Jeremy Cavanagh

Robert, I'm building my own DIY scanner for 8 mm and I'm intending to use a mono machine vision camera to do RGB frames and then combine them in software as I don't like the loss in resolution from a bayer sensor (as brilliant a technology as it is). I've been warned off this approach and told that just getting a larger bayer based sensor will get over the loss of resolution however I'm not convinced about this and I was wondering what your opinion was (BTW, I'm an engineer so not afraid of technicalities.......no, a real engineer, not someone who has spent their professional life behind a keyboard.......).

Perhaps Ferania can piggyback on the PR Kodak's announcement is generating but to have a chance they will have to get into the market quicker than Ektachrome and establish a foothold, if only by a few months. The other thing Ferania may be able to do is if they can make the film more easily available than Kodak, this could be difficult for Ferania but Kodak's last mile distribution eco system is pretty withered so Kodak may not enjoy an adavantage here. The other thing is I don't think Kodak has set out how they will make the new Ektachrome available in S8 e.g. it may only be available as a process paid package to go with the new camera which will limit its reach whereas if Ferania makes it possible to get stock in a variety of ways and in both 8 and 16 then that's more attractive. If Ferania has the resources and energy left over to be nimble then they could build a place alongside Kodak and you and I win, if both companies are nimble then that could still pay off for everyone as well.

Question: How noisy is an Arriflex 435 compared with other MOS cameras?

What did you use for the interiors?

Would this have been the camera Arthur C Clarke describes in his book, The Lost Worlds of 2001, being used by Stanley Kubrick to follow the bone thrown in the air that cuts to a satellite in orbit in the finished film of 2001?

Great! Upon reading that I looked up the Prince Charles website and they are adversiting it as 70mm, I missed it when it came to the BFI Waterloo a year or two back.

I can relate to that, removing the side plate to get at the back of the lens and into which various controls are fixed and wires soldered almost sent me crazy, but even worse was the exposure circuit board on the other side of the camera and its wiring 'harness' leading all over the camera. I've yet to succeed rebuilding an 814 despite Gareth's disassembly website and needless to say a technical manual for either the 814 or 1014 is impossible to obtain.

Good point Kyryll! I completely forgot the other use for the term 'shading' that had a different meaning for tube cameras (video) on dealing with irregularities as the tube face was scanned and now used with CCDs etc as you described the noise level from the chip that affects blacks.

"Shading" is the traditional term used in American television for colour balancing a broadcast camera be it whites or blacks (in the UK its traditionally known as "racking" and in Australia just "CCU". This is when working in real time with a camera's output. So if I have understood your question the idea with the "blacks" is to get them black or a dark shade of colour (whatever is required by the production) at a particular video level. If its a single camera you set the green channel at the level you want (using a waveform monitor and a grade 1 picture monitor) then either match the blue and red channels to the green channel or offset them slightly if you need to add a bit of colour to your blacks and this is all done initially using a standard chart. if you have multiple cameras you will then seek to match the other cameras to the intial camera both on the chart then on the set once lighting is up. These days cameras, be they used for film or video, have automated this process while giving the DOP more control to take or in put an intial setting and carry it across different scenes as sensor based cameras are used in much different ways than they were when colour balancing proceedures were used for multiple camera set ups.

Can you explain a bit more what you mean by "better".

You jest! Shurely an Iphone, while sitting next to me on the train in London........

Apparently Logmar's intention is to take the experience gained from building this camera and, using its design as a base, produce 16mm and 35 mm versions.

I'm just pointing out, like the others here, that it is not peculiar to the UK nor one industry. You have pointed out an important thing that needs airing but Boddington's response shows that its possible to push past things like nepotism.

Freya, I'm originally from Australia and have lived in the UK for years and I think Australia has a worse class system than the UK, why should the US be any different.

Thanks Jean-Louis.

I have a naive lens question, if I have a prime lens for 35 mm use built with an Arri Standard Mount and I put a PL adapter on it to use on a PL front 35 mm camera will there be any issues of coverage across the frame or gotchas with things like flange depth, etc? Forgive me if this has already been covered in other threads.

Exactly the sort of chart that has been used to line up studio television cameras for years checking, blacks, gamma, knee levels and also flares. The question about the difference between master pedestal/black and black level might be answered this way: black level may refer to the black level of an individual channel i.e. Red, Blue or Green while master pedestal or master black refers to changing the level of the blacks of the three camera channels together. However, again, that's for television cameras, I don't have enough experience with digital cameras used for film to know if the same language or descriptions have crossed the devide.

You are right, the mantis came into my head first when typing my previous post (typing too fast and not thinking, Doh!) rather than the Prosilica and when I had been looking at their specs a few week back I had thought the Prosilica had better specs. I just did a goolge and it seems the Prosilica is a similar price to the Imperx.

Robert, Thanks for that info about the costing and types of the Imperx cameras you are using, excuse another question, but why Imperx as opposed to something like the Allied Manta range of cameras (I couldn't find info on the Imperx data sheets as to whether they used a global shutter)? I used to repair broadcast cameras for a living but am very rusty and would like to build my own scanner. A more general question: 12 bits - is it enough? Is there any mileage in trying for 14 bits e.g. instead of running a 4 to 6K camera at 12 bits run instead with a 2 to 3 K camera at 14 bits (or more) and use the dynamic range of film to provide a greater look of resolution rather than raw horizontal pixels (though that would depend on the content of the image, excuse me if this is a silly question, I did say I am rusty on electronic cameras and certainly haven't applied them to scanning film).

Yes, I've been costing out some 2.7K - 3.3k cameras and getting about 3000 Euros, I was expecting this 6k Imperx with a large Kodak sensor was going to be over $5-6K US.

People, this is an immensely informative thread on DIY telecine, thanks for sharing so much information. Just a quick question, what sort of cost is the Imperx camera with the Kodak sensor?

Is there a website and does anyone have an idea of pricing?

Guy, Interesting posts and thanks for the link. Question: Can phosphors be used to smooth out spikes emitted in a LED's spectrum? I.e. if you take a red Led and put a phosphor around it that will absorb a spike and re emit across a wider part of the spectrum for red light (albeit at a lower level)? is this something that is practical i.e. outside of the lab and is it done with any sort of lighting?

If the electronics are a problem it shouldn't be difficult to come up with a scheme to update and redesign/replace (well except for the cash and time.....) but I expect that would only happen as a private venture as I expect Arri and Panavision wouldn't be able to mount an internal business case for such work. As to any mechanism and chassis reworking well I expect that's another ball game.

Hope to, don't know what day yet.