Tyler Purcell

We've been very lucky with our two units. I haven't seen ANY FPN in the scans. Very slow scanning is the only issue that I've personally had. But we have two of them and can load each overnight so in the morning we have something done. It's a real shame they weren't 3fps... I think ours in full resolution are close to 1.9 seconds per frame. EEK! Only 1 out of 7 BM Cintels works. We've been trying to track down why this is the case, but it for sure is the case. Every one I've tested has HORRIBLE FPN, making the image worthless, EXCEPT for the one we have. IDK why it works, but it works really well. I wouldn't use it as a final because the registration can be finicky to get working right, but if you do get it working right, the thing does work great. When they release their new model (hopefully NAB 2020), it will be a marketable improvement with a higher resolution imager. The HDR mode is a gimmick in my opinion. I love the Spirit. I just wish we didn't need to use Bones. Good feedback, I will talk to him about that option for sure. When we get ready to buy, I'm going to demo one here in LA and I hope they have a 4k model around as well. My only concern is that we need to deliver true 4k images to customers and I'm scared if the imager is only 4k, it will be hard to do that once you re-frame things.

Our business has been in process of moving since April, but when it's up and running again, yes we do commercial scanning. We have a few Imagica's for 4k 35mm, Spirit 2k/4k, a working blackmagic Cintel 2.0 (4k HDR) and soon will have a scanstation. Where I don't have much experience with the Lasergraphics products outside of having stuff scanned for me, I've seen the results and they're quite outstanding. The Spirit 4k does have the upper hand at being a trilinear array, full 444 and 10 bit DPX raw, which is quite nice. It also has a very nice optical path. The down side is the poor registration and expense to keep the machine running. I do use it for nearly all of my own productions though and it's suited me well for the last two years. This trailer was scanned entirely on the Spirit in 2k, it's 3 perf 35mm mixed with 16mm cropped to 1.75:1.

35mm is 2x anamorphic 99.95% of the time.

It's all about MTF and how crisp your negative is. What I've seen is that really good pin registered scanners can get a bit more out of a crisp negative at 4k than at 2k, but only a tiny bit. You do get more noise in the image however and the noise is crisper, so that's something to think about. Whenever we get our Scan Station, I will do an A/B comparison.

Yea ebay can be rough. I buy and sell on ebay quite a bit and I've mostly purchased items that are broken already, so I don't have to deal with something happening.

No, but it's the most sensitive consumer level camera on the market. Moonlight is good enough to capture a stellar image.

Yea sadly that's the first generation camera. I worked with JVC as a beta tester on that camera and it was quite amazing for the time. It's sad they fell apart, but they got super hot, so one would think the issue was heat dissipation. I shot quite a bit with that camera and it always did me well. I don't think there is any way to easily fix and I bet most of them would have similar issues due to age.

Pretty neat! I wonder if they'll ever make motion picture film again!

I still carry a lot of incandescent with me, 50 - 150w bulbs of various colors and types. I have a bunch of cheap chinese balls and lots of edison receptacles. I find MOST places still have standard edison sockets or florescent. I find it tricky to deal with fluorescents because the sockets can break easily and I've been blamed may times for destroying sockets and I'm tired of the blame game. So I generally pretend the fluorescents don't exist and light with my own stuff, unless I'm given express permission to change them without consequence, in which I'll go out and buy new bulbs. If I'm working with ceiling tiles, I will rig chinese balls to the ceiling and run a dimmer based lighting rig. Takes no time to setup and can easily hang with little hooks or even tape, without damaging anything. I generally use the same trick for most of my indoor lighting to compensate for the lack of fluorescents.

The A7SMKIII is very small. Plus it can literally see in the dark.

Everyone has the specs wrong. It DOES NOT DO CINEMA DNG INTERNALLY! Everyone is reporting that, but on Sigma's own website it clearly says "external cinema dng recording" and then at the bottom of the page it says "with future software update". The camera records .h264 only, not .h265 like the GH5, so I don't know they're doing i-Frame, so I think that statement is a lie as well. It also states it only does 8 bit internally. So yea, nothing special here, move along, move along.

I does and I will keep an eye out.

Strange issue. Most likely your version of windows 7 is different between the two computers, which is why there is a complication with installation. Quicktime for PC is 32 bit as well, so perhaps it doesn't work properly on the 64 bit system?

If they're being shot in Europe than most of the time Frame 24 will have them for sale. However, if it's stateside, it can be more tricky. A lot of times the 1st AC's take leftovers home with them and sell them on facebook. We also have Reel Good film in hollywood who specializes in short ends, they have gotten 65mm film before, all be it, for quite a lot of money.

There are two features being shot in 65mm right now, Nolans new movie and the next James Bond film. When they're wrapped, there should be quite a few short ends on the market. Gotta keep your eyes out!