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4K Spirit on eBay - $5k opening bid


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It's also 1400 lb lol 

Last time we moved one, we destroyed the carpet because it weighed so much. 

Kinda useless without the software. 

Robert, I didn't know you could turn these into Xena's.. That's cool. 

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22 hours ago, Tyler Purcell said:

It's also 1400 lb lol 

Last time we moved one, we destroyed the carpet because it weighed so much. 

Kinda useless without the software. 

Robert, I didn't know you could turn these into Xena's.. That's cool. 

Without a licensed and configured SUSE 10 or SUSE 11 Linux workstation running either DFT Bones or DFT Phantom-2 software the machine is a giant dongle.

They are good machines which make great scans but they are complex and power hungry and allot to maintain.

I have three.

I am going to look into seeing about a Xena conversion on the parts machine I have. The other two run ok.

Xena would have to be able to activate the spooling transport and then the Spirit capstan motor would be replaced with a newer motor. The lamp and gate setup would have to be converted to a full aperture instead of a slit and the Xenon hot lamp would be chucked and somehow a integration sphere and LEDs would have to be fitted to illuminate the film.

Allota work but maybe a 9.4K Spirit conversion kit would be a thing.

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30 minutes ago, Tyler Purcell said:

AH ok, so he hasn't done it, got ya. 

Dang... Oh well. Maybe someday! 

I might work on figuring that out as I have three Spirits and one is a parts machine.

I will probably try to sell the two running scanners but I doubt the market is hot for them so conversions might be a better route as they have really nice film transports.

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8 hours ago, Robert Houllahan said:

I might work on figuring that out as I have three Spirits and one is a parts machine.

I will probably try to sell the two running scanners but I doubt the market is hot for them so conversions might be a better route as they have really nice film transports.

Yea, they aren't worth much unless ya need a telecine, which they can be used as without a computer.

They are very nice movements and systems in general, just overly complex for no reason. 

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12 hours ago, Tyler Purcell said:

Yea, they aren't worth much unless ya need a telecine, which they can be used as without a computer.

They are very nice movements and systems in general, just overly complex for no reason. 

The Spirit is a true RGB scanner and there are two ways to make a true RGB scan, one is Line scan and the other is a Monochrome area sensor. At the time the Spirit was introduced there were no area scan sensors capable of 2K much less 4K and when these new generation Spirits were rolled out 7.5FPS 4K was about as fast as could be done, it is still a reasonable speed today.

The Arriscan is much slower especially in HDR 4K and the large photosite CCD lines in the Spirit with the 750W Xenon lamp still makes a very good scan just not anywhere near as steady as a modern scanner.

Cintel carried the CRT flying spot scanner all the way through to the same era as the last generation Spirit with the Millenium then DSX and C-Reality. 4K flying spot scanners were truly Rube Goldberg machines of even more complexity than the Spirit and made very good scans with a new tube.

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On 3/13/2023 at 7:03 AM, Robert Houllahan said:

The Spirit is a true RGB scanner and there are two ways to make a true RGB scan, one is Line scan and the other is a Monochrome area sensor. At the time the Spirit was introduced there were no area scan sensors capable of 2K much less 4K and when these new generation Spirits were rolled out 7.5FPS 4K was about as fast as could be done, it is still a reasonable speed today.

With CCD you mean, the first Arriscans which were contemporaneous with the Spirit 2K (although not previous model Spirits) had CMOS area sensors with a rolling shutter that weren't as good as CCD but came with 2-flash HDR to compensate for the lower quality of the CMOS sensors. I'm sure the quality didn't match at the time, but it was Arri's intention to improve their scanner over time so that it could and would later match and/or exceed the dynamic range that the CCD imager scanners produced. Adding the micro-scanning option would also have represented a big improvement as you can then get native 6K from the 3K sensors producing a true full 4K scan or a significantly nicer 2K scan as it would have helped compensate for sensor noise. Unless I'm mistaken I think all Arriscans came with 2-flash HDR and then when micro-scanning became available that became an optional extra option to purchase for the scanners.

On 3/10/2023 at 12:34 PM, Daniel D. Teoli Jr. said:

So pretty useless as-is for scanning?

Yep.

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5 hours ago, Dan Baxter said:

With CCD you mean, the first Arriscans which were contemporaneous with the Spirit 2K (although not previous model Spirits) had CMOS area sensors with a rolling shutter that weren't as good as CCD but came with 2-flash HDR to compensate for the lower quality of the CMOS sensors.

There were no high res area sensors in the 1990's when the "Classic" Spirit arrived, it had a full res HD mono line and three half res color lines to make 4:2:2 HD scans.

The newer Spirit series has 3X 2K lines and 3X 4K lines and the HD config uses the 4K lines and scalers, it is a very good machine and can scan some material like ECO exceptionally well. It is not as steady as the newer scanners and it is complex and expensive to run.

The Arriscan ALEV monochrome 3K CMOS sensor might be global shutter it is not just a early Alexa sensor it is specific to the scanner. Because it is a mechanical pin registration scanner it would not matter if it were rolling shutter as the film is stopped and locked during imaging.

The Arriscan beats the Spirit 4K in resolution and dynamic range especially in 2-flash where it is a actual 16-bit scanner as the sensor is 14-bit. The original Arriscan is still one of the best scanners available especially for negative, It is at least comparable to and possible exceeds the Scannity and is as sharp and steady as a Scan Station but has better color performance.

The Arriscan has very little visible sensor noise at all in my experience using it.

 

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The Arri scan's are also hella slow. With 4 flashes per frame, it takes a while to scan. 

Ya need more than one machine to be in business with an Arriscan. Taking 8hrs to do a 1000ft roll of film, means ya gotta charge a lot. 

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Mine is a 2008/09 Arriscan and I don't think there was a sensor change but I could be wrong.

The Arriscan is about 2FPS in 6K HDR mode.

The Scan Station is about 7.5K in 6.5K HDR mode.

Arriscan is good for selects scans and short form work like commercials and Music Videos it is not exactly a dailies machine. Although Arri did try to makret it as such in 2K SDR where it gets about 8 FPS and does full res and proxy scans simultaneously.

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3 hours ago, Robert Houllahan said:

Although Arri did try to makret it as such in 2K SDR where it gets about 8 FPS and does full res and proxy scans simultaneously.

I was told it uses a different gate in this mode, is that true? I've never seen one run like that. 

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