Robert Houllahan

So a show is being originated on some Kodak Ektachrome 100D 35mm.... sure looks great.

That is not even comparatively that bad I have scanned much worse. Also that would be prepped to try to get it a bit flatter before going onto the scanner. And while scanning turning the speed down and stopping the lens down for better field of focus with more lamp time works pretty well.

The last version of the Spirit (HD 2K 4K) series has allot of fans and moves air through the machine with filters on the bottom, it also has allot less electronics (1 rack) than earlier machines and it does not really require any ventilation, just a reasonably climate controlled environment. The two I run are 3-phase but can be run in 220v and they really draw less power than one would expect. They are loud but in the lab everything is loud and compared to the (silenced as best as possible) ring compressor based air knives in film processors the fan noise of the Spirits the Scan Station the Xenas and the San stuff it is reasonable or even not that noticeable. Of course in a post house they live in silenced machine rooms as not to disturb the hard work being done in color suites on cat food commercials...

Probably around $8k to $10K

I think all labs do rewash in processors, or rewash machines which are just somewhat smaller modified processors and PhotoMec and Debrie have RW Machines as current products. Basically you feed the film into the processor forward of the developer so it goes through some fix and wash and the final and drybox. Kodak has a manual for this process that is pretty specific about the best methods and how to setup a machine. This is probably the most thorough cleaning method due to the much longer time the film spends in a tank and the amount of heat and agitation that can be safely applied to the film. They are just not practical for a post house / office environment. I have saved some really valuable film and delighted a few clients with the rewash process, one in particular was a rare and famous concert on 16mm Kodachrome from the 60's and some of the reels had very bad mold damage stains and cracked emulsion. After the rewash the mold was totally gone and the stains with it and the emulsion was warmed up and the "cracking" had healed considerably. Went from almost unusable and a tremendous reconstruction and painting out of the mold stains job to almost good enough to use right from the scan. Rewash costs a bit more than processing (say $0.20-0.25/ft say) and some setup fees and it is not for every job. I am sure FK charges allot to do it. The latest Lipsner HFE8200 machines do a pretty great job for allot of stuff in a high end post house that can afford the liquid but they were a re-design to a Tric machine so a bit of a legacy design. Can get some embedded stuff out so a step above the buffer machines like the Lipsner XL etc which can do a great job at removing surface dirt and dust and greasy stuff.

Here are a few more of the XL1100 and how the buffers and film path work:

HFE is a "engineered fluid" by 3M I think and it is hella spendy like $1K/Gal and is basically non toxic under the conditions it is used in. I know the Lipsner 8200 HFE machines at Co3 NY needed an environmental cert to be run as they are vented to atmosphere but nothing compared to the Perc one. That said many Dry-Clean businesses still operate with Perc. Ultrasonic is a small tank with the tank itself having ultrasonic "speakers" to do hi-freq oscillation of the tank liquid, this works but a it is too small and too short a time to really open up the emulsion and get it to release embedded dirt and dust stuff, a rewash processor does that but that is like running a 1/3 of a full film processor so not allot of places outside of labs will want to do that. I could see a possible DIY machine for immersion cleaning using a non evaporative method and some kodak kit chemistry then air knives and a drybox as a possible more modern lower enviornmetal impact way to get at stubborn dirt and also to kill mold etc. Here is the Lipsner XL1100

Well I think these machines were built in another time and can make good platforms to modify and improve.

Here is the PhotoMec / Kodak PF200 cleaner which uses two stages of atomizing sprays and rotary sponge buffers, I think it is about $45K from Kodak.

I have an early version of the San Labs Pristsa it is sub par compared to the Lipsner XL1100 series IMO and for some inexplicable reason it's transport puts the dirty film on top and the clean film on the bottom as if gravity did not exist.... It would not be hard to modify a Lipsner Alcohol cleaner to run IsoparG and if you look at the San Labs wetting buffers (with the two gold anodized bars under them) and then the four buffers for post wetting polishing below that is essentially the same configuration as the XL1100 but without an air knife as I think IsoparG evaps very quickly. The rest of the machine is a pile of PTRs. I heard from some people in NY Post that the SLS worked ok but was not ultrasonic cleaner. The "Prototype" Cinelab has from San Labs was a real pile of junk. I am using the cabinet and some other parts from it for the rewash machine I am building.

IMX-253 (4112x3008) Sony Pregius cameras from FLIR or IMPERX etc. run about $3K and that is the 4K sensor in the Film Fabriek and has been used in the Scan Station and Xena and many other scanners, it is quite good and fast. Youc an get USB3 or GIG-E or 10GIG-E interfaces which should work on the Retroscan.

One does not necessarily need to use a solvent like Perc or Novec as a cleaning solution. There was a interesting and supposedly quite effective cleaner made by TFS in LA that used distilled water in a rewash-like setup that had heaters for the water and a tank with turbulation / agitation and then a dry box. Supposedly it worked well but it required people to maintain the distilled water to prevent mold and that is why it was not a popular machine like a Lipsner Ultrasonic with Tric or Perc. Rewash "processing" is an extremely effective way to clean film and it basically uses some of the tanks of a film processor to do heated full immersion in turbulated tanks and then out through the drybox. This does not need the semi hazardous Perc and a ton of ventilation. I am building a rewash processor out of some PhotoMec spares right now. On a smaller level there are tons of heated ultrasonic tanks for stuff like jewelry and a fairly simple transport and post ultrasonic air knife system could be put together maybe running a final bath or bleach bath as a solution. Machines like the Lipsner XL1100 or San Labs or the new Kodak PhotoMec P200 spray or wet the film then buff it and dry it, this is good for surface dirt but cannot really "open up" the emulsion and turbulate away trapped dirt.

You probably have to get it from Kodak but maybe check B&H Photo or Mono No Aware in NYC. Not sure about international shipping of that chemistry, also I believe there is a running lab in Mexico check the Kodak lab directory.

Here is the setup on the DFT Spirit 2k/4K series:

Process chemistry ECN-2 and ECP are the same stop fix and bleach only the developer chemistry is different, ECP works it just requires different printer light trims when making a print. I would guess that C41 might need more development time and ECN2 for running ECP but that is just a guess.

It might be worth noting that the Liquid Gate for the Scannity costs more than a Scan Station. It fully immerses the whole lamp and optics in a wild looking and large chamber.

We have successfully developed ECP in ECN-2 so it might work in C41

I do not think the any LaserGraphics scanner is equipped with a liquid gate from the factory. DFT has one for the Scannity and Arri has them for the Arriscan XT and DCS Has developed them for the Xena.

The Spirit uses a 750W Xenon lamp with an ingenious mechanism for removing the heat from it's output the is capable of putting out allot more light than the LED lamps in modern scanners and this combined with the very large photo-sites on the CCD line arrays gives it great ability to scan dense negatives and prints in real-time with good results and low noise. The electronic ballast and lamp plus the filter array and other optics like the heat dissipation system are hella expensive and complex. The "newer" Imagica ImagerXE had a Xenon lamp and a (I assume hella expensive) large fibre optic tube to send the light to the gate from the bulb. Today's LEDs are really good and keep getting better and if you use the right R,G,B,IR LEDs and enough of them in an integration sphere with some of the new holographic diffusion you get a lamp with excellent variability in color to match the film stock characteristics and the big added bonus of diffuse light to help conceal scratches. The LED lamp will far outlast the Xenon one (or another lesser capable hot lamp) by a huge margin. The LED lamp is very compact and as they are typically pulsed to match the film frame / camera taking shutter timing they don't need a huge heat-sink and the power draw is minimal.

I would figure it to be around 12iso do you have the stock number?

As with all digital technology the main component costs of building a good film scanner have come down considerably, especially the camera. The new Sony Pregius line of Global Shutter CMOS sensors are very good and 4K/5K is very attainable for the hobbyist in their 3.45micron and 2.75micron pixel sensors. The trick is building a film transport and really good LED Lamp and then the software to glue it all together. I can tell you that the high end R,G,B,IR LEDs used in the Xena scanners I helped co-develop cost about $900.00 in just LED parts but that is designed to be a high end lamp. I would imagine an enthusiast could run a acceptable LED lamp which costs 1/10 that and other middle market scanners probably fall somewhere in the middle for those parts. Good, Cheap,Fast pick two they say but film scanners inevitably will become higher res and fast enough and the costs will be pushed down. YMMV

Cinelab was very busy in 2021 and the last quarter of the year was kind of bonkers between Tri-X for schools and a bunch of high profile work for NFL HBO Nike etc. I have five scanners and I am building another Xena probably with the 12K or 14K Sony sensor. I know that film in NYC is way up and probably more than LA I would guess.

Thanks that full set of 7 small and 2 large PTR holders and the Electrostatic brush would push the cost of that bench cleaner I built way over $1200.00 I think the last I looked the larger PTR roller holder pairs alone were $8-900.00 from the now defunct company in Canada that made them.

Shoot a grey card under each lighting setup and then use the offset tool in Resolve to balance the color out. Be aware that if you shoot without an 85 you can oversaturate the blue layer with daylight in some instances and conditions.

I am not sure if I have the parts or time to build another one of these right now. It works and we use it for prep in the clean cube at the lab.