Tyler Purcell

So 3D printed material, no matter what it is, will not have the tolerances for proper FFD, never going to happen. Manufacturers spend an ungodly amount of time engineering the gate to flange distance and making it perfect. The gate and lens mount, really need to all be made of metal and somehow connected. So the tolerances are based directly on film channel/float. Some cameras have a pretty large film channel, this is the gap between the pressure plate and aperture plate. Metal gates are used because you can polish the side rails and the film can be at the same depth as the physical aperture. The pressure plate, shouldn't actually be putting pressure on the film itself, it should be very smooth but held firmly in place by the gate laterally to prevent wobble. Yea, you will need gauges that go down to .01, as the FFD range is .00-.03mm, depending on how much float the film has. Some cameras can be run at .03 and not be a big deal, others need to be spot on .00 and that's the tricky part. Engineering the pulldown, the consistency with the FFD across the frame, film channel, a spring loaded side rail gate, timing with the shutter, all of these things are very challenging to get right and I'm afraid, no way a 3D printed camera would actually create proper images. Someone tried it with a 2 perf 35mm 3D printed camera and it was basically unusable. The tolerances are incredible, .01mm off and you go from working to not working. As someone who services film cameras for a living, it's a miracle any motion picture camera works at all. I commend the work tho, I'm glad to see you playing around with it. I'd love to see if any images come out.

Good movies, can (not always) have a lot of magic behind them. Moments that weren't necessarily scripted a certain way, which just fell into place and worked. For the audience to know everything about production, including how those magical moments came to be, may undermine the filmmakers skillset. It may make them seem less like a genius and more like someone who struck oil accidentally and accepted the revenue simply because they touched the ground. On the other hand, some productions are so tedious and difficult, when you hear about what the filmmakers went through, it kinda opens your eyes a bit. I almost prefer the horror stories, because you can learn what NOT to do. I generally don't purposely seek out production information, but I will read the trades if there is an interesting story. I haven't let those stories effect my enjoyment of a film.

Or just use some tape to mask off the monitor, either way.

The Cintel II uses manual focus on the outside. I assume when you change the optic, something about that focusing system changes and it's more complicated to setup right. I have not been under the hood, but they said it's much more complicated. It's an FPGA based system, so the bandwidth of the system is limited, that's why they can't just change the way it works. They would need to change the FPGA entirely, which means updating everything including software. This is the trap they got themselves into when developing it in the first place. They're still using TB2 for transferring data, which is extremely slow compared to the modern TB5 120Gb/s protocol which they would probably move over to with any new hardware. The "black box" is fully replicable evidently. I assume their goal would be to offer an upgrade for older systems, like they did with the lamp replacement, updated gates and updated drive system. They've been very good about updating older systems. It would be a camera and black box swap out, which is basically the entire back bone of the scanner yes. Na, PC's are horrible at this work because they're just using raw power to chew through processes. FPGA's are night and day better, it's why everyone uses them for cameras. You can buy specific FPGA's built for tasks like processing the bayer imager and encoding the raw file. Those tasks in of themselves done via software, require MASSIVE power. Have you worked with Red Raw 8k before? It'll gobble up half your GPU just playing back at full res because there is NO optimization. Scanners like the Scan Station have/had (not sure if they've updated this or not) two dedicated GPU's, to do what a basic modern cinema camera does in real time at 80fps. It's just a cost reduction method. Blackmagic's concept is lightyears better, but they are using decade old tech, that's the problem. I'm not sure how the Director works, but the spirit, scanity, imagica and arri scan, do "nearly" everything on the scanner.

As Dan said, they're entirely different imagers, so yea, there is a significant gap. Nobody is scanning vertical 35mm in 10k anyway, the point of the high resolution scanner is for VistaVision and 65mm formats like 5 perf and IMAX.

Actually, it's literally just switching the optics. The reason why they can't have users do the swap, is because there is calibration involved and supposedly it's "burred" in the scanner, so they don't think it's something users can swap. I had a lengthy talk with their engineer at NAB 2024 about this, as it was already done and working at that point. It's saw it running at NAB 2024. Yea, they're using the full imager, they're just shooting the perforations, so the usable image area is of course less. The scanner works no different in S8 mode then 35mm mode, it's using ML to stabilize using the imager's data. It does this IN HARDWARE, not on the GPU of the client system like many scanners do. This way, they send a pre-stabilized image to the client system, which then dumps it to a drive. All of the corrections and adjustments the user makes, is done to the actual scanners hardware in real time, the stream off the scanner is fixed. This way of doing things, where brilliantly simple, also leads to major issues when you want to upgrade or change anything. This is the reason why BMD have been delayed on their new imager scanner. I have been told YET AGAIN, the new imager is on its way, but not to expect it anytime soon. They're now expecting 2 year lead time.

Here in So Cal the "film" scene is dying fast. Not long ago, I had commercial agencies knocking on my doors non stop for shoots, even double booking sometimes by accident. Now, all they want is digital and they want fast/cheap. It's really unfortunate. I actually had to buy a real digital cinema camera because otherwise, I would get no work. It's really sad, but I hope to keep shooting film. I got dehancer and a few other tools to help make the digital camera look more "filmic" and it's working, but inside I know it's not film.

Couldn't agree with you more, the shorter the better. Tell a story that is simple and you'll win over the hearts of your audiences. Also, comedy works great. 🙂

Yes, they do! If you ever need any encouragement or want me to read something, plz let me know. I'm a big proponent of making short films.

Damn, yea I totally feel ya. This is a very common issue with creatives; not being able to prove their skills. I work with people all the time who are in the same boat, in fact one of them just wrapped their first narrative production on 4 perf 35mm. Very excited for them because I know that feeling and just completing something you worked hard to make, is a great feeling. Here in LA, it's almost comical how many people are doing "spec" shoots like this, just friends getting together with some actors making something quick and dirty to build a demo reel. If that industry stopped, I'd lose quite a bit of business because we scan a lot of those films. With that said, I've been involved in the local community here in LA for a long time, so finding scripts is so easy, it's almost like the streets are paved with them. So I understand how frustrating it can be if you can't find something to shoot. Where I do write a lot of scripts, I've found my personal work to be overly complex to make, which is the main reason I haven't personally invested in any of them outside of multiple drafts and shelving them. With SUPER short films like you're talking about, I think other writers won't take you seriously. Sure you can probably find something from one of the multitude of websites, but conversing with people directly to help, maybe more challenging. So if I were in your shoes, I'd take my time and write something. The main reason is simply due to your experiences and access to locations/people. As the filmmaker, your personal experiences should be in the story and you should frame it around what you have available resource wise. You may spin your wheels for weeks trying to find something shootable for the budget, crew, cast and locations you have available. It's far easier to get a list of things you know, places you can use, story concepts that work and mix it all together, especially when you're talking about 5 - 7 pages. Funny enough, I'm writing a story right now that has literally no on-screen audible dialog, partially because I'm going to be working with non-actors and partially because of shooting speed, you can do one take and move on, when its just physical actions happening on camera. I do like super short subject films, I think it's the best way to get your feet wet, hold audiences attention AND make your money spread over multiple subjects, rather than doing one big film. I have made the mistake of making "epic" short films way too many times, they just don't play because they're impossible to book at festivals and peoples attention span is too narrow these days. So being under the 12 - 13 minute cut-off time, is smart and I would try to find a script that has little to no dialog, so you don't need to worry as much about actor quality OR dealing with flubbing dialog lines. Anyway, those are my .02 cents.

The Cintel has not been updated for NAB 2025. They made a slight alteration to the magnifying optic, which allows them to use the full imager for S16mm formats. They then made a slight change to the software which allows a crop-in for 8mm formats. It's not a new scanner at all, zero major changes made. The diffuse HDR light source is not a recent addition, it's been around for at least 3 years. The 8mm gates debuted last year FYI. They did this to increase the speed of scanning with a SINGLE pass HDR mode. This was one of the biggest slowdowns in the older generation scanners, having to re-scan for HDR. With AI tools, scratch removal is easy, PFClean does it without an human intervention. The updated versions of DRS Nova do as well. PFClean has the benefit of working native with Apple Silicon and utilizing it's massive AI potential to render in real time. This is a breakthrough for people who don't want to invest in huge workstations that are sheer horsepower to crack this nut. The lower cost solutions are getting substantially better and PFClean is a very cost effective monthly license for people who actually would use it.

Yea, the grain structure is challenging on YouTube, especially when you don't know the exposure or post process. I work with 7222 all the time on my own scanner and system, so I have a better understanding of how it compares to other stocks. I do find it to be pretty much in line with 250D in grain structure, but 50D is absolutely less grainy. However, you will have LESS black detail with 50D, it's a lost cause trying to get that detail, it just won't be there no matter what you do on set. Blacks are a big problem with these finer grain stocks, you have to light everything, you can't let anything just roll off, it will be unrecoverable. Fine for a film noir, but not for anything else.

The reason why 500T is such a great stock for low light, is that they formulated it for DR under middle grey, the toe is much more refined for night work. The daylight stocks, 50D and 250D, just struggle a lot with below middle grey. You'll find it to be very difficult to retain much if any detail unless you over expose the highlights and shift the middle grey up a bit, almost like a pull process. 50D can take the over expose no problem, but it also means you need to light for 250 probably, that's about what I'd rate it at if you were attempting this. I generally over expose 50D outside to help retain blacks and 9 times out of 10, it works great. Film has such a great amount of highlight retention, you can't really screw it up too much unless you're dealing with direct sun or reflections of direct sun. Where I haven't shot a lot of 7222, I have scanned a bunch and I don't know why you think it's grainy. Maybe the films you've seen shot with it are older?

Fotokem has a 13k Director.

So Kodak makes film with a 6 month selling window as "fresh". Anything over 6 months in the world of motion picture is considered "expired". A stills guy, may laugh at that because people in the stills world, generally shoot decade old expired film without flinching, this is because the 35mm and large format negatives are so much larger than the vertical like 4 perf 35mm and 16mm, that the excess layer of fog (change in density) doesn't really phase them. Also with stills, the consistency between each image, doesn't really matter quite as much as motion picture. Storage is also critical. If the film is stored improperly, at too warm of a temperature for instance, the fog layer will be stronger. You can help reduce the increase of fog by simply freezing the film, but when was it frozen? A year after you got it new? Was it already expired before being frozen? There are just too many variables to build a successful guide in understanding. Each roll of film is unique, especially considering there is no way to exactly tell a rolls age, unlike still film where it's printed on the box. There is no such thing on motion picture, You can get close, maybe within a 2 year window, but you can't figure out anything else, not even Kodak can. So in the long run, there is nothing you can do. If you want to shoot old film, the risk is that it won't come out at all, even if you over expose, even if you do everything right. The remjet may be baked on because the film sat in someone's attic, you don't know. People aren't going to be truthful on the internet, so why bother? I know film is expensive, but if it doesn't come out, then you lost more than buying it new. So I always suggest to people, the best way to make sure you actually get results, is to shoot somewhat fresh film. Year old properly stored (frozen) film from a reputable source? Ok go ahead. But most stuff that's cheap on eBay, is junk. Straight 100% garbage. Mostly reversal stocks like VFN or older Ektachrome. None of that is going to work. Even EXR and Vision 1 stocks, I would stay 2 miles away from. Vision 3 stated in 2007 I believe, but only with 500T. So any stock that would be worth shooting today, would at minimal be Vision 3 and they did change the sticker, so you can tell if it's from 2017 or older, just by examining the sticker.

Yea, you could easily replace with ADR, because your actors can speed up or slow down to match in post. Shouldn't be a problem at all. Recording on site, no way. Not only will you never find 24FPS anywhere on that dial without checking with a strobe, but it's actually not that consistent. Even the electric motor driven versions aren't that consistent.

Hit up Cinelab in New Bedford MA. Robert has a cool 16mm recorder.

Good idea, I dig the concept.

Hey, so give us some information on what you'll be shooting, that would help a lot to define what camera system will work best.

We have a really nice updated spool design. We've been struggling with printing it properly, but I think we may have cracked that nut recently. I'm gonna sick my partner on it and see if we can get it done in the next week or two. Plz keep an eye out on our instagram @tye1138 and the Aaton Facebook group, I will be updating people on those two platforms.

Awesome! It's so rad you're documenting all this down and releasing great books. I love your super 8 book and always use it as a reference for people when they come over and have questions about the format.

100% man, I think the stuff looks great on film. The highlight retention of film is 2nd to none, so when you're shooting something that's literally white, it makes more sense to shoot in a format that has the DR to deal with it. Plus, most of the stuff is dealing with direct sun as well, which means harsh shadows and to retain both highlights and shadow data, it's film or an Alexa.

Yea, you can see the daylight spool fringing from the edges in the 2nd video. So that musta been a 100ft load camera. At one point I thought I saw the camera in another shot, but it musta been the camcorder they were using as well. Neat videos tho, almost the same stuff the skateboard guys are doing. I have a friend I sold a very unique Eyemo to, which had a reflex viewfinder and he makes skateboard videos with it, they come out sick on 35mm 4 perf. Expensive, but man they're so cool looking. I think the "square" look is so back these days and that modernized Eyemo had Nikon mount, so you could use still lenses on it, which was awesome.

I mean, the film stocks are very similar to 20 years ago. Vision film released at the end of the 90's and even though it's more tailored to digital finish in later iterations like the modern Vision 3 stock, it's still a similar look. What you probably are seeing mostly, is a difference in budget, skill, worn out equipment and the way things were finished. A well maintained camera body, should have no effect on the image outside of the optics. What lens you use of course, makes a difference. It's not cut and dry tho, because depending on budget, you will also be limited on lens choice. Either something integrated like the Scoopic or something extremely old and potentially not working properly, like some Arri B mount lens for a 16S. Either way, a more modern and professional setup, would net you superior results. Professional filmmakers who shoot on 16mm, generally use an Arri SR3, Aaton XTR Prod or Arri 416. Those are kind of the 3 top cameras. Now you aren't getting into any of those for sub $15k, but that's basically what you'll be after in the future. I went with Aaton, trained to be a tech and now I service them professionally, and also shoot quite a lot of film as a for-hire DP and my own work. Where I do like the SR's and 416's, as an owner operator, I just love the form factor of the Aaton XTR Prod. Where it's not a hiking camera by any stretch of the imagination, it does fit the bill for the over-all package quality, ease of use and performance. Being in your shoes is challenging, I talk with young filmmakers who want to shoot on film every day. I've made all the mistakes, but I've also made the films to prove what works and what doesn't. I've also owned so many cameras, not just serviced them, but bought them, shot with them, formed an educated opinion and figured out what works and what doesn't. None of this is rocket science. It's not the 1970's, expectations on modern filmmakers are higher than they've ever been. Using an antiquated camera system will just lead to frustration with the process. Where I agree somewhat with negative attributes Dom discusses about the Scoopic, unfortunately it's the only small, extremely portable, electric motor drive 16mm camera that has a cult following, reasonable support (new batteries and parts, etc) plus they're extremely easy to use. You can buy one any day of the week, from various sources, not just some random guy on Ebay. It will fit in a backpack no problem, good new batteries last a long time, it's beyond easy to load, has all the features like decent focal length (12.5-75 T1.8) , reflex viewfinder, high speed (64fps) for slow mo shots and most importantly an internal meter that's meh, but works. Wind up cameras are a joke for this sorta work, they'll always be a problem due to the length of the wind and being able to capture moments and mot worrying about the wind. Plus, you're stuck to having an external meter all the time, which really sucks. Bolex EL/EBM's are too much money for what they are. I wouldn't own a Beaulieu unless you were a tech. I love my 2016 Beaulieu, but they are impossible to find. Cameras like the CP16R are inexpensive, but they are plagued with board issues and now the main parts supplier seems to have gone out of business, so I'm sitting here with my thumb up my A$$ trying to find parts as I'm one of the only service providers in the country maintaining them. Eclairs can be hit or miss, the ACLII is a pretty fine camera, but hard to find and very expensive for what it is. Tho that little 200ft mag is just perfect for so much work. The Arri 16S that Dom suggests, where it may sound attractive financially, they are not very portable. They are very heavy with a decent zoom lens, there is a considerable amount of weight way out in front of your face, holding it up with one hand and then adjusting focus is nearly impossible. You need a huge shoulder kit, which suddenly makes it not light and not portable and certainly not something that will fit in a backpack for carrying it around when hiking. Then you have to wear a battery belt with a damn cable the entire time. By the way the belt itself has more mass than the entire Scoopic camera. So unless you're on a tripod 100% of the time, have a truck a few feet away full of equipment and do not care about portability what so ever, then it's absolutely in no way shape or form, something I'd ever recommend. It is as Dom suggests, a very robust and well made camera, but its portability is based on being a few feet from a vehicle. Darn thing doesn't even have a decent carry handle, something that can be easily remedied if you have a machine shop, but really guys? Also and IDK if anyone knows this, there is little to no support for the older black body Arri cameras in the United States anymore. Plus, even you could find a tech to work on it, the pricing would be outrageous because if it needs parts, good luck finding them. In the case of the Arri S, M and S/M it's mostly motor issues you'll run into and I've seen it countless times. Anyway, those are my .02 cents.

Yea, the 2016 is IMPOSSIBLE to find actually, more rare than any other good 16mm camera I've seen. Plus the pricing would be way too much for the OP, who clearly is looking for an entry level system. I would never suggest the 2016 to anyone who isn't specifically ok with waiting 2 - 3 years for one to pop up AND requires the special functionality that camera has such as a good built-in light meter, standard c mount lens operation, 80fps, crystal sync, Forward/Reverse operation, 200ft magazine, actual mirror reflex design, etc. I absolutely love mine and have been on many adventures with it around the country, but it's very much a specific camera for a specific task; the run and gun 16mm filmmaker who needs more than just a consumer camera quality. The Scoopic is a very good camera that I recently started recommending because frankly, there are so few options like it on the market today. Back when you could get an EBM for $500 bux, it was a no-brainer to buy an EBM or an EL. However, with the crazy pricing today, it's clear the Scoopic wins in so many categories. For $800 bux it's probably (though unfortunately) the best deal today. A camera I have glossed over in the past because there were far better options for not much more money in the past.