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What does Lasergraphics do with their old trade-in scanners...anyone ever buy one?


Daniel D. Teoli Jr.

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At their website, Lasergraphics talks about their trade-up program. I wonder what they do with their older scanners like the discontinued Scan Station Personal model. I wrote them a few weeks ago to ask about buying used scanners. But guess what...No Reply. 

Anyone ever buy a used scanner from Lasergraphics? How did it work out for you?

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I wonder if anyone ever sent a Personal back to get it turned into a full Scan Station?

I think most of the basic components like the chassis are identical, they basically are on the two Scan Station machines I have now except the capstan is on the left on the Personal and on the right on the Archivist which is where the capstan is on most other scanners.

I think LaserGraphics uses allot of off the shelf components for motors and drive stuff to keep costs down and reliability up.

I have not heard of a used Scan Station for sale yet.

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The Archivist, ScanStation Personal and ScanStation all use the same basic chassis design. The early ScanStations (like ours) have the capstan to the left of the lamphouse, the newer ones have it to the right - so it can operate just fine on either side. All of these machines are designed in a modular fashion, and things like camera stack replacements, optical readers, lamp house, even control boards, are pretty easy to do in the field. When someone upgrades from one machine to another, they are essentially getting a box of new parts and instructions for how to swap them and send back the old ones. We have upgraded our camera stack twice, replaced the optical audio reader when it died, and installed new film gauges through upgrades. Lasergraphics has never had to come here to do any of it, because it's easy for the end user to do, nor have we had to send the entire machine back, just the parts that needed repair or the old parts were replacing after installing and testing the upgrade. 

There is a decent market for used parts (cameras, etc) on ebay, because as Rob said, the vast majority of the hardware inside these is off the shelf stuff. I wouldn't be surprised if they just sell the used standard parts to recoup some of their money, or put them into test models for in-house use. There simply aren't enough of these machines out there that there would be a flood of old ones sitting in a warehouse. 

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Not to hijack the thread, but I see a lot of talk about homebrew scanners these days. Much of it is people cooking something up to get at old super-8 material that doesn't have much value, but I've heard about cintel 3s being refitted with HD cameras, as well as ground up designs. It's something I'd pondered writing about. Is there anyone in particular who's good to talk to about that sort of thing? 

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13 minutes ago, Phil Rhodes said:

Not to hijack the thread, but I see a lot of talk about homebrew scanners these days. Much of it is people cooking something up to get at old super-8 material that doesn't have much value, but I've heard about cintel 3s being refitted with HD cameras, as well as ground up designs. It's something I'd pondered writing about. Is there anyone in particular who's good to talk to about that sort of thing? 

There's a whole bunch of people out there doing this. You're correct that most are doing 8mm or 16mm and they're relatively simple conversions (using projectors). There are a handful of us who are building high end scanners either from scratch or based on the chassis of an old telecine.

Mine is a 14k scanner capable of scanning 28mm through 15p IMAX. It's sprocketless, intermittent motion, 3-color sequential RGB, eventually HDR, etc. It's built on a Cintel URSA Diamond chassis, but the light source, rollers, platters are my design, and the feed/takeup and capstan servos have nothing to do with the old Ursa: 

image.jpeg.c89d48d80224ec5cfdf26cb40cd93297.jpeg

I know @Robert Houllahan is also building one for large gauge film. And there are a bunch of folks on the Kinograph forum making different types of scanners, so it's become a bit of a hangout with lots of good information. 

Edited by Perry Paolantonio
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If you want modular already fully running kits with mature software for anything from Oxberry scanners to Cintel (and maybe Spirit) Chassis or any level of roll your own to a full turnkey system take a look at the Xena. It is sort of the PC of the scanner world to LaserGraphics Apple as it is allot more technical to setup and run but is now very reliable and males great scans.

www.digitalcinemasystems.net

 

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Oh joy, once again Perry is mistaken. Yes they do re-sell them, and one of my mates came very close to buying a used ScanStation Personal recommended to him by Steve Klenk. He held out as he saw that it was a dead product and purchased a full one instead.

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  • 3 weeks later...
On 11/11/2022 at 8:36 AM, Perry Paolantonio said:

They don't sell used scanners.

So, you are saying if you bought an Archivist and now want a Scan Station you just buy the extra parts? How does their trade-up program fit into that Perry? Are they giving you a break on the parts prices?

I still never got a reply from them on this. 

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Just now, Daniel D. Teoli Jr. said:

So, you are saying if you bought an Archivist and now want a Scan Station you just buy the extra parts?

No, I'm not.

Just now, Daniel D. Teoli Jr. said:

How does their trade-up program fit into that Perry? Are they giving you a break on the parts prices?

I have no idea as we haven't done a "trade-up" -- as we already have the top end ScanStation, there's nowhere to trade up to. But we have consistently upgraded features (hardware and software) over the years. It's an easy process - you buy the part, they send it to you with instructions for installation, and you send back the old part (like if you're upgrading camera modules). 

What I am saying is that many of the parts on their Scanstation-form-factor machines are probably interchageable. Can you upgrade an archivist to a full scanstation in the field? No idea but I'm guessing the answer is no. The basic chassis appears to be similar in most ways, but there are things you would not be able to do - like add the optical/mag track reader module. That requires an opening in the deck plate for the connections as well as the mounting holes and registration pins to hold the module in place. I don't see any of that in the photos of the Archivist. That would imply that an upgrade is more complicated. You'd probably have to send it back and they give you a discount on a pre-built scanstation. 

For the most part I have always found that Lasergraphics pricing is reasonable and the quality of the equipment more than justifies what some people think is a high price. It's really not, when you can rely on the hardware to just work, correctly, all the time.

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On 11/14/2022 at 8:44 AM, Phil Rhodes said:

Not to hijack the thread, but I see a lot of talk about homebrew scanners these days. Much of it is people cooking something up to get at old super-8 material that doesn't have much value, but I've heard about cintel 3s being refitted with HD cameras, as well as ground up designs. It's something I'd pondered writing about. Is there anyone in particular who's good to talk to about that sort of thing? 

Well, this is not the Large Format Forum, so we don't have to be that anal Phil. Artists and the like need a little room to work. They don't like to be pigeonholed. I never complain about these things and let people ruminate a bit. You never know where things will lead and boom...you have a breakthrough!

That would be great if they redesigned the Cintel and there was another option for sound 16mm scanners other than the usual names. B&H sells Cintel scanners. But getting any info out of B&H is tough. 

Here is an old article B&H did on film scanning. It was how I learned about Cintel.

main2_27.jpg?itok=HX38_dON

Photo B&H

A Guide to Scanning Motion Picture Film | B&H eXplora (bhphotovideo.com)

What is nice about the Cintel is you can buy the scanner and the components at B&H and it is somewhat affordable. Plus B&H answers their emails. The downside of the Cintel is the output is no good for 16mm. (per this forum) And I think it won't work with Windows, you need Apple. 

I see Perry has bought or rented a church to relocate his operations to. I've been trying to clean up things to make room for a proper table to do cine' scans on. (I've been using a folding table I got at Lowes.) The point of all this is...we are all on different levels with our film scanning. And there hasn't been any decent options for affordable 16 mm sound scanners. But, hope springs eternal, as they say.

 

Edited by Daniel D. Teoli Jr.
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On 11/14/2022 at 8:52 AM, Perry Paolantonio said:

There's a whole bunch of people out there doing this. You're correct that most are doing 8mm or 16mm and they're relatively simple conversions (using projectors). There are a handful of us who are building high end scanners either from scratch or based on the chassis of an old telecine.

Mine is a 14k scanner capable of scanning 28mm through 15p IMAX. It's sprocketless, intermittent motion, 3-color sequential RGB, eventually HDR, etc. It's built on a Cintel URSA Diamond chassis, but the light source, rollers, platters are my design, and the feed/takeup and capstan servos have nothing to do with the old Ursa: 

image.jpeg.c89d48d80224ec5cfdf26cb40cd93297.jpeg

I know @Robert Houllahan is also building one for large gauge film. And there are a bunch of folks on the Kinograph forum making different types of scanners, so it's become a bit of a hangout with lots of good information. 

 

That's impressive Perry! Good luck with it.

I have no interest in building anything, nor do I have the skills and knowledge for it. I'm an end user. As I've said, I don't even need the films. (Although handling lots of film has its own educational benefit.) If it was possible, I'd be perfectly happy with acquiring high quality scans of films. (If they were reasonably priced.)

 

 

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On 11/15/2022 at 12:09 PM, Robert Houllahan said:

This was once a URSA Y-Front now it is a 6.5K Xena.

9746D325-656C-46A8-B483-3A2BDF435E8D.jpeg

Is this something you built Robert? Love the focus rack!

 

On 11/14/2022 at 10:30 AM, Mark Dunn said:

Hmm.

Maybe the redundant Cintel I've seen lurking alongside the 35mm Steenbeck I helped refurb isn't such a pile of junk after all.

You need photos of it.

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On 11/16/2022 at 1:19 PM, Dan Baxter said:

Oh joy, once again Perry is mistaken. Yes they do re-sell them, and one of my mates came very close to buying a used ScanStation Personal recommended to him by Steve Klenk. He held out as he saw that it was a dead product and purchased a full one instead.

What is dead about it? Wouldn't they service it?

What type of price were they asking Dan?

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24 minutes ago, Perry Paolantonio said:

No, I'm not.

I have no idea as we haven't done a "trade-up" -- as we already have the top end ScanStation, there's nowhere to trade up to. But we have consistently upgraded features (hardware and software) over the years. It's an easy process - you buy the part, they send it to you with instructions for installation, and you send back the old part (like if you're upgrading camera modules). 

What I am saying is that many of the parts on their Scanstation-form-factor machines are probably interchageable. Can you upgrade an archivist to a full scanstation in the field? No idea but I'm guessing the answer is no. The basic chassis appears to be similar in most ways, but there are things you would not be able to do - like add the optical/mag track reader module. That requires an opening in the deck plate for the connections as well as the mounting holes and registration pins to hold the module in place. I don't see any of that in the photos of the Archivist. That would imply that an upgrade is more complicated. You'd probably have to send it back and they give you a discount on a pre-built scanstation. 

For the most part I have always found that Lasergraphics pricing is reasonable and the quality of the equipment more than justifies what some people think is a high price. It's really not, when you can rely on the hardware to just work, correctly, all the time.

 

OK, thanks for the clarification, Perry.

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

That would be great if they redesigned the Cintel and there was another option for sound 16mm scanners other than the usual names. B&H sells Cintel scanners. But getting any info out of B&H is tough. 

It appears the new version is shipping. From what I read yesterday, the only difference is the new light source that was mentioned here a few months ago. That's to allow them to do HDR in a single pass, rather than having to back the film up and run it a second time, which is clunky at best. 

It does not appear there's anything else new on there though, at least in terms of hardware. Still seems to be the same crappy camera as before, locked at UHD, which isn't even an aspect ratio that matches any film gauge. It's a cool design, poorly implemented. 

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

I see Perry has bought or rented a church to relocate his operations to.

Rented. The commercial real estate market in Boston has lost its mind. The city is hell bent on "beating" the San Francisco Bay area on life sciences lab space square footage, so everyone with an inch of office space is trying to sell it as lab space. Even old gas stations. There's basically nothing you can buy in this town for anything even resembling a reasonable price. Our current building, where we've been for 15 years, and which has housed countless post production and production companies over the years - even the Boston Film Video Foundation (where you could rent Steenbeck time by the hour back in the day) - is being razed to construct a 12 story lab building. Outside our window, we can see 7 or 8 major construction sites, so it's been like one huge traffic jam here for the past two years. I'll be happy to be in a quiet (mostly residential) neighborhood that's quiet!

 

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2 minutes ago, Perry Paolantonio said:

It appears the new version is shipping. From what I read yesterday, the only difference is the new light source that was mentioned here a few months ago. That's to allow them to do HDR in a single pass, rather than having to back the film up and run it a second time, which is clunky at best. 

It does not appear there's anything else new on there though, at least in terms of hardware. Still seems to be the same crappy camera as before, locked at UHD, which isn't even an aspect ratio that matches any film gauge. It's a cool design, poorly implemented. 

Rented. The commercial real estate market in Boston has lost its mind. The city is hell bent on "beating" the San Francisco Bay area on life sciences lab space square footage, so everyone with an inch of office space is trying to sell it as lab space. Even old gas stations. There's basically nothing you can buy in this town for anything even resembling a reasonable price. Our current building, where we've been for 15 years, and which has housed countless post production and production companies over the years - even the Boston Film Video Foundation (where you could rent Steenbeck time by the hour back in the day) - is being razed to construct a 12 story lab building. Outside our window, we can see 7 or 8 major construction sites, so it's been like one huge traffic jam here for the past two years. I'll be happy to be in a quiet (mostly residential) neighborhood that's quiet!

 

 

Thanks for the rundown on the Cintel, Perry!

That's sad you can't afford a place. I mean, with a successful biz, if you can't afford it...who can? I hope heating a church is not too $$ crazy. Maybe you can sublet space out to defray costs. Well, send in some photos when you get settled. 

A work-house is on my wish list of things to buy. Of course, I don't have the $$ for one...but it is on my list. Around here, a doable work-house is a real option as long as you are not running a business out of it. Since I'm running an archive that sells nothing, it would be fine for me. First thing I'd do I would be to line every wall with chrome wire shelving. (That has skyrocketed in price from $89 to $149 per shelf unit.)

Here is what you would get around here for a work-house...

db6d51fd1604a478c585b58416adc971l-m33895

$10,000 house

12bfdc7df5d663e466c01c943e0277e4l-m19198

$55,000 house

fb7d1b7a6c32289b7ae0d62596013b4fl-m27120

$130,000 house

Having a proper place to work makes a world of difference. You don't have to fight things instead of doing your work. Perry touched on this with his comments about the Lasergraphics. Something along the lines of...you can do your work and not worry about reliability...type of comment. I've said this before about the need for constant gear acquisition. If you can get settled with your gear...you can just produce and be relaxed about your work. It is a nice place to be.

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On 12/3/2022 at 1:03 AM, Daniel D. Teoli Jr. said:

What is dead about it? Wouldn't they service it?

What type of price were they asking Dan?

The cost for the SSPs was $50K, and I assume that you don't get a large discount off the used ones - rather you would have to option to buy it right away instead of having to wait 3-4 months to commission a new scanner (could even be longer than that at the moment) and it will be serviced and ready-to-go.

The SSPs came in two varieties - 35/16 which was designed I think to compete against the Cintels mainly (they also have an 8mm gate but horribly low resolution obviously due to the fixed camera), and then they had another option for 16/8. The Archivist was going to be the same, the 35mm option appeared on the website very briefly before Stefan changed his mind on it. It's a discontinued product now. I assume that any ones they take back now will be converted into Archivists. If you have the opportunity to see an Archivist in person what you will notice is that it has 35mm rollers on it - they're exactly the same rollers as the ones on the ScanStation and the newer Directors except in plastic and you can buy the chrome rollers as an upgrade. The Archivist is a better version of the 16/8 SSP really with a better camera and more features, but you may be stuck with the features it has as LG may not offer any improvements to it later. It's yet to be seen what they do, hopefully though they treat the product differently to how they treated the SSP and they offer improvements to it in the same way they do for their higher-end scanners.

Here are some pictures to illustrate the rollers off a couple of random websites. First the plastic rollers:

e1TuVjd.jpg

6FJWSSN.jpg

With the 16mm mag film you can quite clearly see it has 35mm rollers despite being a 16mm scanner. Those photos are from this website.

And Chrome Roller option from this website:

LomNpLA.jpg

Gs6xOXC.jpg

I don't know if the ScanStation Personals had the choice of chrome rollers or not, I don't think they did. Just because they're the same rollers as the Director and ScanStation though doesn't mean the motor is the same, the motor inside that drives the film is called the "transport module" and obviously you need a more powerful motor for 35mm and then an even more powerful one for large-format for the models that support 65mm. Maybe you can get Robert to take a couple of photos of the transport modules in his two LaserGraphics scanners and see if they look different.

 

Edited by Dan Baxter
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On 12/3/2022 at 10:52 PM, Dan Baxter said:

The cost for the SSPs was $50K, and I assume that you don't get a large discount off the used ones - rather you would have to option to buy it right away instead of having to wait 3-4 months to commission a new scanner (could even be longer than that at the moment) and it will be serviced and ready-to-go.

The SSPs came in two varieties - 35/16 which was designed I think to compete against the Cintels mainly (they also have an 8mm gate but horribly low resolution obviously due to the fixed camera), and then they had another option for 16/8. The Archivist was going to be the same, the 35mm option appeared on the website very briefly before Stefan changed his mind on it. It's a discontinued product now. I assume that any ones they take back now will be converted into Archivists. If you have the opportunity to see an Archivist in person what you will notice is that it has 35mm rollers on it - they're exactly the same rollers as the ones on the ScanStation and the newer Directors except in plastic and you can buy the chrome rollers as an upgrade. The Archivist is a better version of the 16/8 SSP really with a better camera and more features, but you may be stuck with the features it has as LG may not offer any improvements to it later. It's yet to be seen what they do, hopefully though they treat the product differently to how they treated the SSP and they offer improvements to it in the same way they do for their higher-end scanners.

Here are some pictures to illustrate the rollers off a couple of random websites. First the plastic rollers:

e1TuVjd.jpg

6FJWSSN.jpg

With the 16mm mag film you can quite clearly see it has 35mm rollers despite being a 16mm scanner. Those photos are from this website.

And Chrome Roller option from this website:

LomNpLA.jpg

Gs6xOXC.jpg

I don't know if the ScanStation Personals had the choice of chrome rollers or not, I don't think they did. Just because they're the same rollers as the Director and ScanStation though doesn't mean the motor is the same, the motor inside that drives the film is called the "transport module" and obviously you need a more powerful motor for 35mm and then an even more powerful one for large-format for the models that support 65mm. Maybe you can get Robert to take a couple of photos of the transport modules in his two LaserGraphics scanners and see if they look different.

 

That is something, USC going into the digitalization business.  You'd figure they make enough $$ from the tuition. I didn't see them selling any hardware. Looks like smaller isntiuions may be interested in farming out their digital scanning / sotrage.

This is interesting...

  • We are able to ingest digital files online, on hard drives, or from digital media such as LTO tapes.
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8 minutes ago, Daniel D. Teoli Jr. said:

That is something, USC going into the digitalization business.  You'd figure they make enough $$ from the tuition. I didn't see them selling any hardware. Looks like smaller isntiuions may be interested in farming out their digital scanning / sotrage.

This is interesting...

  • We are able to ingest digital files online, on hard drives, or from digital media such as LTO tapes.

I don't think they're in business to the public. I believe these services are being offered to people in the USC system and probably for outsiders who need digital copies of materials in the archive. 

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