Paul Bruening

His "Whiskers" were all covered in mud. I'm guessing it was easier than digging and was reusable.

All of the information is still present in that thread. Read and ignore the pictures. What camera person doesn't like pictures?

I recall going over this with Bruce: What happens if the keycode stops on the reader, in between scans? Can it still make the read? Revolution or perf counting would bypaas this problem as well as the keycode spacing problem. I dumped the whole keycode approach since Bruce and Paul had an accurate and cheaper way to handle the whole system through 1:1 motor rotations, which the Mitchell does already.

Hey Dominic, The only way I could make this work was the leap frog thing. Both paths have to share the same FFD. One dog legged path goofs that up. But, that was only what I could come up with. I'm all ears.

C'mon, fellers. Hep me. I need hep. As I was driving into town it dawned on me that it's only been in about the last 5 years or so that the scan, computing and storage improvements and costs have made this approach even worth trying. We may be the first people to even consider this thing. Please, splatter some brain on the graphs. I have to know the real limits and gains possible. Do it for the industry on both the film and digital side if not to help a friend. I can imagine all of us standing on the stage at the Oscars with s**t eating grins on our mugs.

Mitchells are cheap these days. They have all the head features you need. From my assessments to date, you will still have to do some monkeying with the gate and/or pressure plate. The easiest way is a pressure plate chopped out in an upside-down U shape that will allow enough light through on a 4-perf frame. You'll then put a 45 degree bounce board behind that (clearing the registration pin assembly is the hassle on that). On the storage note, as you know already, 2TB SATA 3.0 drives are going for as low as $150.00 these days. The storage issue gets better with each passing quarter.

Thanks for the pic. That's a biggun'. And I like bigguns'. How many were made? Are these the only two now in existence? Would Christies release their successful bidder's name? It's probably a better path for me to jam these two Mitchells together and be done with it. I was thinking about others who might like to try it with something ready to rent. They'd have to go 4-perf. But, at least, it is all ready to go. I still need help with my graphs. If they're wrong and this won't work on that end of the mind-spectrum, then there's no point in turning the first screw on this. I don't like building crap that doesn't work. That makes me manifestly dumb instead of only theoretically dumb.

May thy pockets over-floweth from thy market's grace. Congrats, Richard.

To alter my post, you don't really need any edge info assuming your frame counting method on the film is utterly reliable during scanning. An X at the head and tail of the roll included at sync speed with the telecine capture gives you all the verifiable info that you just have to have. Adobe can change from any normal frame counting system to sequential frame counting (making sure the capture is non-drop frame, of course). As long as the math in the editor matches frame for frame the edge number math between X's, you can depend on the editor's Tcine, sequential numbering for dependable scan lists. I just liked the idea of seeing the edge numbers included in the telecine and have the confidence I could physically verify the scan list accuracy in the off chance I get hick-ups in the telecine capturing or editor. Video, software and computer circuits do hick-up from time to time.

You only have to have edge numbers from a telecined pass (workprint) to choose with physical verifiability the useful frames in the scan pass (mark an X at the head, make sure it shows in the telecine, line it up on the X in the gate for your scan pass and your Tcine data will match your scan pass frame counts). As long as you have a way to manage frame counts with a computer so to scan only useful frames you're in good. You can make up shot lists by hand on the computer. A keycoded system might be useful to read general frame locations but you still have to decide on and tell the computer which scan shots you do and don't need with the knowledge that it can get them with frame accuracy. I guess a keycode reader could get part of the info that you need but some kind of perf counting or some kind of revolution reading of the motor still has to be done since keycodes are spaced. At that rate, you might as well let the revolution counting or perf counter manage the whole roll. You have to make workprint decisions first, anyway. That is your best source for scan shot lists. I'm guessing that you won't want to make all 1,730,000 frames of a 2 hour feature at 10:1 shooting ratio into high res scans to cover both workprint and conforming steps. 173,000 4K RAW scans alone take up about 5.5TB of drive space. 10X that gets noticeably hard to manage. Does that make sense? Is it useful or am I goofing up a different approach you already have in mind to solve those issues?

From what I'm getting here, a person could rent an old Technicolor camera, run color through two paths (intruding a little bit of ND into a path) and B&W through the top strip of the bipacked side and not have to build anything. It would be already ready already. Where is one? Maybe a museum, somewhere, is getting short on cheese and could stand to rent it out with some matching lenses. Since Technicolor is still alive, might they have one?

Sorry, John. I was editing my previous post while you were posting yours. What do you think of that post trick to get around special film costs?

I could probably make a passable coating washer. Could I just fudge the normal layers of the top strip in post to dodge the special stock costs? A simple Adobe invert color command might do the trick. I only have to switch the blue and red channels. The BiPack magazines already exist, as well.

Interesting, John. As I read your post, it occurs to me that with 2-perf's inherent vertical pressure combined with the normal perf line pressures, flutter may occur insignificantly or not at all. Now, how to get short ends for reversed layered, no back-coated 5219? 5212 is already a gettable stock.

I resemble that remark.

I thought about that one too. Keeping the two stocks pressed together to avoid flutter required stamping mechanisms or air pressure or vacuum. That's beyond my abilities. The air idea meant more gear and/or more noise tethered to the camera. The other problem was the costs at Kodak to remake the front strip with switched order of emulsion and leave off the coating and/or a lab that could wash off the coating without altering the emulsion.

My two solutions for that was using my existing Aranda controller and motor and add another motor through a break-out. The head/tail bloop light would bleed into both paths for path matching and the controller would maintain frame sync. The idea for an under-carriage, toothed belt, gearbox and shafts design is doable at my level of engineering but a little more expensive than simply adding another motor.

I had thought of a two path, Tscope framed, VistaVision pull-down where the two images were separated by two perfs and 1/2 leap frogged over each other. The optics were within reach. But, I can't put my hands on that dang VV camera body and medium format lenses. If I turn Mitchell body number three upside down and go with medium format lenses I could get results that I would never find a use for (assuming the graphs are correct). I suppose I could get a shot of a person walking up to a 20K and still get full detail as they climbed into the housing. I'm not trying to be an smarta** to you, Adrian. Just providing the kind of example of where 3 paths would be useful.

Aren't Anglo-Saxons mostly Germanic? We did that in Western Civ, Roman to-. It's been a while. Still I've got modern hate-dar. It sounded a tad mean to me. But, then again, I really like Simon. His tip on camera body metals was great for me.

Yup. Expanded detail to help with the normal, log, roll-off of film, taking the extra stops that came along for the ride (which might have been 8 to 10 extra stops if it had worked). If beautiful but not too funky looking images are called for then that's the goal. If surreal is called for then that's the goal. My current project could use plenty of both given it's low overall production value. 1/2 silvered mirrors are the more common approach these days. I'm not savvy enough to know the deep, engineering and physic behind beam splitting. I know that splitting mirrors have less glass, flawless reflective coatings if I don't buy the student grade off Edmund's, are more plentiful and are much easier to mount than prisms (did I mention, cheaper?). You lose a full stop in both paths on each mirror. I can take two hits on my ND'd path and keep a 2 stops darker viewfinder (compared to spinning mirror reflex) since that path needs darkening anyway. I can't get around loss in image quality. I can reduce the loss by parsing the quality of the mirrors available.

2-perf is really, really cheap. Mithcell's are really, really, cheap (I already own them and their registration is flawless). I already have one beam splitter and veiwfinder optics. I already have the fiberglass and resin. All of that is my principle defense for this design. It was cheap.

The idea is to get stunning images. Two 2-perf Mitchells running short ends is still way cheap. Two 400' loaded Mitchell mags and cameras in a well made, fiberglass blimp is still lighter and smaller than one loaded Mitchell in my metal blimp. If it had worked, it would have been a massive leap in image quality for a short leap in equipment hassle and cost... if it worked.

It just dawned on me. I could be thinking about this all wrong. If I'm using the same, single lens and same ASA stock for both paths then any stops of ND won't do anything but make the filtered path uselessly thin. Is that right? This may actually be the dumbest idea I've ever come up with. Wouldn't I have to make the HDR path difference through separate lens apertures? Two lenses are no good for this.

This is my first guess on question #4. Please, help me with what needs to be moved where or changed to make the graphs more accurate. There's no way to improve shadows or stops on the thick end of the scale on night exteriors and only little help with the thin end. Sunny days look much more useful on both ends of the neg (assuming I haven't royally messed something up).

This is really goods news, Ben. Thanks.