Any new developments with the FilmFabriek HDS+?

[Tyler Purcell]

2 hours ago, Robert Houllahan said:

The Form Labs SLA 3D printers can print material which is a Kiln Fireable ceramic.

Interesting. Have you tried any of this yourself? We'd love to do ceramic parts someday. Thanks! 

[Robert Houllahan]

2 hours ago, Tyler Purcell said:

Interesting. Have you tried any of this yourself? We'd love to do ceramic parts someday. Thanks! 

Some of the re-worked RTS gates I have for the Xena scanners have really nice ceramic guides (they were something like $30-40K each back in the Telecine days) and they work exceptionally well for stability.

I have not tried to make any ceramic parts on the Form Labs printer but that seems like a really interesting material option.

[Tyler Purcell]

So riddle me this... if I did pick up a Xena, could I pay you to make us a wet gate for it? We've been thinking about it for the future. 

[Robert Houllahan]

11 hours ago, Tyler Purcell said:

So riddle me this... if I did pick up a Xena, could I pay you to make us a wet gate for it? We've been thinking about it for the future. 

Shoot me an email I am sure that could be figured out.

[Tyler Purcell]

5 minutes ago, Robert Houllahan said:

Shoot me an email I am sure that could be figured out.

Awesome, if we stay here in LA (which may happen), we will probably invest in one and expand the business. 

I'll be in touch in that eventuality! 

[Robino Jones]

My scanner (RobinoScan) uses a perf laser sensor and stability is good on both 16/35. There are some micro bumps at splices, but nothing too bad. You won't even notice splice bumps if the splice is clean. In general with fresh film it's pretty much rock solid.

I do stabilize in post right now, mostly because of splices and old warped films - have to do this until I the final capture software is done (using openCV) but in general, it's very stable.

It's crazy to me that the FilmFabriek HDS+ is so unstable and scratches film out of the box (according to Tyler Purcell). Sounds like a terrible scanner to own.

Here is my scanner stability at capture, without any post-stabilization. Please excuse the crooked framing as the camera is unscrewed from the mount at the moment.

 

[Tyler Purcell]

47 minutes ago, Robino Jones said:

My scanner (RobinoScan) uses a perf laser sensor and stability is good on both 16/35. There are some micro bumps at splices, but nothing too bad. You won't even notice splice bumps if the splice is clean. In general with fresh film it's pretty much rock solid.

I do stabilize in post right now, mostly because of splices and old warped films - have to do this until I the final capture software is done (using openCV) but in general, it's very stable.

It's crazy to me that the FilmFabriek HDS+ is so unstable and scratches film out of the box (according to Tyler Purcell). Sounds like a terrible scanner to own.

Here is my scanner stability at capture, without any post-stabilization. Please excuse the crooked framing as the camera is unscrewed from the mount at the moment.

 

I'd love to see this in 16mm. With 35mm, it's a lot harder to see stability issues. Heck if we ran the HDS at this slow of a capture speed, you'd never see the perfs being unstable. 

The scratching is unacceptable. It took us quite a bit of work to get it NOT to scratch. Polishing, machining, re-polishing, etc. We finally got it, but the fact the first roll we put on it, got damaged, scary. The good new is, the older gate, which they were very happy to help us acquire, does not damage film period. It's just less stable, so we had to make some changes to make it stable. So now it's a lot more stable. Is it pin registered? No way. But it's fine for 16mm. 

[Robino Jones]

12 minutes ago, Tyler Purcell said:

Heck if we ran the HDS at this slow of a capture speed, you'd never see the perfs being unstable. 

I can do real-time. Scanner was set to 12fps when I took the video. Here's faster.

 

16 minutes ago, Tyler Purcell said:

The scratching is unacceptable. It took us quite a bit of work to get it NOT to scratch. Polishing, machining, re-polishing, etc. We finally got it, but the fact the first roll we put on it, got damaged, scary. The good new is, the older gate, which they were very happy to help us acquire, does not damage film period. It's just less stable, so we had to make some changes to make it stable. So now it's a lot more stable. Is it pin registered? No way. But it's fine for 16mm. 

Sounds like a nightmare, how much did you pay for this?

 

16 minutes ago, Tyler Purcell said:

I'd love to see this in 16mm.

Maybe when I swap the gate I'll post a video.

[Tyler Purcell]

49 minutes ago, Robino Jones said:

I can do real-time. Scanner was set to 12fps when I took the video. Here's faster.

Oh it's just not refreshing in real time, got ya. Sweet! 

49 minutes ago, Robino Jones said:

Sounds like a nightmare, how much did you pay for this?

$45k after tax, audio heads and such. But the wet gate was the attraction. It does work well, we can eliminate most scratches, especially from camera negative. So that helps greatly. No need for fancy digital post cleanup software. 

49 minutes ago, Robino Jones said:

Maybe when I swap the gate I'll post a video.

Thanks! 

[Dan Baxter]

On 12/16/2022 at 6:23 AM, Robino Jones said:

It's crazy to me that the FilmFabriek HDS+ is so unstable and scratches film out of the box (according to Tyler Purcell). Sounds like a terrible scanner to own.

I note you're running positives, negatives have a thinner base and are easier to damage if the tension isn't right or if there's imperfections in the gate. Also your gate is 3D-printed plastic that you've polished, a mate of mine has similar gates like that for one of his scanners that he designed but he tells me he doesn't consider them safe for film. He can use them, and he does, but he wouldn't let someone else use them because they require maintenance and you need to test it with junk film regularly. That's why the polished steel is much better.

Nice work on the fan, I believe I told you adding a fan should help reduce or completely eliminate heat-based sensor noise with that camera. You should turn the fan on the camera off and do a comparison scan to show what happens when the camera doesn't have that additional cooling.

You can't really compare your RobinoScan to any commercial scanner though as for a start it's designed to take small reels, it doesn't look like full 1200ft 35mm negs would fit, and certainly 2,000ft full print reels wouldn't either. It wouldn't be just about fitting them on but then doing the engineering work for tension control etc. It's nice and stable though as you say and works very nicely for what you're using it for.

[Robino Jones]

13 hours ago, Dan Baxter said:

I note you're running positives, negatives have a thinner base and are easier to damage if the tension isn't right or if there's imperfections in the gate.

The bottom rails are 3d printed and the edge guides are polished aluminum. There's also a spring loaded aluminum side pressure guide at the opening. The bottom rails are printed in the direction of the film and free of zits, there is no scratching. Obviously full metal would be very nice, but this works really nicely and require no maintenance beside a little dusting with a soft brush if needed.

The tension is monitored and adjusted in realtime via 2 rollers at feed and take up side. I haven't observed any differences in regards to the film transport between negatives and prints.

12 hours ago, Dan Baxter said:

He can use them, and he does, but he wouldn't let someone else use them because they require maintenance and you need to test it with junk film regularly. That's why the polished steel is much better.

Most likely, it's just a bad design. My gates are very reliable.

13 hours ago, Dan Baxter said:

Nice work on the fan, I believe I told you adding a fan should help reduce or completely eliminate heat-based sensor noise with that camera. You should turn the fan on the camera off and do a comparison scan to show what happens when the camera doesn't have that additional cooling.

Camera temps are 32~34c all the time, images are super clean.

14 hours ago, Dan Baxter said:

You can't really compare your RobinoScan to any commercial scanner

I'm not, there's still a LOT of work to do on my machine. What I can say though is that my scanner does not scratch film and it's pretty stable.

45K for a film scanner that scratches film is unacceptable. I feel bad for Tyler having to build a new gate for his commercial scanner and having to figure out how to make it more stable. 

14 hours ago, Dan Baxter said:

it's designed to take small reels, it doesn't look like full 1200ft 35mm negs would fit, and certainly 2,000ft full print reels wouldn't either. It wouldn't be just about fitting them on but then doing the engineering work for tension control etc.

The design is ready for 2400' platters but I'm still using a prototyping frame. Swapping to larger platters takes 2 min with a screwdriver and approximately 20min to run the tuning/calibration motor sequence. The software and tension sensors do the rest. 

I'm currently borrowing 1200' platters from an optical printer until the final frame is finished. I'll order laser cut 2400' platters in time.

------

 

 

 

 

[Dan Baxter]

10 hours ago, Robino Jones said:

45K for a film scanner that scratches film is unacceptable. I feel bad for Tyler having to build a new gate for his commercial scanner and having to figure out how to make it more stable. 

I don't think you realise how much the commercial stuff costs - you can pay $40K just for a replacement gate for some of them, whereas we're talking a product that has a gate that retails at under $1000. I think that was a one-off, but even with commercial equipment the owner needs to properly test it with junk film before they use it with real film. Telecines, projectors, platter systems, the Xetron Loop-Matic™, dubbers, scanners, film cleaners, processors, printers and cameras - anything that you can put film through. If you don't want them to scratch, damage, or ruin film they require you test them periodically and do the required maintenance work. Some of them require modification from their original design, here's an example. The "friction rollers" will press dirt into the film, that's one way dirt becomes embedded in prints - they're run through that system hundreds of times when played in the cinema and at the end they can have embedded dirt in them that you can't get out with cleaning alone. I'm sure that there's similar examples of lab equipment that does it to negatives as well.

11 hours ago, Robino Jones said:

Most likely, it's just a bad design. My gates are very reliable.

They're definitely not a bad design, I've seen the design and the prototypes. You have a gate that appears to have no warped-film clamp, whereas the ones I'm talking about are specifically for warped film so it will get warped film very flat without having to clamp up and down like previous commercial scanners did. The design wouldn't fit your form-factor though as they're specifically designed for the Retroscan Universal MkII so you'd need to design your own if you wanted that ability. With that said we're still looking for a fabricator that can make them, do let me know if you have any leads or ideas there. The parts are so tiny that many of them can't do it (think 16mm and 8mm gates).

11 hours ago, Robino Jones said:

The design is ready for 2400' platters but I'm still using a prototyping frame. Swapping to larger platters takes 2 min with a screwdriver and approximately 20min to run the tuning/calibration motor sequence. The software and tension sensors do the rest. 

Ah okay, good to hear. Don't get me wrong, it's a very nice design and you've got the same imager that all the current 5K commercial scanners use (including by the sound of it Filmfabriek). The design itself though is impressive as most people that build something similar from scratch end up making a film-shredder. Would your design work if the PTR rollers were removed and replaced with regular steel rollers?

[Robino Jones]

51 minutes ago, Dan Baxter said:

even with commercial equipment the owner needs to properly test it with junk film before they use it with real film.

I built the machine, so of course I tested it with dummy film. lots and lots of them ?  

53 minutes ago, Dan Baxter said:

You have a gate that appears to have no warped-film clamp, whereas the ones I'm talking about are specifically for warped film so it will get warped film very flat without having to clamp up and down like previous commercial scanners did.

..but you haven't seen my gates Nostradamus, If you are referring to the Kinograph thread - everything on there is super old.

57 minutes ago, Dan Baxter said:

you'd need to design your own if you wanted that ability.

Thanks very much I'm good ? 

48 minutes ago, Dan Baxter said:

Would your design work if the PTR rollers were removed and replaced with regular steel rollers?

Soon it will be only PTRs without the 2 metal tension rollers. Tension will be integrated in the main rollers. PTRs are designed to take out dirt particles not add them like the "friction rollers" example you linked to. My transport is like the Kinetta which is a great machine. Of course you need to keep the PTRs clean and give them little baths in soapy water from time to time.

I really didn't want to derail the thread with my machine, all I wanted was to share the stability I'm getting using perf sensor. I'm not comparing my scanner to anything, there's still so much to do on my machine - probably another full year of development and headaches. It's hard making scanners.
 

[Andrew Wise]

This thread gives me the pip. 
To backup FilmFabriek, I think Tyler is over exaggerating the stability “issue”, and is quite bipolar on what expectations he has for stability from the machine.

See the video linked on the opening link of this video, my super 8 scan. 8mm will show the worst stability because it’s so small of course. I’ll upload an overscan of 16mm so you can see it’s much less noticeable on a larger format.
 

I didn’t have any problems with scratching from my gate until about 6 months of use scanning a lot each week. I’d worn down the nickel coating on the gate, so I had to take it to a local shop to be plated. I decided to chrome plate it which was a bit difficult due to the increased thickness of the chrome, but it turned out fine. 
the steady gate does not have a groove for the film, the whole width of the film is in contact with the metal. It’s very important the film is clean to avoid debris sticking there. 
I’ve been using the gate with the chrome plating for about 8 months now, it’s all going well, there is some sign of wear in the chrome, but no pitting or scratching. I’ll have to look at redoing it again soon. I have a 2nd gate as a backup for that time. 
to be fair, this is wear and tear, and it’s up to the operator to monitor the condition of the scanner frequently for any wear. I assume this would be the case for most scanners, cleaning machines and film processing machines. 

The steady gate works well for me. Unless it’s crazy warped film. I just overscan even more than normal to allow it to wiggle around and then stabilise in post. 

I just realised Tyler seems to be referring to using the old gate design, which does not provide any lateral pressure to keep the film from moving horizontally in the gate. But does have a groove to keep the image area suspended in the air, keeping the edges of the film in contact with the gate 

[Dan Baxter]

3 hours ago, Robino Jones said:

..but you haven't seen my gates Nostradamus, If you are referring to the Kinograph thread - everything on there is super old.

I'm just going by what you shared there and on here, although true I can't see the full gate in the video.

3 hours ago, Robino Jones said:

Soon it will be only PTRs without the 2 metal tension rollers. Tension will be integrated in the main rollers. PTRs are designed to take out dirt particles not add them like the "friction rollers" example you linked to. My transport is like the Kinetta which is a great machine. Of course you need to keep the PTRs clean and give them little baths in soapy water from time to time.

You're supposed to clean the PTRs between every full reel that goes through them, that's the problem with PTRs. I'd refer you to page 57 of the Blackmagic Cintel manual which clearly states this. The operator is supposed to swap them for clean ones between each reel. You're right that on many scanners you're forced into using them (in addition to the capstans), but that's a design flaw really IMO, especially for anything below $100K in price or anything faster than say 2fps. Both the Blackmagic Cintel and the Kinetta have four that you can't bypass for example, and the FilmFabriek HDS+ has some as well. If they get old and film slips on them and there's abrasive dirt on them it can cause cinch damage (basically, the abrasive dirt will scratch the film). Really it would also be best to do it with the capstan rollers as well, which is mentioned on page 58 of the cintel manual.

Of course anyone can choose not to clean the PTRs between each scan, but then what they'd be doing is skipping the manufacturer's recommended maintenance, which is not a good idea with PTRs.

Dry PTR cleaners can sometimes do little but transfer dirt from one frame onto another. You should examine a dirty film sometime and run it through your scanner twice in succession and you should see it happen if the film is long enough.

[Robino Jones]

8 hours ago, Andrew Wise said:

I didn’t have any problems with scratching from my gate until about 6 months of use scanning a lot each week. I’d worn down the nickel coating on the gate, so I had to take it to a local shop to be plated. I decided to chrome plate it which was a bit difficult due to the increased thickness of the chrome, but it turned out fine. 

That makes more sense.  Was the scratching on the the perf areas or on the actual image? 

[Andrew Wise]

1 hour ago, Robino Jones said:

That makes more sense.  Was the scratching on the the perf areas or on the actual image? 

The scratching was on the base side in the centre of the image. It was very very fine. I rescanned with the wetgate to make it disappear, then stopped using it. 

on my 16mm gate, the wear is more exaggerated where the edges of the film run

 

[Andrew Wise]

On 12/16/2022 at 6:23 AM, Robino Jones said:

It's crazy to me that the FilmFabriek HDS+ is so unstable and scratches film out of the box (according to Tyler Purcell). Sounds like a terrible scanner to own.

Haha it does sound that way! I think the other HDS owners are too busy working scanning film to come on a forum to try convince strangers 

I upgraded to the HDS from a moviestuff mkii, so in my eyes the HDS is incredible value for such a powerful and simple to use scanner, with a great imager and strobed RGB light source. I haven’t used a more expensive scanner, so I can’t compare. But just looking at the price, would one say it’s about half the cost of an Lasergraphics archivist (happy to be corrected, I’m not 100% sure on the price)

i primarily scan a lot of 8mm home movies, which I love doing. The HDS is perfect for this job, and I always assumed this is what the machine was designed to do.

I think scanning neg was just an extra option they added. And they barely advertise it. They really push saving old film if you see the website. 

even if the stabilisation is not rock solid like a Lasergraphics, it really doesn’t bother me. The home movies are all hand held running around the backyard chasing the dog. They need a global stabilisation of the image area, not a rock solid stable perf. 
If I wanted to scan more neg for current filmmakers, I’d save up more and get a Lasergraphics for sure! 
 

Sure, the scanner could be better, people love to boost their appeared intelligence by picking at everything and how they could designed it better, but they’d do that with any scanner. 

It’s not fair to bash the HDS because you wanted a Lasergraphics but only had half the money to spend

[Tyler Purcell]

9 hours ago, Andrew Wise said:

I think Tyler is over exaggerating the stability “issue”, and is quite bipolar on what expectations he has for stability from the machine.

I mean, the original "steady" gate damages film, period. The fact you can't see them is irrelevant. We found the scratching took more than two passes to be seen in the image, but it was still there on the film itself. You can't make a gate where the picture area "rubs" on any surface. The picture are has to be free of any potential issues. The fact you admit it happed after 6 months of use and had to chrome plate your gate, shows how much of a flawed design it is. 

The "steady" gate also doesn't sit even in place. Every time you load film up and tension it, the gate "falls" into position. This leads to scans which have uneven focus and warped corners in some cases. It takes me nearly 30 minutes to install and calibrate the original gate which has proper film channels, doesn't touch the picture area and DOESN'T move when you tension the film. I have to run our 100ft calibration roll we shot specifically for calibrating the scanner, at least 5 or 6 times all the way through to insure focus is even as I'm adjusting the two locking screws which fix the gate to the scanner, so it doesn't change position when tensioned. 

The original gate doesn't work because the film channels are too wide. The solution is to adjust the roller position slightly, so the film rides in one of the film channels. This fixes the lateral (horizontal) steadiness. The vertical steadiness is poor because the capstan (you may have altered that as well) stock, is not round. We have the tools to measure it, none of the 3 we own are round. So what happens is that, as the film goes over the "bump" as we call it, the film warps slightly, this warp alters the position of the film as it rides past the laser detector, causing the trigger to happen LATER than it did the frame before. 

To solve this problem, we put a fixed roller between the bottom of the gate and the capstan. This chrome roller, does not touch the picture in any way and the film just slowly glides by it, creating a very straight surface. It works pretty well, not flawless, but we're close. 

9 hours ago, Andrew Wise said:

See the video linked on the opening link of this video, my super 8 scan. 8mm will show the worst stability because it’s so small of course. I’ll upload an overscan of 16mm so you can see it’s much less noticeable on a larger format.

Our Super 8 scans have been far more stable (for super 8 that is) than our 16mm scans. This counterintuitive, but we believe the reason is simply because the film is so much easier to move, the "twist" which causes the trigger to change relative position, is just not happening. We have captured this phenomena on video, but it's very hard to tell what's going on unless you really sit and stare at it for a while. 

9 hours ago, Andrew Wise said:

I didn’t have any problems with scratching from my gate until about 6 months of use scanning a lot each week. I’d worn down the nickel coating on the gate, so I had to take it to a local shop to be plated.

Right, we've had ours 18 months and the gate got worse and worse until we went to FF and they sent us an older gate, which has worked MUCH better. 

It should have been made right to begin with. 

9 hours ago, Andrew Wise said:

to be fair, this is wear and tear, and it’s up to the operator to monitor the condition of the scanner frequently for any wear. I assume this would be the case for most scanners, cleaning machines and film processing machines. 

No, this is called poor design and poor engineering. 

9 hours ago, Andrew Wise said:

The steady gate works well for me. Unless it’s crazy warped film. I just overscan even more than normal to allow it to wiggle around and then stabilise in post. 

We are developing a clamp which can hold the film in place when scanning warped film. Should be something we can sell mid year next year, along with a chrome gate that goes down to the laser area. 

9 hours ago, Andrew Wise said:

I just realised Tyler seems to be referring to using the old gate design, which does not provide any lateral pressure to keep the film from moving horizontally in the gate. But does have a groove to keep the image area suspended in the air, keeping the edges of the film in contact with the gate 

We have all 3 of Film Fabriek gates. 

The original gate which is two perf only. (lets call this Gen 1)
The same gate as the original, but for S16 (lets call this Gen 2)
The Steady gate with the rollers top and bottom. (lets call this Gen 3)

The Steady gate was the one we had all the problems with lateral (horizontal) movement in the image AND the scratching. We had to machine out a channel so the image area didn't touch the gate and that worked to remove any and all scratching. But we found FAR more accuracy in scanning with the gen 2 gate. Our lateral (horizontal) movement is satisfactory. It's only been the vertical registration that has thwarted us due to the un-round capstan. 

[Tyler Purcell]

3 hours ago, Andrew Wise said:

i primarily scan a lot of 8mm home movies, which I love doing. The HDS is perfect for this job, and I always assumed this is what the machine was designed to do.

It's probably the worst home movie scanner I've seen. The Pictor is a far better S8 scanner in every way and also has built in stabilization. You don't need to have gobs of leader to every single roll either. The threading is tricky. The motor is not smooth enough for audio without horrible "wow". It can't even run at a constant speed either. We've discussed these issues with FF and they've logged in many times to our system remotely and yea... it's "normal" in their eyes. 

I've tried to do the home movie stuff with our HDS and I've given up. It makes no sense. Most home movies come on single rolls, so we're assembling them onto bigger reels with labels for disassembly. Then we're running them as one big batch and taking them apart at the end and putting them back onto the 50ft rolls. Running a 50ft roll makes no money. I don't even do single 16mm daylight rolls unless it's for a friend.

We only do jobs that will make us money. Our "norm" is straight from camera negative 1200ft built lab rolls, super 16. 

This year we did a narrative feature, and two documentary features which were all 16mm camera negative. We've done dozens of music video's, commercials, demo reels, camera tests and of course our own projects. For clients, Hayden thinks we did 150k feet of 16mm camera negative, that's his best guess based on our invoices. I can't tell how much print film we did by foot because we charge by reel size, not by foot. However, it was not much. We also did a pretty fun collection of 16mm home movies from the 30's and 40's, horribly warped and faded as well. So IDK... I think for the entire year, we're probably 180k if you include the prints and home movies? I bet we did 3k of super 8 for the entire year. I just hate running it. I have 3 rolls that are mine, which haven't been scanned yet because it's such a bare to deal with. 

 

[Perry Paolantonio]

13 hours ago, Tyler Purcell said:

Then we're running them as one big batch and taking them apart at the end and putting them back onto the 50ft rolls.

Why would you do that? Just put them on the larger reel in order, number the boxes/original reels to match that order, and return the 400 foot reel plus the original boxes to the customer, so they can cross-reference any notes on the originals. This is how it's been done since the VHS home movie transfer days. (we do 4k home movie scans *a lot* for people who had previously transferred them to VHS, and we receive the original consolidated reels assembled for the first transfer). It takes about 15 minutes to assemble 8x 50 footers onto a single 400 foot reel. It simply isn't that big a deal. We charge $15 for this, which covers the cost of the reel and leader. If we have a lot of reels to consolidate, most of them are done while other reels are scanning, so there's really no extra labor cost to cover. 

There's no good reason to break the film back down and return the film on the small reels unless you're dealing with an archive and they require they be separate for cataloging purposes. In fact, those tiny little hubs cause the film to be super curly at the end (something that gets worse over time), which I'd imagine probably isn't good for it, long-term. 

Edited December 19, 2022 by Perry Paolantonio

[Tyler Purcell]

5 hours ago, Perry Paolantonio said:

Why would you do that? Just put them on the larger reel in order, number the boxes/original reels to match that order, and return the 400 foot reel plus the original boxes to the customer, so they can cross-reference any notes on the originals.

That's the process we do, just at the end we put them back on the reels they came on. So if they wish to project them again, they're not on big reels with long leader.

[Tyler Purcell]

5 hours ago, Perry Paolantonio said:

There's no good reason to break the film back down and return the film on the small reels unless you're dealing with an archive and they require they be separate for cataloging purposes. In fact, those tiny little hubs cause the film to be super curly at the end (something that gets worse over time), which I'd imagine probably isn't good for it, long-term. 

95% of the time were dealing with archives or camera negative.

We stay away from the home movie business, it's just not worth the box of 20 8mm rolls. We'd have to charge $60/roll to make it worth our time. It's a pain to keep converting the scanner from 16mm to 8mm due to the calibration of the gates. It's not like a Scan Station where it's easy to swap them out. There is no "rigid" gate holding system. So every time you swap gates, you have to re-create the calibration. 

[Perry Paolantonio]

40 minutes ago, Tyler Purcell said:

That's the process we do, just at the end we put them back on the reels they came on. So if they wish to project them again, they're not on big reels with long leader.

Well, all Super8/8mm projectors except for toy projectors can take a 400' reel (some take larger), which is what we consolidate onto. I can't imagine the Filmfabriek scanners take more than 5' of leader to thread up since they're not much bigger than a reel-to-reel tape deck. The ScanStation (and pretty much any professional scanner) requires closer to 10' of leader on each end. Nobody has ever complained to us about having to sit through a few seconds of leader. 

Edited December 19, 2022 by Perry Paolantonio

[Andrew Wise]

21 hours ago, Tyler Purcell said:

It's probably the worst home movie scanner I've seen. The Pictor is a far better S8 scanner in every way and also has built in stabilization. You don't need to have gobs of leader to every single roll either. The threading is tricky

You realise the length of the film path was designed that way for the wetgate right? Or was did you think it was another terrible design fault? 
The long film path allows the isopropyl alcohol to evaporate before it reaches the take up reel. 
I have no issues lacing the HDS, it takes a second. I’m actually slower lacing up my Pictor because there’s a tighter weave and the dancer arm I have to hold. 
I keep a long length of leader on my 1200ft Elmo reels ready for the scanner. The leader is not an issue. 
the Pictor cannot scan as fast while using the wetgate due to the short film path, only about 1/3rd the speed. Although I have thought about adding a little arm bolted on the table with another roller on it to extend the film path to assist with drying. 

I’m charging more than others scanning home movies, and my customers are very happy with how they look. I hate the whole numbers game you constantly play making it sound you’re incredibly busy at top of your game, but I’ll participate- I’ve paid off my HDS in less than 12 months only scanning home movies, charging 60-80c per ft.
I can whip through small 3 inch reels by doing what Perry also does, splicing them in order; but changing the Kodak leader to plain white leader so the ink doesn’t run when wetgate scanning, and loading them up on the Elmo 1200ft reel. I then return them to brand new 400ft reels in a can when I’m done. Customers are very happy with this. 
the old plastic 8mm Kodak reels are going powdery, and the small core is not good to store the film on. 

3 hours ago, Tyler Purcell said:

we put them back on the reels they came on. So if they wish to project them again, they're not on big reels with long leader.

 

3 hours ago, Tyler Purcell said:

95% of the time were dealing with archives or camera negative

What archives are projecting old home movies? Statements like this make it sound like you’re too good for home movies, it’s bottomfeeder business. 

I don’t know why I keep replying to these stupid comments, but I guess on this forum it’s who has the most contribution points hey