Robert Houllahan

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.

I built a bench top cleaner similar to this with a set of PTR rollers and a Anti-Static brush. It does not take the place of a "real" cleaner like a Lipsner XL1100 or a full immersion ultrasonic cleaner.

If you are mixing powdered then that mask is fine as you just want to ensure that you do not inhale any dust. We mix liquid chemistry at Cinelab under a vent hood so no masks are really needed for that with proper ventilation.

So the FF HDS+ "Wet gate" is a set of rollers which applies the Alcohol to the film on both emulsion and base just before the gate? What are the rollers made of? Full immersion liquid gates do not contact the film in the picture area like any other scanner these days.

Bleach exhaustion / oxidation IMO. This is the step in the Reversal process that is usually this issue esp with the way the bleach can "go flat" relatively quickly.

There are two ways to make a "Wet" gate. 1. Some kind of wiper or roller that wets the film before the gate and then either enough time or a air knife to dry the film before it winds after the gate. This method has been used many times for many years going back to SD Rank Telecine. It works, sort of, and the liquid is not consistently applied nor really "thick" enough all the time. 2. Full immersion in liquid where there is a pump system to constantly circulate the liquid and enough depth so the optical properties work well on the base and the optical glass window is out of the image plane. This works exceedingly well and can fully fill in even the worst base scratches. One of these methods is relatively easy to impliment, one is much more expensive and complex. The advantage of a well done liquid gate scan is not just reducing the restoration seat time so it can be spent on other work but also to make the scratch removal consistent. As in if you send work to one artist with a good eye and skills you get good results, if you send work to a restoration mill with a ton of noobs their scratch work might be all over the place. YMMV.

Kodak at one point spent a zillion dollars experimenting with this and concluded that silver and flesh was the only way it works. Truly re-animation by alchemy.

Well that is a bit of a big stretch of the imagination IMO all these new scanners feature excellent light integration spheres and very finely controlled LED lamps. The SSP uses the same LED lamp as the SS and I have seen plenty of bad base scratches which the lamp did not conceal. A full immersion liquid gate with Perc or the Engineered fluid that Arri or DFT uses will completely fill the base scratch and make it truly disappear. There are large upfront costs to running a full immersion scanner with chemistry but the back-end is consistently and in scan removed base scratches. Liquid gate does not do anything for an emulsion scratch but those can be "healed" with a rewash step in a specialized rewash and polishing processor. That has the advantage of also killing and removing allot of mold and other artifacts in a much more deep cleaning step than a basic cleaner can do. I have saved some extremely valuable film for clients of important historical stuff with a rewash and it took minutes and healed over some of the scratches and removed some truly hard to deal with stains mold and artifacts before the scan even happened. cost was very low compared to hours of computer restoration time. YMMV I believe all the LG machines use the same basic modules for transport and lamps as far as I understand it. They are all very similar or near identical machines similar to how a Spirit HD, 2K and 4K (last model) are all the same and different features are (mostly) unlocked with a software key. I think this "modular" build process allows for uniform parts and the very high reliability of hardware and software across their machines. As with many professional products you buy the features you want in a modular machine, the machines are not "crippled" you are just paying for the features you want. I think it is a Sony Pregius IMX387 which is 5472x3048 and has the same 3.45u pixels as the 6.5K camera. The line of Sony Pregius 3.45 micron backside illuminated global shutter cmos sensors are really excellent and they are also used by LG Kinetta Xena and Film Fabriek in the 4K IMX253 which is 4112x3008.

That machine does not have machine vision GPU perf registration which alone puts it in the same category of scanner as the BMD Cintel. The LG Archivist (Like the Scan Station Personal I have) runs the same software as the full Scan Station and most of the features which Scan Station has are also on the Archivist. If you want or need professional tools for running a business then these machines costs are pretty reasonable, remember that the Spirit 4K I have cost $2M in 2009 so the $50K or even the $190K for the Scan Station is a comparative bargain. Also the service contract cost is reasonable if it is a primary machine and having it down will cost the business allot of revenue.

I don't think you can go wrong with the LG Archivist if your needs are good 16/8 scans it will vastly outperform the Retroscan and with the new Sony Pregius 5.4K sensor that LG is using the pix quality will be very good and low noise. Scan Station is also a easy to use machine with pref-stabilization and sound reading while scanning plus many other features that the RetroScan and FilmFabreik cannot match. The Scan Station is a exceptionally reliable machine with very stable software.

A couple of points / observations. 1. Service contracts are usually based on a percentage of the machine's sale price and the level of service. The Arriscan XT is about 300,000 Euro and a fully kitted our Scan Station is around $190,000 and a DFT Scannity is $1M So the relative cost of an annual service contract seems to be in line for each machine and the expected level of hand-holding and "bespoke" service. 2. As a owner of a Scan Station "personal" which has the stupidest moniker for a scanner to date, it is unfortunate and a IMO mistake on LGs part to not make a new fixed camera module to replace the poor quality 5K CMOSIS camera. This is LG's business decision and the SSP has run very well for us and is good for scanning prints not so great for negatives. I think LG has concentrated more on selling scanners and scanning speed and machine reliability than on pix quality overall and they have left many machines in the filed not upgraded and I am not sure if they care. I know of a Scan Station at PFA which has a CCD that shows obvious tap balance lines in almost all of the scans. I have also had customers send in film which was scanned on the 5K Scan Station that showed obvious FPN and the scanner operator told those customers that it was in their film. Allot of people sold the SS 5K as being perfect when it was not and then quickly jumped on the 6.5K Sony camera s soon as it was available as it fixed the poor quality from the 5K one. So that is part scanner owner not caring but also part LG not engaging on upgrades for older machines. Now that the Scan Station and Archivist have better Sony Pregius cameras the FPN (Also a big issue with the Cintel) is basically gone. Also a lack of understanding by scanner op's (as Perry said) on the very basics seems to be a problem as LG has sold so many of these scanners (I would not be surprised to see one pop up at my local 7-11) and they are pretty simple to use but not always to get the best scans from. I know with my SSP I always setup focus and do a custom base cal to try to minimize or eliminate the FPN from the 5K CMOSIS chip. Some noob or part time scanner ops might not even know enough to see there is an issue. I think Stefan always hated the SSP and decided not to put any interest into it, I feel they could have called it the Scan Station Dailies and put a bit more into the machine and then all the Kodak owned labs might have those instead of the Cintel machines they run. I wonder how they will do with the Archivist and it is interesting that they announced a 35/16 machine and then quickly withdrew it for a 8/16 only model. I also think if Blackmagic puts a bit of interest into a revamp of the Cintel with a 5K or better sensor and perf stabilization they could really hold LGs feet to the fire. Scanning is only going to get cheaper and faster with CFA based scanning, then there will be some room in the high end for machines which are true RGB and have the better color reproduction and offer stuff like liquid gates.

Not really the best option is to overscan and then fix in Resolve after the film is scanned, and if you have 6464x4860 pixels it is fairly easy to select a custom area to make sure any framing jumps are covered to fix without loss of resolution in the final. Most of the scanners lock onto the perforation(s) to stabilize as if the scan was pin registered.

Yeah that is a really nice sound reproducer and would take allot of work to hack into a scanner. If he has the Sondor scanner it would be the better bet to mod into a newer faster scanner system.

Possibly for a hand crank ?

I get more and more requests every day for recording digital onto 16mm and 35mm for scan back. I have been expanding my Film Recording department.

I talked to the manager of NY Lab when I was there before the Pandemic Plaguepocalypse and he said they had run about seven million feet in that lab location alone. I would think based on the amount we run at Cinelab and the other labs around the world they probably make 40-50M feet of vrious ECN stocks every year.

According to the 2017 Kodak price list the P-200 cleaner is $37,500.00 USD FYI.

I am not sure what you mean by "Cheap" I think the P200 is at least $50K but I have not priced one out, most film machines are in the $50K - $250K range as they are low volume engineered and produced products.

Kodak / PhotoMec have the PF200 http://www.photomec.co.uk/our_products/p200film-cleaner/ I know a few post shops that have them. A XL900 or 1100 will probably run you $10K or more these days if you can find one.