Cintel 16mm scan setting is too bright

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vitaphone27

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Cintel 16mm scan setting is too bright

PostFri Apr 24, 2020 12:28 pm

I wonder if any other users of the Cintel scanner have found the same problem as we have encountered. We have used the scanner since it was introduced in August 2016.We work mostly with pre 1960 original prints, the majority of which are black and white. The brightness/black/white level is supposed to be set by using the auto black button.

This works well for 35mm and 16mm Technicolor prints which by nature are denser and need little brightness adjustment. However the problem arises most critically with 16mm black and white films where the use of the brightness wheel produces an image far too bright to proceed with scanning. The only option at this stage is to wind down the brightness wheel which introduces colour casts which in turn can be reversed in the edit process by reducing saturation to nil.

It is to be hoped that developers are aware of this problem before the release of Cintel 4.0 software which is due to appear soon, I believe.

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DavidS

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Re: Cintel 16mm scan setting is too bright

PostTue May 05, 2020 12:54 pm

The auto white adjustment in print will always set the white level balanced at level 1000 (10 bit). This means it is imperative that you run the auto white calibration on the brightest frame in the clip that you are scanning with that setting.

There has been some suggestion that we should increase the overhead on the calibration to ameliorate this problem but with any reduction in that value of 1000 there will be increased noise in the blacks. Because the scans are in a logarithmic scale a fairly small reduction in this overhead can cause a fairly marked increase in black noise.

If you are seeing whites entering clip during the scan this would suggest that you have calibrated on a frame that was too dark. I can only assume this is what you are seeing when you say the image is too bright. The scan settings should always have whites as high as possible otherwise they will be noisy. You should not be adjusting so the image looks correct at this stage all that should be the case is the whites just out of clip.

There can be a colour cast to some black and white stocks even though the whites are balanced unfortunately which as you say has to be corrected out in resolve by reducing saturation. Ideally we would add an extra film type to the scanner for black and white stocks but this has not yet been done.

Let me know your thoughts, cheers

Dave
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Tony Saffrey

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Re: Cintel 16mm scan setting is too bright

PostFri May 08, 2020 5:12 pm

I think that what is happening the when incident light is lowered, it doesn't track balance.

Maybe if the work around works, it maybe be possible to balance by "open gate" method BEFORE the film is laced (but I think it requires correctly laced before the the controls work - therefore might work with blank film frames).

The brightness control doesn't seem to track without causing a colour cast.

It still doesn't work correctly even with correct grey scale - the whites always seem to crushing.

(I sometimes work with Vitaphone 27 on the same kit)
Anthony Saffrey
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Tony Saffrey

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Re: Cintel 16mm scan setting is too bright

PostSat May 09, 2020 10:54 am

David S said -

" The scan settings should always have whites as high as possible otherwise they will be noisy. You should not be adjusting so the image looks correct at this stage all that should be the case is the whites just out of clip"

Exactly, but with the automatic colour balance, is it indeed too bright and crushing the whites. When you turn the illuminance down, it introduces a colour cast. But some of the prints are tinted and toned so it defeats the purpose.

Thinking back to when I working at the ABC in Australia, we had 16mm prints of BBC Telerecodings which they somtimes used cut in the original negative. CAR used bellow down the intecom "Hitting the Clipper!!! before we had time to adjust the levels!

Cheers,

Anthony Saffrey
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James Little

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Re: Cintel 16mm scan setting is too bright

PostWed May 27, 2020 1:36 am

Auto white is just trying to get the RGB channels matched to 1000 out of 1024 on the scopes. In events when users aren't certain of the brightest frame on the reel, and as such, some will go into clip if balanced on an earlier frame, we'd expect that users would maintain the RGB balance but bring the light levels down. "Auto Black/White" can't meet everybody's need and in some special cases people might need to make manual adjustments. If you're doing HDR scanning "Auto" is the only way, but again, in special cases I probably wouldn't recommend HDR scanning anyways.

Let us know if you were able to manually achieve your desired results, if not, that's probably worth further discussion as black and white support is trickier on this scanner as it does not have a monochrome sensor.

Regards

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