Daniel D. Teoli Jr.

You are lucky they replied to you. I wrote to Novoflex in Germany, in the USA...all over. Never one reply from them.

Got timed out... As far as the extension tube / ring. That is how you adjust the magnification...thinner or thicker rings. At least that is how the Retroscan operates. It came with many rings to adjust. One edit to the above... Extension tubes should not reduce sharpness...unless a lens won't perform well in macro mode. You can also check your HDS+ sensor by mounting your lens of a digital camera with an adapter to see how it performs Tyler. Have you inspected / cleaned the front and back of the lens Tyler to make sure it has no smudges? The Retroscan uses a C mount for CTTV lenses. Lots of lenses available, but all cheapies. I use a Ricoh and it seems doable. The 2K sensor is just so-so. One of the best lenses for copy work ever made was the Nikon Printing lens. Internet Photo: Fair Use Yes, you need lots of $$ for it! But if you got a M39 mount on your HDS+ you are very lucky Tyler. You can try all sort of lenses. Nikon, Rodenstock and Schnieder all make APO enlarging lenses. Internet Photo: Fair Use Or test out non-APO lenses. Tons of options for you Tyler.

So, you got an extension tube. Many times, enlarging lenses are mounted backwards for photography. Supposedly better performance for photography, since the lens was designed to project. Extension tubes don't reduce sharpness. Tubes with lens, such as teleconverters or cheap macro magnifiers do reduce res. I don't know if mounting a lens backwards helps that much. Never tired it, but it is a common claim. I don't see how it is an issue to try different lenses Tyler. Just order a few from B&H, try them and see. If no good return for a refund as you are dissatisfied. What kind of lens does Lasergraphics use?

Enlarging lenses are usually mounted backwards for macro work.

Yes...Phil sums it up. (If you are serious about getting a project done.) As I said earlier, an artist can dream, but the artist should never ruin a project because of ego. Shoot digital with a cheap, used camera from eBay. Don't ruin a project over ego and prejudice. But...it is your choice.

The Association of Moving Image Archivists - Fair Use Got an email from the AMIA. They want me to take some of their classes on film preservation and other things. One class was on taking oral history. I do lots of audio work. Much of it is with archival material, but I have recorded a decent amount of audio for the Archive as well. A pretty basic thing when you are recording is; don't hold the mic in your hand unless there is no other way to support it. You will get noises in the recording from finger movement. And even if you are using a mic on a stand, you can get hand cramps holding a recorder for hours on end. Some of the old timers wander all over with their stories. When I did this oral history below, it was over many hours and in 7 recordings I consolidated. Now, I don't mind wandering stories. You never know when you will get some gem audio. But GD...I don't want to have to hold the recorder for all that time! I recorded this right when Covid was first exploding. Was shut down for a year after it. I was shooting a film with this guy, but after covid he deteriorated, and I never could finish the project. I was glad I got some audio. (...and the raw footage.) Oral History Nesta Kerin Crain R.Morriale D.Teoli Jr. : D.D.Teoli Jr. : Free Download, Borrow, and Streaming : Internet Archive Photo: D.D.Teoli Jr. I've always told you this... You got someone with special knowledge or history...get it down. Audio, film, photography, scanning ephemera, whatever...get it down. One day they don't wake up...and all that history is gone!

Now, I do tons of Google image searches. Tens of thousands over the years. So, image searches are a big deal to me. I'm a photographer and archivist. Photos are what I'm about and not text so much. So, this test only applies to image searches. Here is the history of a recent search for the IL killer. It just happened to be the search that set off this post. I missed what he looked like on the news, so I did a Google image search to see him / it . I've more or less always used Google and never thought anything about it. It is just easy, and I thought it gave the best results. Sure, I heard about all the privacy issues, but didn't care. Really, I like the popup ads as I archive them in my popup advertising Archive. I also welcome SPAM emails. Have over 400 of them...in the Archive. So, I'm on a different wavelength than most people. Apparently, Google results can vary quite a bit. And the exact same, repeat searches can vary greatly within a few minutes or seconds of when they were originally made. Here is the original search I made... I figured somethings gotta be wrong, so went to Bing... Then tried AOL search... I tried some Russian or China Search engines, but when they didn't respond immediately, I shut them down worrying about ransomware. Retried same exact Google image search as I started with and did better this time...but not by much... Then tried Yahoo search... I finished up with a repeat of original Google search... Crazy huh! I didn't time it, but all these searches were made within say 5 to 6 minutes.

What lens are you looking for Tyler? What lens mount does the HDS+ use? How do you know it is the lens and not the imager? I'm thinking you need to try other lenses before making that determination. Or am I wrong and there is another way to determine this? I thought the Scanity had a very good reputation. (Although I never had any scans done with it.) Have you compared aperture to resolution? F4 or 5.6 is usually best for sharpness. But it may vary.

Beside her plaster work, Cynthia Plaster Caster was quite a creative illustrative artist. I saw some of her Christmas cards she made in a video. Unfortunately, I can't find much online about the cards. Cynthia Plaster Caster 5.24.47 - 4.21.22 Sadly, Cynthia Plaster Caster died a couple months ago. She was 74. I had tried to contact her to see if she would send me scans of the Christmas cards she made so I could include them in my Archive. But I could not get in touch with her. I hope a collection of the cards surfaces someday. You just never know...some things never surface.

A while back you had complained the lens that came with the HDS was subpar and giving you soft images...or some such thing. Did you ever find a lens you are happy with for the HDS?

That is why you do tests / sample scans. You can debate all you want with words, but where are the test images? You try the options to see what works best for you. The tests have the final word.

Is it similar to the Retroscan where you got aperture and a light brightness dial? You should do a YT video on its operation. When I first started cine' scanning I tried auto exposure. Terrible results. Everything is manual now. And much is timed scans if exposure is not consistent.

OP...I gave up cable about 15 years ago. Saved about $14,000 over the years. I put that money in cine' reels for the Archive, photography and other archival work. On a good day, in my local, we get 3 on-air channels. All political propaganda pretty much. I only watch the nightly propaganda news, 60 Minutes and Sunday Morning propaganda show. I copy the Olympics every couple years and speed through it. I generally just watch DVD and Blu-ray I get from the library. I can get 10 or 20 DVD's from the library a week if I want. They have access to all the collections in the state more or less. But, in general, I just watch an hour or two of DVD's a night. I'm mainly doing work. No time for TV...especially propaganda. WWII Propaganda Postcard DDTJRAC Now, I collect propaganda extensively in the Archive, but don't like being force-fed propaganda on TV when I want some entertainment. I watch all sort of films as long as they are interesting. I especially like old Noir and obscure films. A friend has Netflix. I can watch it anytime I like. Seldom if ever used it. Over the last year watched something about bodybuilders buying breast milk to build muscles and the Don't Look Up movie on friend's Netflix. My favorite part was then the shits got eaten in the end! I got Yellowstone season 1 a few months ago. I will order Season 2 from the library when I feel like it. I like old films. Especially some of the Avant-Garde obscure film collections and silent films from the early 1900's. An old favorite film of mine was High Noon 1952. I like watching films, when films were films, and not a bunch of bullshit jump cuts and CGI.

OP...is the exposure pretty constant on the film? Are they home movies? If exposure is all over the place, you may need timed scans, as opposed to best light scans, to get the best you can from the film. Just depends on how much the exposure varies. You should put up some sample scan photos. Text only goes so far. Good luck with your project!

This is a crop of the title page. It was on a dupe VHS tape. One of the other films on the tape was dated 1980. I'm thinking this is some of the earliest titling text used on videotapes. Any idea as to the date/s it was used? Thanks

I have lots of 8mm and 16mm Zeiss viewers. They are the best. But I've given up on them more or less. You can get a pretty good snapshot of a film with rewinds and a loupe. I inspect the beginning a few frames withing and the end. When you have thousands of films to take a quick look at, the viewer is just too time consuming.

A lady donated 2 cases (1,000 discs) of inkjet printable M-Disc 4.7GB to my Archive. I was very grateful as I had cut out buying M-Disc 4.7GB for my VHS Archive over a year ago after they jacked the price up from $2.10 to $3.06 per disc. The distribution for 4.7GB M-Disc is terrible, not much competition and priced is pretty fixed. Now, the discs look to be the same and the earlier discs. The problem is with the packaging. One case of discs had the usual bottom plastic disc floater replaced by a paper-thin piece of plastic at the bottom of the spindle. That was fine, not an issue. The next case of discs had nothing. The bottom disc rested on the bottom of the spindle. All the discs in that case had scratches on the bottom disc. So, 20 discs had defects due to poor packing. Maybe they forgot to put in the thin plastic liner in one case or maybe they just cheapened up even more and thought a paper-thin piece of plastic was too much cost or used too much wasted crude oil...dunno. As far as M-Disc themselves? They are as archival as you can get with optical media and archiving digital data. I've used them for many years and have done extensive torture testing of M-Disc of all sizes. It is just too bad there is not more competition with engraved optical media / engraved quartz. Verbatim used to make affordable, branded 4.7GB M-Disc that were good. But they discontinued the 4.7GB M-Disc around +/- 2020. <><><><> Damage from recent storm...thousands of trees down! Photo: D.D.Teoli Jr.

2 Dogs Barking D. D. Teoli Jr. : D. D. Teoli Jr. : Free Download, Borrow, and Streaming : Internet Archive When I take a walk, I will carry a small digital recorder with me to capture interesting sounds. Here is a field recording of dogs barking if you need it for any of your projects.

Court: Harvard can be sued for distress over slave photos (aol.com) BOSTON (AP) — A Connecticut woman who says she's descended from slaves who are portrayed in widely published, historical photos owned by Harvard University can sue the school for emotional distress, Massachusetts’ highest court ruled Thursday. The state’s Supreme Judicial Court partly vacated a lower court ruling that dismissed a complaint from Tamara Lanier over photos she says depict her enslaved ancestors. The images are considered some of the earliest that show enslaved people in the U.S. The court concluded the Norwich resident and her family can plausibly make a case for suffering “negligent and indeed reckless infliction of emotional distress” from Harvard and remanded that part of their claim to the state Superior Court. The judges said the university failed to contact Lanier when it used one of the images on a book cover and prominently featured it in materials for a campus conference — even after she'd reached out about her ancestral ties. “In sum, despite its duty of care to her, Harvard cavalierly dismissed her ancestral claims and disregarded her requests, despite its own representations that it would keep her informed of further developments,” the ruling states. ---- What a mess the USA is becoming.

You would never think in a million years a scanner would scratch film. What a mess. People don't care what kind of product they put out nowadays. Listen up...and I'm only going to tell you this once... When you get some new piece of equipment that runs film, run some white poly leader through it first. Don't use acetate leader. Poly leader is very sticky from static electricity and easily picks up problems. Below is leader that was run through a projector with deteriorated rubber rollers. Photo : D.D.Teoli Jr. Acetate leader may be better for showing scratches and dents to film. This leader below happens to be poly, so it can also work. Photo : D.D.Teoli Jr. I gave up on acetate leader. Just too crazy priced now. I got a few hundred feet left, but am mainly poly leader now. I like acetate leader best. Poly leady is one big dust magnet. In the dark, shine a flashlight on it sideways and see what I mean. Terrible. But acetate is only for the well financed cine' devote, if you are talking about thousands of reels of film like I have to deal with.

So how do you handle it? Can you scan at slower speeds? Will your cache keep the files until they can be saved to the drive or are some dropped?

Then it wont work for warped film. Sounds like a Retroscan gate where the film just runs between two edges...flat or warped. Warped films should be flattened in the gate or you can't get any steady focus.

Todd, if you haven't done so, you should be making a blog about your work with Diamant. Showcasing options you can deliver with your stock footage / restoration gig. Same with Robert. He talked about making things work for low budget indie films. Well put out some of the budget plans to show how it works in black and white. I mean, you guys are in biz. You want biz. So, spell out all the options to get more biz and show how it can be done before someone gives up on it due to worries about costs. Breast feed them in info!

Tyler, it is very troubling they would send out the machine with a gate that scratches film. Do you think it was a QC fluke? That's basic shit right there. You got a brand new camera or scanner, it should not scratch the film. How did you recover from that loss?

Robert, you should know about scanners. And have samples ready from various scanners for the film practitioners to review before ordering scans. As far as gearheads? Dunno, I'm not on set. But sure, you got camera fondlers, fanboys and gearheads of every variety. For me, I'm not much of a gearhead. I just want the finished project. I can appreciate fit, finish and construction. But in the end, all I want is the finished product and not a hard-on for the gear. For instance, I'd be perfectly happy buying hi-grade or even decent scans of films to work with and not have to bother with the physical film and scanning. But, many times to need the experience of handling things like film to learn. You can't learn via shortcuts and be well rounded. And people may learn from the lusting and fondling of gear. There have been times in the past where I bought a thing just to look at it, see how it worked and how it was built, along with taking photos of it. If you want to look at it...you have to buy one!