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What lens do you use for 8mm scans? (Retroscan or other scanners.)


Daniel D. Teoli Jr.

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I just set up the Retroscan for 8mm. I never scanned 8mm with it. I hate 8mm, but I have about 450 R8mm and 120 S8mm to scan. And that number was after I sold off about 400+ R8 / S8 films. They are just too low Q for me. But there is a lot of rare material in the 8mm films that I have, so I will have to make do with the low IQ. 

 

DSC29092.jpg

 

I'm using a 50mm Ricoh CTTV C mount lens. Sharpness is acceptable, but it takes a 3-inch (75mm) extension tube to fill the frame for R8mm. The max scanner light output just about covers normally exposed film at f4.

As a comparison, the 50mm lens works fine for 16mm scans with a very small extension tube. I can get by with f5.6 most of the time for 16mm. To overscan the R8mm I would use maybe 2-1/2 to 2-3/4 inches of tubes. (I didn't test the overscan really, so guessing.)

I was thinking maybe a 75mm or 80mm lens would be better for R8mm with less extension tubes needed...but just guessing.

What length lens / extension tube combo do you use for 8mm?

Thanks!

Edited by Daniel D. Teoli Jr.
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This is what I am using on the Mark II, the suppled Ricoh 50mm lens, the supplied adjustable extension plus a bunch of CS-Mount to C-Mount spacers. I have been tempted to try a C-Mount to Nikon F-Mount adaptor and Micro-Nikkor lenses but so far I have not been tempted enough.

SCANNER SHIMS FOR 8mm.jpg

Edited by Robert Hart
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Here's my friend's one:

dscan.thumb.jpg.f10ceba9754abb151664f7f54564cc16.jpg

The light and the custom gate (which you can't really see there as it's a 3D-printed prototype) make far more difference than changing the optics or the camera. So you have: camera ~$3K, optics about $400.

The light on the other hand is about $200-250, to fit it into the original housing it's attached to a custom machined heatsink, and you could improve the diffusion method if you were motivated enough. It takes some fiddling to get right as it is, it's not like you can just pop the diffusing glass ontop of the LED and call it a day! The warped-film gate isn't for sale but assume a range of $500-1,000 if it was available at retail (per gauge). You can't see it in the picture, but there's also a speed controller so that he has complete control over the speed. The stock machines run at 15fps, but he can slow it down as required to improve the scan.

The point being that it's kind of pointless to start with replacing the optics or the camera and leaving in the original light. The low-brightness, low-CRI light is the main limiting factor followed by the lack of film gates to hold the film in focus. A brighter high CRI light gets you much better colour and reduces smearing/motion-blur. Changing the camera and lens is more expensive, it will improve the quality of course but it's futile if you're pointing it at the same light!

That one is a couple of years old and his ScanStation now handles most film so it doesn't do much work now even though it is quite capable compared with a stock Retroscan. In my opinion these things are only good value for someone with a strong DIY mentality who is technically capable and able to make improvements, for someone like that they can be a good learning tool. Other than that they're capable of making "access scans" which is what they were originally designed for, and that's about it.

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Thanks for pointing that out Todd.

If you have an existing Retroscan Mk II you are much better off doing it yourself. They're just using a 90 CRI COB LED and you can use a higher CRI light, the diffusion won't be designed to conceal scratches because it takes precision to get that right and a lot of tinkering. It doesn't have a 4K camera at all, just a 2.4K GigE camera (resolution is 2448x2048), the old camera which was this one (a model from 2016) had a resolution of 2048x1536.

It is good to see they've made a cheaper model though.

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On 9/28/2022 at 1:06 AM, Dan Baxter said:

The one in my friend's one is an APO-Rodagon D 75mm. But the light is more important to change than the optics or the camera and building/fitting in a decent light for the Universal Mk1 won't be easy.

That is a great lens. Too bad Retroscan didn't use a M39 mount instead of a C mount.

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38 minutes ago, Dan Baxter said:

Thanks for pointing that out Todd.

If you have an existing Retroscan Mk II you are much better off doing it yourself. They're just using a 90 CRI COB LED and you can use a higher CRI light, the diffusion won't be designed to conceal scratches because it takes precision to get that right and a lot of tinkering. It doesn't have a 4K camera at all, just a 2.4K GigE camera (resolution is 2448x2048), the old camera which was this one (a model from 2016) had a resolution of 2048x1536.

It is good to see they've made a cheaper model though.

 

 

universal_sample_medium.jpg

https://www.videouniversity.com/wp-content/uploads/RetroScanUniversal.jpg

Internet photos: Fair Use

I've got their old Universal model with 2K camera. The diffusion LED light has worked fine for me Dan. Is the light on the newer models subpar?

With 16mm I use it at 80% light at get a f5.6 scan. I found with slight overscan with 8mm I can get by at f5.6 using 55mm extension tube instead of the 75mm tube I was using. Only with the densest underexposed films do I have to go wide open with the lens. Every once in a while, I found having more light would have helped. But 98% of the time it is fine.

That Universal seems to be built like a tank. I see old ones on eBay all the time. Hope mine holds up. If it goes, I will be in trouble!

Edited by Daniel D. Teoli Jr.
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11 hours ago, Dan Baxter said:

Here's my friend's one:

dscan.thumb.jpg.f10ceba9754abb151664f7f54564cc16.jpg

The light and the custom gate (which you can't really see there as it's a 3D-printed prototype) make far more difference than changing the optics or the camera. So you have: camera ~$3K, optics about $400.

The light on the other hand is about $200-250, to fit it into the original housing it's attached to a custom machined heatsink, and you could improve the diffusion method if you were motivated enough. It takes some fiddling to get right as it is, it's not like you can just pop the diffusing glass ontop of the LED and call it a day! The warped-film gate isn't for sale but assume a range of $500-1,000 if it was available at retail (per gauge). You can't see it in the picture, but there's also a speed controller so that he has complete control over the speed. The stock machines run at 15fps, but he can slow it down as required to improve the scan.

The point being that it's kind of pointless to start with replacing the optics or the camera and leaving in the original light. The low-brightness, low-CRI light is the main limiting factor followed by the lack of film gates to hold the film in focus. A brighter high CRI light gets you much better colour and reduces smearing/motion-blur. Changing the camera and lens is more expensive, it will improve the quality of course but it's futile if you're pointing it at the same light!

That one is a couple of years old and his ScanStation now handles most film so it doesn't do much work now even though it is quite capable compared with a stock Retroscan. In my opinion these things are only good value for someone with a strong DIY mentality who is technically capable and able to make improvements, for someone like that they can be a good learning tool. Other than that they're capable of making "access scans" which is what they were originally designed for, and that's about it.

 

Beautiful setup!  It is kinda hard to follow total cost that was invested in parts in your post. Was the camera $3,000 alone? When you change the camera, did the original software still work?

I've tried a light pin gate for 16mm. Worked terrible on warped film. That was my experience anyway. 

After he made all the mods, how did the scan compare to the Lasergraphics? You had sent in a sample scan comparing the Retroscan to the Lasergraphics a long time ago. Was that Retroscan sample output photo made with this scanner after all the updates? Or was it a stock Retroscan output photo?

 

Edited by Daniel D. Teoli Jr.
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26 minutes ago, Daniel D. Teoli Jr. said:

I've got their old Universal model with 2K camera. The diffusion LED light has worked fine for me Dan. Is the light on the newer models subpar?

The (original) light on both models is sub-par, but it'll matter less on black-and-white film.

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

Beautiful setup!  It is kinda hard to follow total cost that was invested in parts in your post. Was the camera $3,000 alone? When you change the camera, did the original software still work?

No the software is locked to the supported cameras. You can use the camera manufacturer's capture software (Spinview, it's free) and get raw captures that are superior to what the software does anyway. Yes the camera was about $3K, it's gone up a bit in price. But really you'd get a different camera now as the Pregius S chips are better and cheaper.

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

After he made all the mods, how did the scan compare to the Lasergraphics?

If the film is good, as in it has good or at least decent colour it was shot well etc then it can get very close in quality. But it's not anywhere near as useful for commercial scanning work (including home movie scanning and dailies) because there's more work involved in using it. That's the major catch. You have to re-render the scans multiple times to get to the same deliverable format, whereas the scan that comes directly off the LG is good to go to the customer most of the time.

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For what it may be worth, I thought I would try my understanding of the notion of a spherical light source.

I trimmed off part of a table tennis ball with the intention of the opening being directed towards the film plane. The ball sat on a PVC ring cut from some water pipe. The ring inside was sprayed with some bright chrome paint in hope of a bit more light scatter.

That plan did not work. The round end of the ball was too close to the centre LED and created a hot spot. There was a bit of weird stuff going on with specks of dust on the clear film test. They acted like little lenses and created ring stains in the image. I guess this might be the defocus effect on scratches. 

I turned the ball over and set the opening towards the LED panel. The light spread seems to be quite even. The colour looks a bit grubby. Neg seems to scan and invert a little better but that is purely subjective on my part from live previewing as a test.

pi.jpg

Edited by Robert Hart
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On 9/29/2022 at 3:10 PM, Dan Baxter said:

Thanks for pointing that out Todd.

If you have an existing Retroscan Mk II you are much better off doing it yourself. They're just using a 90 CRI COB LED and you can use a higher CRI light, the diffusion won't be designed to conceal scratches because it takes precision to get that right and a lot of tinkering. It doesn't have a 4K camera at all, just a 2.4K GigE camera (resolution is 2448x2048), the old camera which was this one (a model from 2016) had a resolution of 2048x1536.

It is good to see they've made a cheaper model though.

What do you think about the cheaper model? retroscan 816 2K

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49 minutes ago, Patrik Ondrasik said:

What do you think about the cheaper model? retroscan 816 2K

816_page_header_001.jpg

 

Probably similar to Universal Mark-1. Ask the maker. The light pin does not seem to do good with warped film, at least with the Universal Mark -1. But I don't have much experience with it. Maybe someone that has lots of experience with the Light Pin can chime in. 

I think these Retroscan machines are great for the budget film scanning business trying to scan people's films on the cheap for them.

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You can't make a film scanner work without a rigid gate which doesn't move, which the film touches as it's being scanned. Retroscan machines don't have gates, thus nothing prevents the film from warping slightly. So focus will never be fixed. 

We spend months trying to get a fixed gate for our Film Fabriek. We finally got a development gate system they made years ago and we've been modifying it to work and it's a prerequisite. 

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5 hours ago, Patrik Ondrasik said:

What do you think about the cheaper model? retroscan 816 2K

It's a better price, but it's the same thing really.

39 minutes ago, Tyler Purcell said:

Retroscan machines don't have gates, thus nothing prevents the film from warping slightly. So focus will never be fixed.

That's because as it says on the website they were designed for archives (the Academy of Motion Picture Film Archives) where the quality isn't essential so they can catalogue their holdings. The home movie transfer companies are just a bonus market.

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

I think these Retroscan machines are great for the budget film scanning business trying to scan people's films on the cheap for them.

They definitely are not the best scanner for any type of commercial film transfer business.

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  • 2 weeks later...
On 10/6/2022 at 7:52 AM, Dan Baxter said:

It's a better price, but it's the same thing really.

Retroscan 816 has a good price of €5,500. I compare it with retroscan markII -4k. I see you have good knowledge. which choice is the better price/quality of scan.

 

Quote

They definitely are not the best scanner for any type of commercial film transfer business.

I know the quality is not the best. But in a similar price category, nothing beats the price of €5,700 + VAT. and retroscan is 8/16mm. I would like the filmfabriek HDS, but the price of €35,000 + VAT is too high for me.
Or pictor pro for €19,000+vat. 8mm with sound.
Which scanner would be your choice?

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Well I haven't seen the results off one, but 90 CRI is not particularly high and it wouldn't surprise me if the new cameras have visible sensor noise. The low-cost scanners in the $3K-12K range were originally designed for low-end work where the quality wasn't important. Moviestuff designed theirs for archives where the quality wasn't essential but they just needed to catalogue their holdings, and the Tobins were designed for the home movie to DVD market in the 00's (there's a little bit of information from the guy that designed them here). The Tobins cost $3600 new. The thing to take note about those 00's low-cost scanners is they had a particular use case in mind because the companies that were making the professional scanners weren't paying those markets any attention, which is clear if you ask how many professional scanners in the 00's could do 8mm at all? They were all focused on restoration (the scanning manufacturers that is) but some of the scanning companies were also looking at new markets like archives and government work.

In 2010's you saw an entirely new class of scanners that were professional or at least semi-professional and suitable for those markets (and also for dailies), and which didn't cost upwards of $500,000. So the purpose that Moviestuff and Tobin were designed for, while those markets certainly still exist they now have scanning systems designed for them that are a much better fit for that purpose today. You can see in the 2007 thread that Clive Tobin said "It is a specialist 1CCD camera which is adequate for old home movies." Adequate for the market in 2007 is how the original designer describes it - it's now 2022.

For non-commercial work such as hands-on hobbyists they can get value out of some of the cheaper scanners today like the Pictor Pro, or even a Moviestuff if they want to put in serious efforts to improve them. But it does take serious work, even just building a new light and fitting it in is not an exercise for a novice user. For commercial work you really want something more capable now because it affects your workflow. If your budget allows for a Pictor Pro and that's the best you can afford and it's for commercial work, then sure that may be the best entry choice and then you could invest in another scanner down the line. The downside is you wouldn't be able to do 16mm until you can buy another scanner, but if 16mm is not essential for the time being then you would definitely find it better than starting with a Retroscan for 8mm work.

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  • 1 year later...
On 9/28/2022 at 9:23 PM, Dan Baxter said:

Here's my friend's one:

That is a really cool setup from your friend! You definitely have my interest piqued.

My organization has the same Retroscan, and while it's certainly subpar to what's out there, it was all we could afford. However I would definitely be interested in upgrading the LED. I'm assuming that Roger didn't build enough electrical overhead into the system to just swap in a 50w LED. The power supply we got for it isn't even rated for the volts the LED your friend used wants, and it looks like Roger used a RCA port to power the one he installed?

I was thinking about installing the LED on its own line/system instead of trying to tie it into the rest the Retroscan. That would hopefully simplify the upgrade and allow me to swap back to the stock setup if there's a need? I've got a 60w LED driver with sufficient voltage range to match, so I could probably just run it through that. Does that sound reasonable?

I would also be interested learning how your friend added speed controls? I have no idea where to start with that, but slowing down scan speed for better quality is something I would be interested in. Speeding it up might also be an interesting option for some applications, though that's less important.

It would be great to upgrade the entire system to your friend's machine's level, but unfortunately I don't have the budget to accomplish that - however this seems like a reasonable upgrade that would greatly benefit our capabilities. Thanks in advance!

 

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Following some generous advice from other contributors here, I made some improvements.

To upgrade the lamp will require another power source for the lamp driver. I had a few old PCs which had laid down but had perfectly good power supplies. Some can be tricked into supplying power by linking a switching circuit that the motherboard of a PC normally energises. Other cannot without some serious innovation beyond my meagre abilities.

I used one to supply power both to the scanner and to an LED driver. I installed it within the rear of the cabinet with suitable venting for it. Be aware that installing anything high voltage which can incinerate itself when it fails is not a good thing to have within wooden cabinetry. The manufacturer of the Retroscan sensibly avoids that risk by using a remote power supply. 

Whilst I originally used a separate pot to control the light level, I found that I could use the controller output from the scanner's main board itself. I did not draw power for the LED driver from the main board. 

I bought and installed a 4K FLIR camera and use the Spinnaker Spinview application. The camera is not seen by the Alteraware app which is custom for the 2K scanner. For my capture PCs limitations and the USB3 connection, the frame rate has to be reduced to below about 9FPS. The camera seems to present its full 4K dose of sensor data even if the sensor is windowed. 

The speed controller was going to be a harder nut to crack. An innovator with the Mark 2 in the US suggested a simpler solution, that of adding a powered motor controller in series on the power line to the take-up drive motor. That has worked fine but there is a frame rate increase as the wind diameter on the take-up reel builds. 

The machine is no longer a set and forget proposition but requires monitoring and several adjustments of the transport speed of the film during a scan run. 

For mildly shrunken and warped/cupped film, I found that a pressure plate which spans the fixed guides and attention to the back-tension on the film is adequate to maintain the film at the light pin's adjusted focal plane.

For the 35mm film, smaller diameter rollers each side of the "gate" are desirable as the film is bent acutely at the fixed guides with the larger rollers. The downside of smaller rollers is less inertia therefore slightly less stability of the film speed through the gate. 

A workaround for mildly warped film is to shim the outfeed roller so that a lateral tension is applied downstream of the outfeeding fixed guide and tends to destress the film edge under the light pin and move the ripple to the opposite edge.

For film which has been cleaned too many times and the emulsion face has become less reflective, it may be necessary to flip the film during a rewind so that the reflective base is seen by the light pin. 

With care, film can capture nearly if not as steadily through the Retroscan as any other but of course on-the-fly electronic steadying offered by other products is not available. Things fall in a heap when a splice or sprocket hole damage visits and passes through. Some things you just have to be prepared to pay for. 


 

Edited by Robert Hart
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Thanks, that's a lot of good information!

Unfortunately, I have limited time (and money) to execute any changes and I can't really develop the system to make it less user-friendly such that it would require speed monitoring. The Retroscan needs to be potato-friendly so most staff can be able to scan/digitize film without becoming experts. There isn't money to fund a full-time AV staff member who could seriously learn how to maximize the systems capabilities.

I'd definitely love to install a pressure plate to help with any vinegar syndrome, but I think that would be outside my skill set. However that does seem like the best low-cost upgrade after a new LED, so I'll make a note about that. Again unfortunately, anything with high vinegar syndrome is either going to have to be sent out for scanning/duplication by people with the proper equipment or more likely written off and disposed of. We have over a couple million feet of film amongst other AV mediums, and that generally means we have to pick and choose what we can save.

But again thanks, I'll definitely get this all documented so someone in future can hopefully try and follow your suggestions! 

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This is the COB LED that Dan Baxter pointed me to. 

https://store.yujiintl.com/collections/led-cobs/products/yujileds-cri-95-50w-cob-led-3200k-5600k-400l

This is the setup for the COB LED lamp powered and controlled independently of the Scanner's own electricals. My own arrangement was for convenience and avoidance of an extra set of cables for some fool like me to hang a stray toe in with a double bonus of damaging the cord and stretching me senseless on the floor.

For a heatsink I have a temporary piece of finned heatsink trimmed down to fit. I intended to replace it with a more robust heatsink styled after the one in the accompanying image. It appears to have been made up from broad and narrow washers stacked with two long machine screws to hold them all together. My guess is that there will be thermal compound in between each of the pieces and under the COB LED. The heatsink would have to be made for you as a custom job. 

I think you will find that RS Components will have the LED driver box and the 50W laptop powerpack. For a pot, I do not know the values. I just grabbed one out of a parts box I had handy and used that before using the control source from the mainboard of the scanner. 

5igTPhs.jpg

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I have had the piece of aluminium stock sitting in a 4-jaw lathe chuck to make the heatsink. To restore back-tension which I had backed off as much as I could when using the pressure plate for 16mm film, for an unexpected 8mm task, I resorted to some primitive bogan engineering with a piece of foam stuck to a piece of flatbar with a felt rubbing strip and around it.

I carefully chose the book thicknesses to stack to stop the flatbar from moving across but add no extra pressure. It was that or pull the outfeed motor assembly out of the cabinet and upset my careful 16mm back-tension adjustments made when setting up the pressure plate. Extreme care is needed to avoid overloading the take-up motor/transmission and the old style electro-mechanical clutch.

Andrew Wise and myself have had separate notions of how to implement a mechanical load-sensing arrangement for constant back-tension with a swingarm and brake band around a hub similar to old analogue audio recorders. The challenge is to make it fit around the exiting hardware and play nice without requiring things to be cut and changed. 

RETRO HEATSINK.jpg

RETRO BACKTENSION.jpg

Edited by Robert Hart
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