Daniel D. Teoli Jr.

Well, you answer my question about cleaning film with alcohol. And I see why you know so much about computers. Too bad you don't run a scanner company, as I know you answer emails timely.

Well, I'm in no rush...mainly because I don't have the money. I hope FF fixes the issues if and when I get some money. Especially the sound. The scratching sounds terrible. Can't you easily move the camera on a LG? What does FPN issues mean?

Dust is not a big deal to me. It is a big deal for you scanners that are scanning new production films for filmmakers. A lot of the archival material I deal with has been duped and duped and duped. Dust is baked into the image. That is a benefit of archival material. It is pretty crappy to start with, you have some flexibility as per the discussion on polishing a turd.

Well, what are you paying Lasergraphics to talk to you Perry? Scanning 10,000 feet a day? You should, be retired Perry...skiing the slopes in St. Moritz in winter and in sailing in Bermuda in summers!

GPU perf registration? Does not having that produce subpar scans with warped film? What about film with clear vs black edges? Is there a problem either way? The Spirit 4K I have cost $2M in 2009 Wow! I could retire on that! (or half that amount.)

Isn't the Kinetta extinct? Or, at least you can't buy them...can you? The HDS+ looks like a beautiful machine. But I worry about your complaint about the sound reproduction. I'm thinking Lasergraphics came out with their cheap Archivist because they were figuring out there is not an endless supply of customers that can pay $100K - $150K for their high-priced machine. But am only speculating. Maybe Lasergraphics just wanted more of the lower end market? Maybe there is an endless supply of $150K scanner customers? I mean, Bezos came down from his space ride and gave $100 million each to 2 people to give away to charity. I'm not math wizard, but I think $200 million buys 4,000 of the cheap $50K Lasergraphics scanners. Too bad for Lasergraphics Bezos does not have hard-on for film scanning. But even if rich, don't know I'd buy a Lasergraphics. It is just that I have zero confidence in a company that never answers emails even after years of writing them. Just shitty service from Lasergraphics. They brought it on themselves. It is not like I'm asking them to type me a GD letter. <><><><> Looks like these permanent splices turned out to be not that permanent. Well, at least the Dupont's poly base held up! DDTJRAC

I'll have to catch up on Tyler's complaint to see if it was on the LG or FilmFabriek. I haven't read it as yet. I can say, for my films, I need ease of rewind to do timed scans as opposed to best light scans. Between the LG or FilmFabriek, which is easier to do rewinds with for timed scans? Some of the archival material has exposures all over the place...just terrible to work with. Best light scans won't work for many of the films and auto exposure won't work. All that can be done is to rewind problem areas of exposure and rescan. And if it needs a third or fourth run, you keep scanning that section until you think you have an acceptable scan. Does not have to be perfect...just pretty good. Get the details down as best as you can and perfect more in post. Projectors? Yes, they can be very hard of film. Photo: D.D.Teoli Jr.

Thanks Robert! You mentioned the FilmFabreik in comparison to the LG Archivist. What areas are lacking with the FilmFabriek Robert? Of the two, which would do better with warped film?

That is why you have an extensive DVD/s instructional set and an extensive manual Perry that comes with the scanner. This gives you a start. Then you work from there. You hopefully have input from other archive employees, and you put your heads together to come up with a useable scan. But it takes practice. To take it further, a scanning company could give you modern produced test film dupes of archival material to practice on and see how your scans compares to the scans they did on the DVD as a goal. (Or not in the case of Lasergraphics.) You know Perry, if you give the same film to 10 scanning companies you will get 10 different scans. So, a lot of scanning and post work is subjective to taste. That is why I said 'useable scan' above. You can perfect it more in post once you got the useable scan. Everything about film scanning I've learned has been through trial and error. It is tough going, there is no breast feeding with it. I'm just glad I had an extensive background in still photography. The other option Perry is for the archives to do nothing. The archive that has a few million feet of film and does not have a few millions of dollars to spend on scans has little choice if they want to digitize their films, Perry. They may have $100K to spend for a scanner and a budget for a $45k a year operator. Listen Perry, you know some archives with good scanners that are just sitting, tell them to loan me the scanner for a 5 years. I will scan all their films for free (but only the ones that interest me) and they share the digital output of these films with my Archive for noncommercial use. And as a bonus I will share all my own Archive's cine' scans with them. That is the best deal they will get if their scanner is just sitting and rotting away Perry.

Yes, that is what I'd like. A sharper, steadier scan of the turd. The Retorscan has stabilization issues with warped and clear edge films. You can use stabilization post processing, but it cuts off the image even if overscanned or it does weird things to the image like twist and turn it. Some of these films are really a mess with defects and warp. It is not just the Retroscan. If you get a flat film with black edges, the Retroscan does great. But the main problem is an old computer likes mine blows out hot air like a blow dryer if I try to do stabilization on video. I have to use a house fan to pump air into the computer to cool it down. So, along with a better cine' scanner...I need a better computer for turd polishing.

My main concern is not in the film cleaning qualities of alcohol, but in the long-term effects it has on film. Some of these cleaners' stink to high hell. Beside $$, you feel like you are getting fumigated along with the film. So, I can't say commercial cleaners are just some benign chemicals that are being used and may not have any long-term effects on film. Alcohol seems the most benign. If you want the deepest of hand-cleaning, then you use a slow drying cleaner, like Filmrenew. But sometimes you can get by with a fast cleaning of film that is not too filthy. The problem with a slow drying cleaner is it takes many, many passes on the rewind bench to dry the film. I know alcohol can clean film, no question about that, as I've used it a few times in the form of alcohol wipes. But only on a few inches of film at a time. Never have tried it on an entire reel. <><><><> ‘The Birth of the Beatniks’ 1945 DDTJRAC

Some type of dust mitigation system may be a good option to put on a 'big boy' scanner. Now, I don't know how practical this is, or even if it is already incorporated in cine' film scanners to some degree. This would involve dust mitigation via a low power compressed air blower to pre-dust the film in a vacuum sealed scanning cabinet. Many cine' scanners already look like they operate in glass door enclosures.

Just a few years back I bought a quart of Edwal for $40's. Now it is $70's and B&H wont ship due to restrictions. Another reason to look for a fast drying, film cleaner replacement.

That is a tough grade you got. Basically, your image is too blue, at least on my monitor. That is the trouble with grades. They look different on every device you view them on. They are not like a print. Even then, the print depends on the lighting. These grades may look terrible on your monitor, but they look OK on mine. The color grading was done to the max adjustment for warming it in Lightroom 5. Also, some tests with desaturation a notch and some additional tint control in some. The only thing what did pretty good was max warming and hand retouching the whites. I don't remember which image was which, so don't ask. Just playing around with options. The image with the whitest eyes were retouched. The rest of the images did not have the eyes retouched. If you want to keep your images blue with white eyes, I think you are going to have a hard time unless they have some crazy AI software for it. Do they have cine' retouching software that can just target the white of the eyes or does it have to be done frame by frame? I'm thinking your lightning / color balance was bad...but I'm no expert on lighting. Maybe she does have blue eyes? Good luck figuring it out!

Got timed out... Disregard 'Same with cine' film scanning' above.

I think it was Dan Baxter that had posted a sample scan from a Retroscan and a Lasergraphics scanner on another film forum. It was hard to see that much difference just looking at the image. He had also scanned the optical soundtracks. If you looked at the smallest details of the optical tracks, you could see some difference and the Lasergraphics was sharper. So, if you are comparing scanner for res, look to scans of the optical track if you are having trouble with comparisons. With flatbed scanners we got res targets we can use. But they (good ones) are made of glass. So, they can't be used on drum scanners. And making a dupe of the res target on film won't reproduce the finest details in the chart. None of the flatbed scanners I've tried can reproduce the finest or even the next to the finest or the next to that finest detail that needs to be viewed in a microscope. 6400 dpi scan of red box above is at glass level using a Epson V500 scanner. I've also done extensive tests with scanner focus. Every scanner is different. But the V500 seems to do best at glass level. B&H sells res targets, but they are the low-grade ones. They seem to be repros of the glass targets with poor center details. Good glass targets are a few hundred $$ each. Same with cine' film scanning. Fashion shoot on Wall Street (Candid) - D.D.Teoli Jr. I'm not much of a pixel peeper. But you have to have confidence in your gear and know its limitations. So, I do a little pixel peeping to get my proverbial bearings. For me, pixel peeping is more important in archival work than with shooting photos. If your gear is good, you spend your time producing images and not in peeping for pixels. But that presupposes you can produce quality material to start with.

They have discussed a little film cleaner attachment you can use on projectors for use with scanners. But do any scanners have a compressed air or vacuum system built into the scanner to mitigate dust? In the old days, all the film leader was acetate. Now it is hard to get acetate leader and it is very costly. But a benefit of acetate was its antistatic qualities. The poly leader of today is a dust magnet. And it is not that cheap either. On a side note... If you get an old projector to test, run white poly leader through it. It picks up all the dirt and also gives you a clue if your rollers are gummy. Projector with bad rollers Or if you got other problems... Before you run film in it. Photos: D.D.Teoli Jr. <><><><> ..film porn for Steven Spielberg! Internet Photo: Fair Use

Anyone try it? Edwal is pretty high priced stuff compared to a quart of alcohol.

That would be an interesting experiment... Photo: D.D.Teoli Jr. Cut off the sprockets off a 10 foot piece of film and clean it, then clean the next 10 feet of film with the sprockets. Archival film is generally pretty filthy stuff. Although if you get film from a film collector, some have routinely cleaned and lubed the film, and it is not too bad. Only problem is; with an ADD'er, they hate repetitive, monotonous work. Cutting sprockets off for 20 feet of film is hell. <><><><> Borrowdale Overhead Process Camera - DDTJRAC

VIP ad 1971 DDTJRAC I think it looks better on the gal! They used one-piece jumpsuits for parachuting, so your clothes didn't blow off. Nowadays a jumpsuit is something different in the fashion world... jumpsuit - Google Search I like the rompers...reminds me of Romper Room. But we didn't have that in the Romper Room! romper - Google Search Fashion is an interesting area of collection. My fashion Archive goes back to the mid 1800's. FIT in NYC has some of my stuff, among other special collections.

Thanks Tyler...impressive.

OK, thanks for the info Robert. How much res is lost with wet gate? 5%? 10% Do you have any test comparison photos? Wet mounting film for scans reduces res on flatbed scanner. Is this the SD Rank Telecine? I like to 'see' what is being talked about.

The wet gate is not that big a deal to me. But how is the FilmFabriek with warped film? Does it offer a warped gate or is it like the Retroscan and film just runs with no flattening to it at all?

It is for the 'real' big boys Robert.

If you are using fast drying cleaners, you may be leaving lots of dirt on your films. Just depends on the machine and process, I guess. I've never used one. I can only say when I use a fast drying film cleaner by hand, it leaves lots of dirt as compared to a slow drying film cleaner. What about these ultrasonic cleaners? But that is another thread. Now, where are the photos of you and your cleaning machines in action? I don't get it. you are supposed to be imaged based people...put in some photos with your text once in a while. Lipsner Smith CF8200 HFE Film Cleaner Photo: eBay Fair Use That would make a great post for this forum. A rundown on film cleaners!