Robert Houllahan

Maybe pushed +1 and maybe stretched a bit in post ?

Definitely looks like nothing else and kind of makes everything else look like boring vanilla.

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

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

Now, for any of you commercial scanning companies that want to do an interesting comparison test of scanning warped film with various scanners...

I have an old 16mm Castle film called Belles of the South Seas. (One of the early 'native' nudie cuties.) It is terrible warped. I overscanned it to get the sprockets in. I did it just as an experiment to see how the Retroscan handled badly warped film. I still have to put it online. It is a poor quality scan. It needs a warped film gate which the Retroscan does not have.

If you like, you can have the film to scan and show your warped scanning capability. 

(Just send me your finished scan and send the film back to me or to anyone here that wants to test their scanner with it.)

Although this is not it, it is something like this. 

 

You can use my scan in your advertising that I will eventually put up at the I.A. to show the comparison.

 

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.

7 hours ago, Perry Paolantonio said:

Most of these machines require serious ventilation - the northlight uses a 4" clothes dryer exhaust port, and will overheat if you don't get the hot air away from the machine. The Spirit is more intense, I think. 

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...

22 hours ago, Toni-Lynn Frederick said:

Just out of curiosity, what constitutes “cheap” or “low budget” for people here? 

Probably around $8k to $10K

4 hours ago, Tyler Purcell said:

Interesting. I wondered why Fotokem did their re-washing in a processor. 

Also, thanks for the info, very valuable. 

Can you explain what the best "automated" method would be to clean film? Do you feel processors are the best or can cleaners if run slow enough, actually do good work. I've been very unsatisfied with the cleaning work done at many labs, it's as of they only remove the top layer of dust, which I can do with my wet gate anyway. 

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:

1 hour ago, Tyler Purcell said:

Ohhhh yea that's what it was, HFE. I thought they had an alternative for the toxicity of pert. 

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.

1 hour ago, Tyler Purcell said:

Cool thanks for the insight! I know nothing about cleaners. I always send it out due to how good pert is. They only charge .04 cents per foot over at Spectra, which is only a few blocks away. So I just drop older content off and get it cleaned. But we've found that even the ultrasonic pert machine can't get off the real baked in dirt. We're trying some hand cleaning with some other stuff that I'll talk about if it works! 

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

6 hours ago, Dan Baxter said:

Yeah from what we've heard people's experiences with these has been mixed. With that said they're cheap (they're being sold for about $2K each from that company) and they appear to be in working condition. I'll let you know how it goes, there are at least three of them currently being set up at separate locations by different people, and I think there's a couple of other people interested in them too.

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.

57 minutes ago, Dan Baxter said:

 

A couple of people are setting up some of these SanLabs cleaners soon, they use IsoparG.

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.

17 hours ago, Todd Ruel said:

All good.  It would be interesting to price out a Retroscan MKII with a good 4K camera mod.  If the MKII costs $10K, how much would the 4K camera mod add to that price?

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:

3 hours ago, Pablo Cruz Villalba said:

Thanks Robert. I'm shooting a Fuji Positive print stock roll tomorrow and I hope I can develop this week or next week.

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.

1 hour ago, Perry Paolantonio said:

That's correct. Lasergraphics does not make a wet gate. 

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

17 hours ago, Dan Baxter said:

I meant the scanners with wetgate like the Director.

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.

2 hours ago, Phil Rhodes said:

Northlight is a metal halide discharge lamp (or, now, an LED retrofit). I remember them looking very cool compared to room lighting of the time when I did some work for Filmlight in 2006-2007, though more with Baselight. Yes, they would absolutely fade over time, but I'm not sure incandescent has much liability there.

Personally I like the idea of notch filtering a broadband source more than trying to mix it with LEDs. The amount of screwing around people have to do in order to get LEDs to be consistent enough is enormous. But maybe I'm thinking too much like a homebrewer, I don't know.

P

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.

3 hours ago, Todd Ruel said:

All good.  Just looking for another solution.  I have a vintage Ecco, but it takes forever to clean a film with that machine.  The Film-O-Clean MK 3 on the Wittner-Cinetec site is $1,264, so I'm looking for something less costly (if possible).  Can't possibly afford a Lipsner-Smith.

Your machine looks very nice!

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.