS is their oldest system still being sold. They have a whole new software suite coming out at NAB, which should solve the software issues at least. Stabilization is a different issue and that will require over-scanning which means they will need a new imager. 

Oh the system doesn't work out the box, but it's mostly due to some major design flaws. I would never want to suggest someone buy a FF unless they understood the issues. Funny enough FF have really not addressed the issues I complained about hardware wise. Maybe they will in a new machine, but the HDS is old now so I assume they are going to do a major update. 

We followed the specs, but windows has so many issues with writing DPX files, that all of our issues have been windows rather than the software or hardware. Lots of research has found many people with the same issues, not related to film scanning, but just related to sequential individual file writes and slowdowns. This is why Lasergraphics do so much processing in GPU, so they can actually negate these issues. FF does all the work in CPU, so it can really bog things down. 

Again, if the HDS was $20k or something, it would be a great entry level machine. For the price, it's not worth it. We're stuck with it because we really can't afford to buy another machine because the FF lease is so good. Lasergraphics was not willing to do a lease anywhere near as good for us. Maybe after we've paid the machine off, maybe we can adventure out and get something else, but I have a feeling the FF updates will fix most of our issues anyway. The only two things we're missing are stability and better software, both are probably coming in April at NAB. 

 

Is there a video on the FF wetgate?

I can't picture someone dribbling liquid on the sponge. Seems archaic.

Internet Archive Search: childbirth teoli

One of these films has a doc dribbling ether on a rag or mask on the lady having a baby. He keeps dribbling it on throughout to keep her knocked out. FF wetgate reminds me of that! 

 

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On 1/3/2022 at 7:50 PM, Robert Houllahan said:

Well that is a bit of a big stretch of the imagination IMO all these new scanners feature excellent light integration spheres and very finely controlled LED lamps.  The SSP uses the same LED lamp as the SS and I have seen plenty of bad base scratches which the lamp did not conceal.

A full immersion liquid gate with Perc or the Engineered fluid that Arri or DFT uses will completely fill the base scratch and make it truly disappear. There are large upfront costs to running a full immersion scanner with chemistry but the back-end is consistently and in scan removed base scratches.

Liquid gate does not do anything for an emulsion scratch but those can be "healed" with a rewash step in a specialized rewash and polishing processor. That has the advantage of also killing and removing allot of mold and other artifacts in a much more deep cleaning step than a basic cleaner can do.

I have saved some extremely valuable film for clients of important historical stuff with a rewash and it took minutes and healed over some of the scratches and removed some truly hard to deal with stains mold and artifacts before the scan even happened. cost was very low compared to hours of computer restoration time.

YMMV

 

I believe all the LG machines use the same basic modules for transport and lamps as far as I understand it. They are all very similar or near identical machines similar to how a Spirit HD, 2K and 4K (last model) are all the same and different features are (mostly) unlocked with a software key. I think this "modular" build process allows for uniform parts and the very high reliability of hardware and software across their machines.

As with many professional products you buy the features you want in a modular machine, the machines are not "crippled" you are just paying for the features you want.

I think it is a Sony Pregius IMX387 which is 5472x3048 and has the same 3.45u pixels as the 6.5K camera.

The line of Sony Pregius 3.45 micron backside illuminated global shutter cmos sensors are really excellent and they are also used by LG Kinetta Xena and Film Fabriek in the 4K IMX253 which is 4112x3008.

 

 

...a specialized rewash and polishing processor.

What type of chemicals are used?

You should be posting before and after photos of your work. Sounds fascinating Robert.

Thanks!

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On 2/28/2022 at 1:34 AM, Daniel D. Teoli Jr. said:

Everything has its price Dan. No need to make excuses for the Retroscan. If you have no budget...the Retroscan is the only scanner choice.

When I bought mine, I sold my 23 yo Harley 883 for $2600. I put a couple thousand $$ on my maxed our credit card and a lady loaned me the rest. I didn't buy the scanner to make a penny, I bought it to preserve history...cine' history. 

If I had to scan people's films for $$, I'd hate it. Sure, I will buy an interesting home movie to scan, but I won't scan boring, low end, garbage home movies or movies that do not interest me...even if they offer $$. I won't do it. No time for it. Too much fascinating work I can't get to because of time....and money. 

The Retroscan isn't the "only" choice. There's the 8mm Filmfabrieks (the Pictors), and you can still get refurbished Tobins.

If you don't want to scan for others/payment then you're self-limiting your budget. A mate of mine would not have been able to buy his Lasergraphics had he not started with something a lot more modest. There are plenty of companies out there charging people to transfer their home movies using Tobins and Retroscans, you could easily find a market there if you wanted it. A few paid jobs a month and you'd be on your way to buying something better.

I don't know what you're expecting, but you can't expect to get a higher calibre of client with the Retroscan Universal Mark 1, it's a rough machine known to damage film. That's not to be judgemental of you or anyone else that owns one just pointing out you will not get commercial clients or archive work with a machine like that even if all they want is to "just see what's on the film" and they're not concerned with quality.

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

 

Well, what are you paying Lasergraphics to talk to you Perry?

I believe the usual cost of support on just about any capital machine is about 10% of the new cost annually, so probably $20k for a full Scan Station.

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

Scanning 10,000 feet a day? You should, be retired Perry...skiing the slopes in St. Moritz in winter and in sailing in Bermuda in summers!

Cinelab has processed and scanned 50,000ft of various film stocks in a day before. Not every day.

8-10,000ft a day when busy is pretty easy to do but it will hardly yield CitationX and Konegsegg money after overhead and all.
 

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

But even if rich, don't know I'd buy a Lasergraphics. It is just that I have zero confidence in a company that never answers emails even after years of writing them.

If the emails to them are anything like your last 147 posts this evening, I can’t say I’d blame them for hitting the ignore button. 

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

Is there a video on the FF wetgate?

I can't picture someone dribbling liquid on the sponge. Seems archaic.

They have a special bottle with a long hose that you use to keep them wet. They also developed an automatic lubricating system. Hopefully if that works, we can switch to something that works better than alcohol. So yea, every 3 - 5 min ya need to lube the sponges. 

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13 minutes ago, Tyler Purcell said:

They have a special bottle with a long hose that you use to keep them wet. They also developed an automatic lubricating system. Hopefully if that works, we can switch to something that works better than alcohol. So yea, every 3 - 5 min ya need to lube the sponges. 

There was a sponge / roller based wet gate for the Rank/Cintel telecine which used Tric then Perc. So Perc should work, not sure if you can use that in Cali.

 

Here is a Xena 16mm liquid gate:

 

 

2F24298D-3AD4-4CB7-A0DE-766AB591BE78.jpeg

4637D8D5-B8D3-4B00-893C-CE788EC50962.jpeg

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2 hours ago, Robert Houllahan said:

There was a sponge / roller based wet gate for the Rank/Cintel telecine which used Tric then Perc. So Perc should work, not sure if you can use that in Cali.

 

Here is a Xena 16mm liquid gate:

 

 

2F24298D-3AD4-4CB7-A0DE-766AB591BE78.jpeg

4637D8D5-B8D3-4B00-893C-CE788EC50962.jpeg

Very nice. 

I wonder what I can run that won't deliver toxic fumes! 

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5 minutes ago, Tyler Purcell said:

Very nice. 

I wonder what I can run that won't deliver toxic fumes! 

Perc with a vent hood.

otherwise your looking at some of the extremely expensive “engineered fluids” that Arri and DFT use.

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4 minutes ago, Robert Houllahan said:

Perc with a vent hood.

otherwise your looking at some of the extremely expensive “engineered fluids” that Arri and DFT use.

Oh right, shit. Perc is too crazy dang. Hmmmmmm what kind of crazy engineer fluids do you think they made? 

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19 minutes ago, Tyler Purcell said:

Oh right, shit. Perc is too crazy dang. Hmmmmmm what kind of crazy engineer fluids do you think they made? 

$1k/gal stuff I have seen and the containers, 3M makes it. Like HFE for the Lipsner cleaners but different viscosity and RI. 

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On 12/20/2021 at 9:20 AM, Perry Paolantonio said:

I hesitate to dive into this, but as usual the info Dan is providing is partial and not completely accurate. 

We have been a customer since the ScanStation was released in 2013. In fact, we have the first commercially shipped ScanStation, so we know the thing inside and out. 

1) Lasergraphics support has been superlative. Yes, you have to pay for a support contract. Yes, it's expensive. But you also get fixes to bugs you find, sometimes the same or next day. A major component of any scanning system is the software, and anyone who has worked in the software industry knows there will be bugs. It's unavoidable. With most software companies, you have to wait until the next version for a fix to become available, but Lasergraphics will give you an interim version to get you around the issue you're having. This is practically unheard of in the software world. 

2) The cost of the scanner has risen.  But I mean, what hasn't in the past 8 years? Also, the "original" scanner was a very different beast than the current model so you can't compare them. Our original ScanStation was 2k, no HDR, and a bunch of other features weren't added yet. The newest versions have a 6.5k camera, HDR, and a host of other features (some of which came from our interactions with their support team, and those of other users).

3) The documentation is abysmal, yes. There is a lot of room for improvement here.

This language is common. Our Northlight 1 uses the same terminology. So did our old DigitalVision DVNR. Is it the most intuitive? No, but it's fairly standard. And you know what? if you don't know what a setting does, just ask. If I saw a setting that said "filter/aperture correction" and didn't know what that meant, I'd surely ask what it does and how it works. 

Learning is a two-way street. 

If this is not intuitive to someone working in film scanning, then that person should be looking for another line of work. This is how you focus film in projection, or in optical printing, and not knowing something that basic shows a lack of understanding of the medium that is well beyond the scope of the documentation. This is not a machine you buy at Walmart, it's specialty hardware that requires some understanding of the formats you're dealing with.

I appreciate a good manual, believe me. I helped to write the original manual for the Media 100, which did what you're suggesting (down to explaining how to read the internal WFM/Vectorscope). But that was designed from the beginning to be a tool for the masses, this is not. There needs to be some expectation that you know what you're doing before you start doing it. If you don't, you're doing a disservice to your customers. If you're an archive then an archivist who has an understanding of film should be the one trained on it, not just someone who happened to be walking down the hall the day it was being installed. 

The training, by the way, is only on Zoom because of the pandemic. They typically travel to the location, set up the machine for you and teach you in person how to use it. And you have basically unlimited contact with Lasergraphics tech support and the sales agent, if you have questions. They have gone to bat for us countless times when we had feature requests and we're extremely satisfied with most aspects of their customer service. If there are issues with the machine, they can log into it remotely and recalibrate and tweak all kinds of stuff. 

Are there things about their support that could use improvement? Sure. But that's the case with any company.

Try getting support out of blackmagic, once they hit a wall and can't figure out your problem. The bottom line here is that you get what you pay for. 

 

Lasergraphics support has been superlative...

 

Started writing Lasergraphics around 2017 / 18 and numerous times after that...never the courtesy of a reply from Lasergraphics. Only years later one reply from their outside salesperson. 

That is shitty service no matter how you try to spin it, Perry.

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2 hours ago, Perry Paolantonio said:

 

is it liquid through one set of holes and air through another to dry it? or are these to drain liquid? 

 

 

Perc is pumped into the chamber with some and vacuumed out with others both before and after the gate chamber. The liquid is continuously circulated by the wet gate support system.

Similar to a ACME or Oxberry liquid gate and the chamber has enough height to keep the optical glass out of the imaging plane.

Can run at 5-7 fps with enough time for the little amount of perc to dry before the capstan with some active air venting / vacuum.

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1 hour ago, Robert Houllahan said:

Can run at 5-7 fps with enough time for the little amount of perc to dry before the capstan with some active air venting / vacuum.

Yea perc dries fast I've been told. 

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On 2/28/2022 at 1:34 AM, Daniel D. Teoli Jr. said:

Everything has its price Dan. No need to make excuses for the Retroscan. If you have no budget...the Retroscan is the only scanner choice.

I forgot, there's also the Ventura Imagers scanners, you can buy them brand new they cost about $8K dual format 8/16. They have audio heads which Moviestuff doesn't have (they will add to the cost of course), but a low-res 1.3MP camera, and I'm not sure what light is in it.

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