Dan Baxter
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Anyone try Lasergraphics warped film gates for 16mm?
Dan Baxter replied to Daniel D. Teoli Jr.'s topic in Post Production
Yeah, that's what others have said about them too. The MkII didn't have that issue, but it has so many other issues. None of them had 4K. The "4K" models have a 2K camera (or 2.5K??) The awful quality light is the bigger issue in terms of quality. A high CRI light makes a huge difference even with the original camera. The lights in your FF and LG scanners are similar - RGB (or RGB+white) fully-spectrum LED, probably the LG one is brighter, and then FF has a diffusion blob and LG has a diffusion cube. MS could have just used a high CRI white light with proper diffusion, that's all it needed, but Roger never bothered with using a decent light, unfortunately. Oh right! Well good for you!! That's the other part of the story re- the MovieStuff collapse, which is that people who are capable will replace them after a year, or after a few years, with a real scanner. As you say they're a "starter scanner" for many.- 13 replies
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Cinetech BSF HYDRA film cleaner
Dan Baxter replied to Daniel D. Teoli Jr.'s topic in Post Production
I didn't mock you. 😛 The Kelmars and the Film-O-Clean are designed to be attached to projectors, but people have attached them in-line to scanners as well. And plenty if people use them how you do - on their own between rewinds. They're designed for use with Media Pads and Film-Guard, but Film-Guard will wear out PTR and Capstan rollers. The Archivist doesn't come with PTRs unless you ask LaserGraphics for them, but it would not be hard to add your own PTR rollers anyway. -
Anyone try Lasergraphics warped film gates for 16mm?
Dan Baxter replied to Daniel D. Teoli Jr.'s topic in Post Production
Did you replace a Retroscan with an Archivist? If so, you're definately not the only one!- 13 replies
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Exactly. Roger has ripped off a heap of people, and to most of them $10,000 is a lot of money. Unfortunately, most of the people that were "dissatisfied customers" didn't want to put their names out publicly, which led to the incorrect perception that everyone was happy. Plenty of customers have said in private though they don't like the way he does business but that they need to be able to still have product support from him. In Roger's ego-driven Facebook post, he talks as if his compeditors are the "big boy scanners", to use your term. No mention of Filmfabriek, DCS, Blackmagic or Kinetta! Or the fact that the big boy machines are very different now than 20 years ago. They cost way less, they're much simpler, more mechanically reliable, more capable in what they can do, etc. Most film now is over 40 years old, so now they have to be able to do archival film, whreas in the 1990's digital scanning was just for special effects. The other perception that existed was that they were getting a bargain, because a LaserGraphics ScanStation fully-loaded is $200,000+. Or because FF charge a lot more for the Muller or the Pictor ranges. Yet anyone actually using them to do their best work for paying customers is spending ages working on the scans in post to try and fix them up for their customers. The same is actually true for some of the less capable big boy scanners including the GoldenEye. Roger takes a cut, and provides a 90 day warranty. You can read the page here, it's still on his website. LOL. He was on the Kinograph forums, but ran away to his Facebook group when criticised.
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Okay so I don't have to keep emailing MS customers I'm putting this here. "I did my research on these before purchasing and couldn't find any criticism of MovieStuff." One of the recurring issues was that existing MS customers were too afraid to publicly speak out against Roger for fear of him withdrawing support or refusing to sell them parts etc. Better research would involve talking to multiple MS customers/RetroScan users first. "These were definitely the go-to 'prosumer' models that were better than the old telecines yet still not the cost of a house like the ScanStation." Roger Evans on his Facebook group would refuse to ever acknowledge his real competitors, and whenever he spoke about competitors it was always the "$250,000 ScanStation". There have always been competitors for the hobbyist market/low-end archiving market, but MovieStuff did their best not to let their customers or potential customers know who their actual competitors were. The above is simply an example of someone quoting Roger's sales pitch without realising that what they're saying isn't accurate. The Retroscan Universal MkII made no sense to me. It was at an unrealistic price-point that doomed it to market failure. With enough work, and expense, you can modify it to get it to work the way that a $10,000 scanner should work to begin with - or you could just buy something that works better to begin with. The film guides actually work fine. Gates would be better, but the film guides work and is the least of the problems that the scanner has. To the point however, you've mentioned many times how collaborative and helpful FF have been with assisting with issues that you've had with your HDS+ - you don't hear people sharing the same experience with MS! It either works the way it came and people are satisfied with that, or if they're not satisfied with how their MS scanner works then they do their own modifications to it with no assistance from MS other than "encouragement" to do so. With the RUMkII it had subpar parts from the start, I have a felling the Universal MkI was better mechanically speaking.
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Called it. There's some more in the low-end market including Film-Digital and Ventura Images for example and don't forget DCS in the "midrange" either.
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Cinetech BSF HYDRA film cleaner
Dan Baxter replied to Daniel D. Teoli Jr.'s topic in Post Production
No, the ones you've linked to are not rebuilt in any way and only one of them is described clearly as being in working condition. You can, in theory anyway, buy the RTI Group cleaners fully rebuilt and refurbished from Jonathan Banks. -
Anyone try Lasergraphics warped film gates for 16mm?
Dan Baxter replied to Daniel D. Teoli Jr.'s topic in Post Production
Did someone finally show you how the LG scanners are priced? One of my friends that has a full ScanStation has a second DIY scanner that he built that produces very similar quality, in his case he'd do badly warped film on his second scanner as he has full warped film gates he made for it. Most people don't buy the warped film kits for the ScanStation or the Director, remember they can't do wetgate scanning anyway so it's only half the solution. 😛- 13 replies
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Lipsner-Smith Excell 1100 Alternative
Dan Baxter replied to Joe Wendling's topic in Film Stocks & Processing
It's similar to the San Labs Prista: https://www.ebay.com/itm/234334902645 Except much more compact and supports 8mm. I think those Pristas can be had for about $2,000 - they're also designed for the same chemical (Isopar-G) but they're not in working condition so you need someone who can repair them and get them running, if you need the contact details just send me a DM and I'll get them for you. The Hydras are very expensive as you might imagine. -
Lipsner-Smith Excell 1100 Alternative
Dan Baxter replied to Joe Wendling's topic in Film Stocks & Processing
Nice. A big selling point for those is the fact they're tri-format as most cleaners can't do 8mm, so they're suitable for labs that are focused on small format as well as 35mm. -
You need to just buy Filmfabrieks, they fill that niche now. They have something coming this year that's cheaper for 16mm. MovieStuff does it too. You need to abandon the MovieStuff software entirely to get the most out of it, and you need to remove their light and build your own light. Even with the cameras they come with this will improve the output, and then you can capture to camera-raw and avoid the 8bit compression forced by MovieStuff's host software. The reason why LG and others lock-down those settings is because they're mostly calibration related, so end-users shouldn't need to fiddle with them. If you really want to change them you can, you can either get LG to change them, or you can get the tools that they use to change them so long as you sign an NDA. Even I don't know more than that and exactly how they work, but I know enough to know they exist because every major scanner manufacturer has tools for editing the "hidden settings" whether they let the user have them or not (usually not - and that's not a bad thing as people would just break something and need support if they had them). Perry was simply explain PTR rollers can be purchased directly from Kodak - they're a standard product that anyone can buy. Matt from Kinograph was working on making their own so that you don't have to purchase them from Kodak as well. 5:34 in the video: Why not just email Matt and bring that product to market?
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The first Muller HD model was released in 2011, and MWA had a range of small format Bayer scanners as well. I wouldn't say that the they and the ScanStation, Kinetta, DSC Xena, and the Blackmagic Cintel weren't "major market" I'd say that they were market disrupters. Well 5K on RGB is far sharper than 5K on Bayer, so depending on what you want you may want to sharpen a Bayer scan in post if you want it to look more like an RGB scan.
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The resolution varies, but most theatrical prints are 1.5K-2K in resolution, but a good negative might exceed 4K greatly. A good showprint though might have 4K resolution as well, all depends on the quality of the print itself. I've seen 35mm prints that look almost as good as 70mm when projected. Also it's not all about resolution, the dynamic range of print exceeds that of Bayer digital even now. Joerg, you are my new best friend! Absolutely correct!! Yep older CCD sensors had limited dynamic range, they couldn't scan print well at all (the scanners didn't even have a setting to scan print - remember you used to have to get a special low-contrast print made for telecine transfer which cost considerably more than a normal projection print and they're normally 16mm but they can be 35mm), and the Bayer versions were even more limited. YES!!! Most older scanners have aggressive artificial sharpening that cannot be disabled. Even brand new scanners today come with artificial sharpening, though thankfully it can be disabled. To put it the way a mate of mine recently did: artificial sharpening in the initial scanning stage doesn't add anything that can't be done better later. Most "film grain" is digital noise, or enhanced by it. Resolution is one thing, dynamic range is another. While the newer Sony imagers are amazing even with a Bayer filter, they can't capture the same dynamic range as true RGB and they are softer from crosstalk. That's not necessarily a "bad" thing as many older movies get scanned and come out far, far sharper than they were ever intended to look in the cinema. The filmmaking and cinematography process took into account the intended look of the film once printed to the projection prints, and scanning the original negative can bring out details that were previously obscured such as making fine wires visible or makeup effects and matte paintings are more obvious, more details in the shadows that were previous obscured, etc. Any decent restoration will use a reference print for grading anyway, but the original negative itself was not color timed and is much sharper than the final print, usually. The other thing is, the older scanning systems are still in use today. Most scanners reached end of life in terms of development many years ago, like the Northlights that were discussed in another thread. With the others like Arriscans, DCS, LaserGraphics, Filmfabriek, and DFT - they have many different models, and in some cases every single scanner itself may be unique. Yeah digital scanners, but they had telecines that were a lot faster than that! Exactly. The price has come down like anything. A decade ago the going rates on a good 4K scan was in cents per frame not cents per foot like it is now. The scanner manufacturers had to compensate for limitations in both lighting and imager tech, newer LED lighting has solved the problem of using Xenon bulbs and splitting into R/G/B for sequential scanning and so on, and the 2019 Sony-chip cameras many feel are true CCD quality without the limitations of CCD. Not only that, but because the older tech took so much more engineering and was so complicated, most of the older scanners are mechanically unreliable and it's impossible to self-service them. I know that's not the case for every scanner, but it's a big difference compared to a modern LaserGraphics that is a literal workhorse and never complains or breaks down. As you say, this has opened the door to larger markets. With your example of Jurassic Park you are right: digital scanning was once pretty much exclusively for Hollywood special effects. Then in the 00's it was for post-production and film restoration as well, in the 10's it expanded into Archive markets, and now it's accessible affordably to the general public who can scan their home movies on the same ScanStation that a film restoration was done on for not that much more money than scanning on a Tobin or a RetroScan. I think MovieStuff is on its last legs... Clive retired many years ago, so that just leaves really FilmFabriek now for that market (yes I know there are others like Ventura Images but honestly for the same price as one of those you can buy a Pictor Pro). 2015 actually they put the JAI camera in, so 9 years ago. As you say, it would have solved CCD area imager tab balance problems, but the camera itself doesn't have as good dynamic range. Blackmagic are still using the same camera they launched with in 2015 or 2016 (I think prototypes went out in 2015 and launch to retail was 2016?) Regardless of the details, it remains amazing value for what you get, but the development is glacial because they don't have the R&D budget due to selling it so cheap and not charging a support contract. They announced the 8mm gate last year and it still hasn't hit the market! Obviously the Cintel will never be for finishing scans of 8mm, but basic support would be welcomed by users as they can make quick proxy inspection scans without tying up time on their proper 8mm scanner, or just to catalogue what they have etc.
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That's a very different takeaway compared to how I saw it! Moviestuff laid off most of their staff, and they have unfulfilled orders older than 12 months... It won't matter if they do, the settings mean nothing to the customer. A lot of the settings are locked-down by the scanning manufacturer as well and to change them you need a tech/developer to change the hidden settings for you. Even off functionally the same machine, you'll have different levels of quality control.