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16mm Film Processing


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I have picked a couple labs to process my 16mm film in 100 foot spools. I have decided on either Fotokem in California, or Cinelab in MA. I have some B&W reversal and I think Cinelab is the only option for that between the two. As for B&W neg and color neg, would you go for Cinelab or Fotokem? I see with 100 foot spools, Cinelab charges about $20 a roll of 100 feet for B&W. Not sure about Fotokem. Also will Fotokem work with Orwo B&W film, or strictly Kodak? Any suggestions?

Edited by Scott Pickering
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Interesting. I do not see those rates mentioned in the Student pdf. It still says 20 cents a foot for processing only. Does Cinelab now offer 5K scanning of 16mm or Super 16? That is what I intend on getting. If you do, what are your rates for that? And what file do you save to?

Edited by Scott Pickering
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I've not had the pleasure of working with Cinelab, but I've heard many positive reviews of their services in this forum.

 

With that said, FotoKem did the dailies for my most recent short film and I've been very pleased with the results & customer service. Price-wise, I'll put it to you this way: if you're processing 400' rolls of color neg, you will wind up with better quality for nearly the same price as a lab I used to use here in NYC. So if you have that amount or more of color neg it may be worth it. Anything less may wind up being a bit pricy due to the minimum footage charge (I forget exactly what it is.)

 

But I saw a significant difference in quality when I switched to them. I've only had them process Kodak stocks, but I'm sure they do Orwo as well. PM me if you'd like the contact info for the pertinent parties over there.

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5K scanning for 35mm we currently offer up to 3.5K S16mm and 3K 16mm scans. Cinelab's fast pinless Xena will be getting a camera head update soon to a 4K+ Kodak-Trusense chip which is 12-bits and 30fps capable. This will allow for UHD res scanning of 35mm, 16mm, S16mm and Super-8mm.

 

We are picking up a third scanner this or next week which is 35mm at true 5K i.e. 5K R,G and B.

 

Yeah the $0.14 is for Process and Prep with Cinelab Print or Scan and $0.20 for Process and prep only.

 

There was once a lab in New York that developed B&W in a dirty dishwater bath, not hard to better.

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We have just acquired a Imagica Imager-XE which has a 5K Tri-Linear CCD at an actual 14-bit color depth, most scanners are 12-bit and some are even 10-bit.

 

We also offer a 4K 12-bit (Monochrome sequential color) Pin-Registered Xena scan which is 4K of each R,G,B and IR with a 4K x 3K Monochrome CCD.

 

Finally our fast Xena with machine vision Perf Stabilization at up to 3K and soon faster and Ultra-HD resolutions at 12-bit.

 

All of the machines which use machine vision use some of the resolution for the perf area, i.e. our Xena has a 3.4K 12-bit Kodak CCD which uses about 400 pixels for "looking" at the perfs, this area can be included in the scan but is not really the picture area of the film. Also these machines are color cameras so a 5K camera has 2.5K of Green and 1.25K of R and B.

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