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J Van Auken

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    Cinematographer

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  1. Alrighty! Finally got the rescan back, and all appears okay. Here are some screens to compare with the first set: https://imgur.com/a/5U2N43s The film's just naturally grainy, what with being expired 500T, even over exposed and no real color being done, but a new scan without the DVNR process clearly takes away the major issues.
  2. That seems to be the major error here, and as disappointing as it is, they've agreed to rescan the neg without filtering and we'll see if that clears things up.
  3. Which leads to the heart of why this has been so frustrating, as this is a 2k scan from a spirit, far from a cheap option, and the results are unacceptable.
  4. That's what's confusing. It was scanned on a Spirit 2k, not one of the older telecine machines. This was the best-light color that was sent back, so I could bring the black levels down, but the specks in the shadows still show prominently. I'd prefer not to have to crush the bottom 10IRE just to get an acceptable picture. Maybe 'one-stop-shop' is a misnomer. Frankly, I'm looking for a place to go that provides a clean picture that doesn't require me to do full grain passes once they get back. When I worked as a colorist, that was a non-issue, but I'm in a very different line of work now and don't want to have to maintain the hardware suite just to shoot my personal stuff.
  5. Thanks for your thoughts on SCREAM. I'm unfamiliar with it, and not in a terrific position to go through another full scan on all the footage. I've been making due this way in the past, but I'm just not entirely satisfied with the results regardless of the settings and mix of temporal and spatial reduction. I'm really after a one-stop solution that delivers acceptable results without requiring intensive post processes once they get back.
  6. That looks just like the type of image I've been after. Just a clean, smooth picture, perhaps not of the highest resolution or 'truest' to the source medium, but at the very least watchable.
  7. Do you have any experience/opinion on SCREAM grain management? That's other service offered at the lab (albeit on a different and costlier machine)
  8. This set of scans was from a Spirit 2k with DVNR, straight output to ProRes4444. This particular lab advertises that the scanner outputs it directly, and no conversion done. DPX were offered, but I wan't in the position to store those kinds of file sizes. The grain that I'm seeing, specifically in the shadows, is typical of all the 16 and 35 I get back. Though its characteristics change from lab to lab, machine to machine, it's been a pervasive enough issue that I have to assume there's an error on my part. I have no problem with the grain in the upper midtones and highlights, as that's the whole reason I'm on film to begin with. It's just the shadows are so distracting, and anything but actual black. As I said, no scanner demos ever look this way, and I'm hoping to find a solution that looks acceptable right out of the gate.
  9. I definitely understand and agree with getting the most 'true' scan possible under most circumstances, but for the purposes of the film I'm shooting now, I am really looking for a one-stop solution where I can be happy with the best-light scans straight from a lab. Not that I any longer have the machines to run them, but I'm curious which post-tools you would recommend that best tackle the kind of noise/grain I'm seeing? I've been a long time user of Resolve, and NeatVideo, but I've found the way they 'clean up' 16mm to produce some very strange results, irrespective of which settings and mix of temporal and spatial reductions I use. If you know of any better, accessible tools for the job, I'm all ears.
  10. Yeah it was from stock I bought new in college and kept frozen/refrigerated since then.
  11. The uploaded images are pretty true to what I'm seeing, but here are a few DPX pulls from the original prores444 from Da Vinci https://drive.google.com/drive/folders/15QmKqvIKJbzEdPc9py6-rNCUOImSk5px?usp=sharing
  12. I really don't. I pulled a few feet and took a look, and sure, I can see grain, but shadows are just clear bits of negative. Something I'm doing/ordering is resulting in these noisy/grainy scans from what are supposed to be top of the line machines. Obviously, there are a lot of steps between negative and final product for things like Fruitvale Station, Mother! and Black Swan, but I never see other 16mm with this kind of prominent grain and I want to know what step(s) I'm missing, short of booking a full DI at Fotokem.
  13. I've been shooting around, testing an SR I just received, and just got the film scans back. I'm less than thrilled with the results after giving a new facility a try from the usual lab I go to. I'd hoped to find a place that could deliver a cleaner/smoother result, and not necessarily just the highest resolution. The scan sent back displayed the same very sharp, prominent grain across the image that I've seen in the scans I've gotten before. Notably, the bright and colored specks of grain in areas that should be totally black. Here are some screen grabs: https://imgur.com/a/D4X8c0Y That's Vision2 500T, rated at 250, and scanned on a Spirit 2k with DVNR applied. This is the second lab I've personally used, and the third scanner (Spirit 2k, ScanStation, and Xena) and in each case I get this prominent grain pattern in the blacks, even when overexposing, and even when ordering grain reduction and color passes from the lab. Scan samples from labs never have this overbearing texture, and I seriously have to wonder what I'm doing wrong.
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