Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

LaborBerlin: State-of-the-Art 16mm Projector

filmlabs.org

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

21–30 of 39 posts

Re: LaborBerlin: State-of-the-Art 16mm Projector

#21

Post by cameron_b »

sublinear wrote: post #15
gwbas1c wrote: post #13

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Why not scan film in instead of.. projecting it on a wall and filming that to archive? It's a different experience: When viewing film, the picture flickers and shakes. Film grain is substantially different than pixels. As much as I enjoy modern digital formats, it's important to appreciate the goal of preserving viewing film.

If it's to be archived it's going to end up encoded as pixels. I think the question was more about the capture of fine detail. A scanner will digitize much more image detail than any capture of the projector output. Although, reading the article it seems an emphasis was placed on color accuracy. I'm not sure if a scanner is necessarily as good at that.

There are some scanners good at that but not at the scope of a 2 hour film.

The other factor is that a projector is the first part of allowing others to view films, and getting the light source nailed down could open the doors to making new prints of those films - a different path to archiving.

Re: LaborBerlin: State-of-the-Art 16mm Projector

#22

Post by DidYaWipe »

Animats wrote: post #7
M4rkJW wrote: post #3

Neat stuff! I have a ton of 8mm and some 16mm film to archive, perhaps this is a good first step towards an open-source film scanner.

8mm film scanners are so common they're available at Walmart. There are lots of DIY film scanners described on Youtube. They don't have to run fast and they don't need a pull-down mechanism, so they're simple devices.

And they typically suck. It's a different story if you want to properly scan 8mm from edge to edge and get TIFFs (or similar) for each frame.

Re: LaborBerlin: State-of-the-Art 16mm Projector

#23

Post by p3_1080 »

luckystarr wrote: post #17

Interesting that the film material had better color retention than the old projectors. I never thought about it before and assumed that the washed out colors of old 16mm projections came from bad recordings.

The pink tint of the left-hand projections near the bottom of the article is actually the film print itself shifting colors due to (relatively mild, in this particular case) vinegar syndrome, which can happen when film prints are stored over long periods in relatively warm (unrefrigerated) conditions. This color shift is all down to the individual film print and really has nothing to do with a given projector itself — but until this project I believe there haven't been film projectors that can compensate for color-shifting on-the-fly (projectionist and programmer in a space that regularly screened 16mm & 35mm prints for about a decade). Now, instead of throwing one's hands up when trying to project a color-shifted print, films can be projected and possibly preserved/digitized in something closer to their original state. For the film preservation field, this project feels quite important and could signal a major shift in the way the field operates.

Re: LaborBerlin: State-of-the-Art 16mm Projector

#24

Post by ilamont »

Former 35mm projectionist here (see https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=35887809). I also worked with 16mm projectors and cameras as a student.

It's cool to see that people are still interested in this media, and trying to fix a number of problems. There are a couple things about this proposal that are admirable, such as switching to dimmable LEDs and open-source/3D printable parts.

I also liked the bit about not trying to reinvent the wheel ("We believe that especially the central mechanical elements of the old projectors – claw mechanism, shutter wheel and film transport - are in most cases so well engineered that a new development here would be a waste of time and energy.") But what follows is an extensive list of new specs that would make the project vastly more complex.

16mm/35mm is already fading, with a finite population of prints that dwindles every year as film deteriorates or reels are lost/destroyed. Some of the technical features ("Manual vario-speed from This project would be far more realistic if such features were scaled back and the focus was on getting a bare-bones, open source projector that works with 16mm optical film (the majority of existing stock) as well as some of the low-hanging fruit on the list. I think is doable. Low cost, simple plastic film projectors were once a thing with another type of film (Super 8, see https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Super_8_film)

If hard stuff is added to the list, at least focus on practicality for a wider range of people, such as a tool to safely evaluate print quality before playback at normal speeds or some sort of print cleaning mechanism for reels that have been sitting in someone's basement for 30 years.

Re: LaborBerlin: State-of-the-Art 16mm Projector

#26

Post by DidYaWipe »

gwbas1c wrote: post #13
yapyap wrote: post #11

Question: the blogpost mentions archivists needing 16mm projectors. Now I assume they would use these projectors to archive 16mm film but how / why? Why not scan film in instead of.. projecting it on a wall and filming that to archive? At least thats what I’m extracting from the blog with my fair but limited knowledge, if someone could enlighten me it’d be greatly appreciated!

> Why not scan film in instead of.. projecting it on a wall and filming that to archive? It's a different experience: When viewing film, the picture flickers and shakes. Film grain is substantially different than pixels. As much as I enjoy modern digital formats, it's important to appreciate the goal of preserving viewing film.

He asked why a projector is relevant for archiving, not viewing.

The only answer I can imagine is for viewing newly-discovered film to determine its content and condition, in order to decide whether it's worth scanning.

Re: LaborBerlin: State-of-the-Art 16mm Projector

#27

Post by DidYaWipe »

sublinear wrote: post #12
yapyap wrote: post #11

Question: the blogpost mentions archivists needing 16mm projectors. Now I assume they would use these projectors to archive 16mm film but how / why? Why not scan film in instead of.. projecting it on a wall and filming that to archive? At least thats what I’m extracting from the blog with my fair but limited knowledge, if someone could enlighten me it’d be greatly appreciated!

I don't know much either, and this is all way before my time, but I'm going to guess that getting sound off the film (if it has it) has got to be one of the reasons. The other being that just operating a suitable projector as intended is the simplest and most accurate way regarding timing compared to finding or writing software to handle scans. I'd think they'd want to do both.

The sound retrieval is a good point. I don't think of sound on old movies.

Re: LaborBerlin: State-of-the-Art 16mm Projector

#28

Post by ethan_smith »

the_third_wave wrote: post #6

One thing seems odd: it takes an 800W LED to double the light output of a 250W halogen bulb. Normally LED is far more efficient than halogen so I wonder why the opposite is true for this project.

The discrepancy likely stems from projector-specific optical constraints - while LEDs are more efficient at converting electricity to light, they emit omnidirectionally requiring complex collimation systems that lose significant light, whereas halogen bulbs with parabolic reflectors can direct most of their output through the projection path.

Re: LaborBerlin: State-of-the-Art 16mm Projector

#29

Post by kmoser »

sublinear wrote: post #15
gwbas1c wrote: post #13

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Why not scan film in instead of.. projecting it on a wall and filming that to archive? It's a different experience: When viewing film, the picture flickers and shakes. Film grain is substantially different than pixels. As much as I enjoy modern digital formats, it's important to appreciate the goal of preserving viewing film.

If it's to be archived it's going to end up encoded as pixels. I think the question was more about the capture of fine detail. A scanner will digitize much more image detail than any capture of the projector output. Although, reading the article it seems an emphasis was placed on color accuracy. I'm not sure if a scanner is necessarily as good at that.

If you're archiving motion picture film, there are no pixels, only film stock. The archive process may include digitizing, but even then you still have to deal with the original film media, which is the primary task of a film archivist.

Re: LaborBerlin: State-of-the-Art 16mm Projector

#30

Post by EvanAnderson »

DidYaWipe wrote: post #22
Animats wrote: post #7

Earlier quoted context omitted.

8mm film scanners are so common they're available at Walmart. There are lots of DIY film scanners described on Youtube. They don't have to run fast and they don't need a pull-down mechanism, so they're simple devices.

And they typically suck. It's a different story if you want to properly scan 8mm from edge to edge and get TIFFs (or similar) for each frame.

Oh, do they ever suck. I did some Super-8 transfers to a Digital8 camcorder in the early 2000's. I tried one of those Kodak-branded 8mm digitizers in my public library last year. The 20 y/o SD Digital8 transfers done with an optical transfer box look better.
Post reply on HN