Designing a new film scanner; need your help

Designing a new film scanner; need your help

  • $600 or less

    Votes: 65 29.3%
  • $800

    Votes: 40 18.0%
  • $1000

    Votes: 46 20.7%
  • $1500

    Votes: 34 15.3%
  • $2000

    Votes: 24 10.8%
  • $3000 or more

    Votes: 13 5.9%

  • Total voters
    222
Still going :)

- Regarding the case for the scanner, the current plan for the external surface texture is much like that of a hardcover book; with cloth overlaying plywood. Somewhat like an electric guitar amplifier cabinet, but more precise. What do you all think of this? it would have an amazing feel to it.


It would be pretty, but the materials involved could become a dust magnet or a source of contamination. I would prefer something simple like a plastic or metal case...
 
The goal of this scanner project has been to design, build and sell film scanners.
However progress has been so intolerably slow for such an extended period of time that a change of strategy is required. In brief:

(1) A kickstarter will no longer be pursued
(2) the primary way of producing and distributing scanners will not be through me
(3) the design and *all* documentation will be freely published online, with instructions in as much detail as necessary for you to build your own scanner. If you can follow instructions to bake a cake or develop film, you can build my scanner. It was always designed to be easy to build, and the vast majority of the parts are easy to obtain.
(3) total cost for users (such as yourselves) to obtain the scanner and accessories is lessened
(4) total time and effort required of myself is similarly lessened, meaning that I will be able to accomplish more with a given amount of time

The goal, as of now, is to make it as easy as possible for people who want to scan their film properly to do so. This will be achieved by developing a scanner design (which I'm doing now), and then helping people to build this scanner themselves.

The main reason for this change is that I have less time and resources than I thought I would have. I could do it the old way if I dropped out or deferred uni for a bit, but that'd be silly. There's more to life than scanners.

The scanner utilises 3 custom parts. Only 3. Everything else is essentially off the shelf, available from a variety of suppliers worldwide. A couple of other parts need to be laser cut, but lots of places do that. Those three parts will still most likely need to be organised, manufactured and posted out by me. Originally this design approach was intended to make production easier for the kickstarter, but a very convenient side effect is that production will be easy for you. Unfortunately, I think that this will seem much more intimidating to most people than it really is. What will make it significantly easier is the level of documentation that will surround the scanner. If you're still unsure about committing money to this design, you could just hold out from ordering the parts until a couple of other people have built working units.

The way I plan to distribute information on the scanner design is through a wikipedia-like website. Much like wikipedia, you'll be able to follow links on it to understand the scanner in as much depth as you feel like. Videos and simple instructions (written just for you, my computer-hating electronic-cameras-are-evil target market :D ) will help make things clear.

Other than this wiki, which will be written solely by myself, I plan to start an associated forum, where discussions on the scanner can take place. Ideas for improving the design, common issues and fixes, that sort of thing. If I agree with design suggestions on that forum, I'll update the 'official' design on the wiki.



So what are the effects / changes resulting from this development?

(1) as soon as I have finished the prototype, and finished documenting it on the wiki, you'll be able to build one. This means you save several months of time compared to a kickstarter-based approach.
(2) Total failure of the project is now less likely. Instead, a worst-case-scenario would just be delays.
(3) It's less stressful for me
(4) it'l be cheaper for you
(5) you'll understand how the scanner is put together, meaning that it will be much easier for you to perform maintenance in the coming years/decades.
(6) if you don't want to have to build it yourself, or if you can't due to disabilities, I will still be able to build one for you. But I recommend making a post on the new scanner forum, when it's up and running, and finding someone local who could assemble it for you. That way you'd have someone nearby who could perform maintenance if/when necessary. Alternatively just ask your local camera repair center to build it.
(7) I won't be profiting from this venture. And although it would be excellent to be able to pay my own rent and that sort of thing from this scanner, I'll leave that to another project, and keep this purely as a hobby.
(8) timeframe: I recon the scanner prototype and websites will all be working and essentially complete and ready-to-go within 4 months. I now set myself the goal of having it all done and online by the last day of July, how about that.
 
Quejai, I think this is a great strategy. I thought there was too much personal risk for you with the original idea, as well as too time-consuming.
I am looking forward to your wiki and parts list so I can start building one myself.
 
Whoa! This is amazing! Can't wait. Super excited for this project to be completed. And I'm sure as hell like the deadline you set.
 
Thanks for the update. To bad the project didn't work out as you initially planned.
Very nice to hear your making this an open source project, will be following your progress.
Good luck!
 
(8) timeframe: I recon the scanner prototype and websites will all be working and essentially complete and ready-to-go within 4 months. I now set myself the goal of having it all done and online by the last day of July, how about that.

Good luck with that. Not sure how it can possibly beat a DSLR + macro stand + light table but we´ll see.
 
Good luck with that. Not sure how it can possibly beat a DSLR + macro stand + light table but we´ll see.

Same here, given that the DSLR method is easily comparable (in resolution and DR) to the best CCD scanners (9000ED, for example).

But I'm all for new film-related gear.
 
I've compared some scans made on an Epson 800 at 4800 dpi and an Imacon Precision III at 6300 dpi with digitalizations of the same Tri-X frame that I made on the Leitz BEOON copy stand with a Leica M-Monochfrom/DR Summicron lens. I found that, while the Epson 800 scans are good, the resolution on the Imacon is slightly higher than on the BEOON, which yielded about 5400 dpi — and that the dynamic range looked about the same on the BEOON and the Imacon, and a bit less on the Epson. Of course, the "scans" on the BEOON were a lot faster than on the Imacon, which take 5 minutes at 6300 dpi.

----------------
Alone in Bangkok essay on BURN Magazine
 
So I met up with calabachie (another rff member) (not sure on the spelling) a couple of times over the past few weeks and we've made a bit of progress. Some brackets for the chassis have been redesigned, and we rebuilt the frame based on this new approach. There's still more to do in this regard, so the rebuild is not yet final. We've shifted our focus to the design of the filmholder system, so that should be featured in the next update. We do have a super-sketchy temporary design, but that will really only be useful for giving early sample scans if everything else suddenly starts working.

Further, the 'carriages' (the things that slide up and down the rails) have been built. The illuminator one is basically a simulator of a kohler light source (with ~90% of the functionality for ~2% of the design effort), and will be replaced in time with the proper design. The camera carriage is a sketchy preliminary version of the final design, and features the back-to-back lenses and an image sensor panel. And 14 bolts.
Unfortunately the wheels and bearings that these carriages use have slightly more friction / resistance to motion than I was hoping. I'll think about how this could be resolved, if it turns out to be an issue. Further the carriages are a bit bigger than I thought they were going to be, so I'm going to lengthen the scanner frame by about 2 inches to compensate.
By the way, I've swapped the positions of the carriages: Originally, it was the camera on top, illuminator on the bottom. But we can get a smaller scanner and a lower center of mass if we put the camera on the bottom and the light source on the top, so that's what the plan is as of now.

Software is getting there. I've found a whole bunch of highly relevant sample code, relating to controlling the image sensor. And it's nuts. Assembly programming is fun.


Just a general point on some previous posts in this thread: This scanner essentially *is* the DSLR scanning approach, optimised. It's also got a film transport mechanism.

It uses a small image sensor, which means that we can use smaller lenses, if we accept that we will need to take several images of each film photo and 'stitch' them back together. This is easy, because of the film transport mechanism. The small sensor size also means we can jump straight on the bandwagon of microscope lenses, and hence outsource much of the optical design.

The very controlled color of the backlight of this scanner allows us to use either the bayer grid in the sensor, or bypass it alltogether and make several passes for each colour channel, and hence bypass a common complaint of DSLR scanning, which is that the colors suck.

The main disadvantage of this approach compared to using a dslr is that, as has been pointed out on other threads, the dslr approach allows you to use that camera for shooting too.

Anyway I do have uni exams coming up, so there's a good chance that this thread will be fairly quiet for the next month. On the other hand, the only thing that's stopping some sample scans is that the software is not quite working yet, and - due to exams - I'll have lots of time to procrastinate by working on this. So yet again, I'm not sure when the sample scans will be ready.

The photos below look terrible. They were clearly shot on a potato, and the little camera module has far too many bolts on it to ever be photogenic. The lower panel on that module is the 'digital back', and yes we ran out of nuts today, so it's not quite as complete as it will be soon. We also haven't reinstalled the stepper motors or belts yet, but they will go back in much like in the previous build.



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Time for a bit of a late update:

Calebarchie and I have been working pretty solidly on this, I recon we'll make the end-of-july (week-and-a-half) deadline, if the postal service isn't too slow. Much attention has been given to illumination, to electrostatic dust control, to software/electrical, to chassis redesigns, and to the film holder/advance/autofocus system.

Illumination:
We spent a couple of days messing with the kohler illumination approach (i.e. microscope illumination); reviewing the maths, building an optical-table mockup, 3D printing a housing for the lens elements etc; but the result was below what we were both expecting.
Film illuminated by our system, on inspection through the objectives to be used in the final design, looked no sharper and far less bright than diffusion (light table) illumination. As those are meant to be the two selling points of Kohler, I was concerned.
We have now dropped the Kohler illumination method in favor of diffusion illumination. This is like using a diffusion vs condenser enlarger. However, when we get enough time we (or one of you) will redesign and publish a modification to get kohler illumination set up. The kohler system will probably cost several hundred dollars compared to the $20 or so of diffusion, so I think it is reasonable to do diffusion first and go for kohler again a bit later on. Remember that unlike a commercial product, this scanner is designed to be incrementally upgraded and improved upon.

Software/electronics:
Up till last Monday, I had spent several weeks trying desperately to make the OV5642 image sensor work with the 'beaglebone black' computer board. But, surprise surprise, the complexity was ridiculous. For example, one of its two (2!) maunals has several thousand pages. If you still don't believe me, go through Dereck Molloy's 'exploring beaglebone' stuff. And yes I got my dose of assembly code for the sensor, but ultimately it dawned on me that even if I could push out some working software thing, I would have little hope of confidently troubleshooting it. That's not a good strategy for this scanner, which needs to work for decades and to be troubleshooted by amateurs.

So then it hit me: we could use a high-performance USB-based camera, connected straight to your computer, and use a well-documented Arduino based system to control the motors and LEDs on the scanner itself.
Much simpler, much more reliable, and around about the same cost. Anyway I'm happy with the change.
Also it's now much easier to upgrade / swap out image sensors in the future.

Also the first version of the software will be a bit of a mess, but the USB camera comes with an image capture program and we'll use a photoshop script to turn the output of that into a real photo. As time goes on and people work out the best routines in photoshop, we'll modify the script accordingly and later on end up with a polished all-in-one scanning program. Vuescan / whateverscan support is also plausable I now think.

The current USB camera is the See3CAM_12CUNIR using the AR0130CS sensor. One point to mention about this sensor: It's monochrome. So for now, bayer colour is no longer a thing unless you pick a different camera when you build your scanner. This means that one pass needs to be done for each colour channel of the scanner; just one pass for monochrome film, but four passes (R,G,B,IR) for colour. It's also 12 bits, which is a bit of a pita, but we can deal with it for now and buy a better one if necessary (and if anyone can find a 16 bit one, put a link below pls). Someone else also linked to line sensors a while a go - interestingly, we could even use line sensors here. Not sure if they're made with USB outputs though. I'm so keen for this sensor to get here.

Film handling:
The autofocus, film advance and film holder system is pretty hip. We're actually working on two systems in parallel for this as a contingency, we might even publish both designs if they're both satisfactory.

Wiki+forum:
Not much progress on content creation for this quite yet, but we'll pump it out at some point.

Color calibration:
Now also, we think it would be good to have some way of calibrating these scanners once they're built. What we currently think of is getting a bunch of film, perhaps 5-10 pages of archival sleeved films of various emulsions, and posting it between us all so we can scan them, save the raw data, then post them to someone else. And then we could have them scanned on Epsons, drums, pakons, have them professionally printed, etc, and then use that as a reference point to ensure our scanners are all on point, even though we might end up using slightly different LEDs, sensors, microscope objectives, etc. This will also let us all play with the best methods for optimising colour in photoshop, etc. We'll sort this all out once we've got the thing working.

The gist of this update: We're getting there, and I'm happy with where we're at and confident with the design.
 
Good work on the progress, quejai and calebarchie. Nice streamlining ideas, although for me a pity about no colour scanning for now.
Sorry calbearchie got booted off this forum. Perhaps he'll be let back in sometime. Please say hello to him from the Old Man.
 
thanks!

Now a couple of months ago, I gave myself the deadline of the 31st of July to have this whole thing done. While we're very close, we're not going to be done by that time. I realise that I seem to have made it a habit of breaking deadlines, but the intention and the effort was there, and a last-minute rush isn't going to help anyone.

I'm in the process of doing another rebuild of the chassis with new acrylic panels, so the main hardware (chassis, holders, carriages, holder holder, etc) could be done by next weekend.

Also the new USB camera arrived. Putting it in the scanner, I was able to get some test images. Now as the proper film holder has been designed but not built yet, I threw together a temporary film holder and used some stiff 4x5 film for the test (film donated by johnmcd). To clarify, the scans below were made with the final sensor, the final objectives, but a temporary holder and a temporary light source. There's also imperfect stitching, focus shifting, dust spots on the lenses, etc etc. This is not a final result, but a test to give you all an idea of what sort of things to expect from the scanner.

This is with the 20x objective. The film sleeve has 'APX 100 1998' written on it (expiry year?), and was exposed and developed in 2015 on a travelwide.

What does this test show? That this scanner will be capable of resolving all the image detail a photo has to offer, and then as much grain as you feel like. Interestingly, the characteristics of the grain change when you change focus.

The first two pics are to give you an idea of which area is being scanned, the final test scan follows. The scan is a bit wide, but I threw it up at 100% anyway so you can get a better idea of what the scanner is going to be capable of.


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