Dan Baxter

It depends on the machine, but with many of them you have absolutely no control over framing and with most you can't scan "edge-to-edge" (the Kinetta makes that a selling point since some Archives want that). A DCS XENA you probably have full control over, Robert can answer on that, but on a Blackmagic, a Lasergraphics or the line-scan scanners like the GoldenEye and Scanity I don't think the user has any control at all. The overscan is whatever is set in the factory where it's designed and manufactured. Even if you repositioned the camera in the Blackmagic Cintel yourself the scanning software (Resolve) wouldn't support scanning 16mm above 2K the software would need to be rewritten, and Lasergraphics has a hard software lock to restrict you from doing anything like that with a ScanStation Personal or the Archivist. You would need someone to write third-party capture software to do anything like that. Remember, most of the older machines only ever supported two formats at most (typically 16mm and 35mm). It sounds like your film is going out of frame because the Moviestuff scanners don't have gates to guide the film to the correct location. There's a 3rd-party product coming for the new ones next year (the current model Retroscan).

A friend of mine has one. What do you want to know? It's just a crippled ScanStation sold at a fraction of the price of the full ScanStation. They removed the editing table and the camera rail, but it had all the other features available including the warped film kit and two-flash HDR. I'm guessing that new features developed for the ScanStation won't be offered on it though. I don't remember if it's missing the P/T rollers as it would appear on the Lasergraphics website, but it wouldn't take much to add your own as the rest of the film path is exactly the same as the ScanStation, it's a "Module" it's called the "Scanstation film transport module" the only thing different will be the sticker on it says "Archivist" instead of "ScanStation" like you see with this one: You can actually see on the website quite clearly that the Film Transport Module is just the same 35mm one as the ScanStation, because if it was different then the rollers would be smaller to be designed only for small gauge film. Given their history with the infamous ScanStation Personal I would not expect them to be making any development for the Archivist or to offer new features etc on it, I would think that how it comes now is how it will always come. Case in point - the camera is fixed so you get lower resolution for 8mm, but it doesn't have to be they could put in the camera rail (i.e. the ScanStation 6.5K Camera Module) and support 35mm as it is but they won't because the scanner is intentionally designed to be limited.

It's IMX342, but there are other newer imagers now including the 5.3K one (IMX530).

Oh I don't disagree with you at all - the Sony imagers are light-years ahead of the Blackmagic ones for scanning. The camera in the Cintel is a Blackmagic. I can't tell you anything more than that, I don't think it's been changed since it was launched. Lasergraphics currently use Emergent cameras with the Sony Pregius imagers:

To be honest with you, I think they are well overpriced as it is and Lasergraphics is putting the price UP next year as well. The only reasonable way for a small company (or an individual) to get one in 2022 is with a clear business plan which you would probably want to prove to yourself first with a cheaper scanning machine. As for the cost of them, you really need to select only the options you absolutely need and get what you don't later on.

A cintel? No I haven't, I haven't used either "extensively". I don't think Blackmagic will put a Sony imager into their product, even if they did it would be the 4K one not a 6.5K camera. 6.5K would increase the hardware requirements for the host computer too much. Honestly, if anyone is expecting them to invest the R&D into it to make it equal to a Lasergraphics that costs multiple time more then those expectations are falling well outside of reality.

What I mean is that there are older models (it's a scanner launched in 2013) many small companies bought them when they were cheaper, and some upgraded them to 6.5K later on. I know two.

For 35mm it's fine, but it's low-resolution for 16mm. It's not an archival scanner though so anything older than 40 years or so or prints etc doesn't look great scanned on it. Tyler is completely right about delivering the scan to clients. You would definitely have to convert the .CRI into a more universal format like Prores for clients. They replaced the lead developer earlier this year I believe, so yes they're working on it - but of course they have a limited budget for R&D and they have priorities for their scanner that guide their decisions (e.g. keeping the price low). Blackmagic bought out Cintel that's why they call their scanner Cintel.

I'm going to have to disagree with you here Tyler. I'm aware of several ScanStations that are owned by small companies or operators that do their own thing and do not advertise that they even have them. Some of them are used by companies that do low-cost home movie transfers. But don't be fooled, the quality varies on those machines a lot depending on which model it is, what options it has, and how it's operated. As far as Archival scanning goes, I'd agree with you that many of the larger vendors do that work - however it's important to point out they have this much more available to them now, whereas they didn't have it available a decade ago due to the costs.

The only "cheap" scanner that is within reach/affordable for consumers and still decent quality which I'm aware of is the Pictor Pro: The only other decent "low budget" option (assuming you're not building the entire scanner from scratch) would be to buy a Retroscan Universal MkII and modify it, in my estimation you'll need to budget for around $14K if you want a decent quality dual-format scanner. The hardest part is adding gates to it to get the film perfectly flat, but there should be a commercial product available soon (aftermarket gates) that you can buy for the Universal MkII, but be aware they won't work with the older Moviestuff machines since they had a different design. If anyone has a Universal MkII please send me a private message, my mate who designed the gates may want to get others to test them before fully going to market with them to ensure they'll work with other machines besides his one.

The Pictor Pro is fine if you only want to do 8mm and Super 8, priced at €13.5K which is less than half the price of the HDS+.

They use a variety of machines. The Ultrasonic scanners were designed for Trike which is banned from manufacture since the 90's due to ozone depletion (it only has an atmospheric life of 6 years though unlike the CFCs). You can read about that in the Montreal Protocol 1995 assessment document. It's the best solvent though, some of the companies have switched to using Perc which is a dry cleaning chemical and highly hazardous so you need the right space to set up anything using that (as Frank mentions you need permits as well and vapour recovery). Some companies use other solvents like the 3M ones which are safer to handle but less effective cleaning solvents and much more expensive. The alcohol-based Lipsner-Smith machines are a good choice if for something safe to handle yourself if you're setting up at home or in an office, you need to re-lubricate film after cleaning though with Film Guard or your choice of lubricant as alcohol dries out the film. If you're hand-cleaning you can still get Trike in small quantities. A good ultrasonic clean gets the film much cleaner than hand-cleaning.

It's the newer generation - 4th gen/Pregius S. But from all the specs it looks like it should perform essentially the same as the 6.5K one it will depend on the camera model of course and the required cooling etc. It's about $5K retail from Emergent, or there's also one with dual-gain HDR now and that's $8K. Someone I know has experimented with the dual-gain camera in a XENA and said it brings a little bit of extra detail in the dense areas when dual-gain is enabled. Let me see... MC245CG-SY-UB-HDR (that's the USB3 version so will be slower) $7,605 and MX245CG-SY-X2G2-FL-HDR is $7,800 (PCIe version) those are the models Emergent has with the Pregius S IMX530 imager and dual-gain HDR. The Arri's are just 35/16mm so I think that probably has a lot to do with the price being less when compared to similar scanners that do more formats. I think that film has between 13-14 stops of dynamic range in it according to Kodak? Capturing the most out of the film's dynamic range and getting the full detail out of the dense areas in the film is the main benefit as I understand it for the newer machines with the modern sensors doing HDR scanning.

There's a pricing sheet here with all of Arri's products on it including Arriscan XT. It's €284.000. Some of the other info - there's many different model Arri's it changed a lot over time, that's also true of the Lasergraphics Director and the Scanstations. The HDR comparisons on the Lasergraphics site are way out of date they look like they were done about 10 years ago, the benefits to multi-flash HDR scanning will be different now to what they were then. I think the camera + lens is about $8K retail. But there's also the newer Sony Pregius S IMX530 5.3K cameras and they're a bit cheaper. You are right though, even with exactly the same camera in another machine like a XENA it seems it's difficult to match the quality and performance of the current Scanstations. Also what they charge to upgrade the older models is outrageous really, a lot of companies and archives will have spent an awful lot on their scanners and just not have it in the budget to upgrade the camera modules for what they ask.