Sad News Alert

alright, i think im ok with how the films are turning out.
Im dropping to use 3 exposures, with +/-2 stops. ive tested the same frame using the same outputs on multiple different reels and with different scenes, and i couldn't see enough of a difference between 3 and 5 exposures to justify the extra time and space thats needed.

For a 50ft reel its taking up about 360gb for the raw photos when using 5 exposures, and only 180gb when using 3, and that increases 3x after converting to tiff.

The image on the left is the single exposure capture at 0EV.
The image on the right is the 3 bracket "hdr" exposure, +/-2EV.
None of the images have had post processing, the left is the tiff output from raw, and the right is created using exposure fusion using enfuse.

There isn't a massive difference, i was expecting more to be honest. But you can still see some improvements, the 3 exposure version has more detail in the curtains, and the person on the right of the image wearing the black shirt, on the left image its pure black, but on the right, i can kinda make out a fold in the shirt. Maybe im just imagining things🤷‍♂️

Anyway, im gonna start the rest of the process after converting all these files.

ive still gotta figure out the best way to post process these films, but i cant be bothered 😭

Im capturing my third reel at the moment, it appears to be the "Durham Miners' Gala", No idea what year its from.

Well... the capture finished without issue, which is great, now time to work out the post process steps😁

We have reached the half way mark (ish) for the capture. Currently at frame 1568, no hiccups or interventions needed so far🥰

Capture is on frame 420, and its been going for 1 and half hours. So ~13seconds per frame?
Yeah, i dont think its going be any quicker, which is unfortunate, i really thought some of the timing changes i made would have shaved at least 1 second per frame off, but apparently not😭

The film hasn't slipped yet, which is good. I think by this point in the film last time i had had to help it out 2 or 3 times. So hopefully that is more reliable now.

Ive started the capture again, Haven't changed a massive amount in the code, just the number of captures before it transfers to the nas and some delays inbetween shots.

This is the first test with the glued up gate that i mentioned earlier.

So far its got past the section in the film that was consistently slipping, so hopefully this just finishes with no hiccups.

If it does finish without issue, im gonna attempt to implement a resume feature, just incase something interrupts the process.

I have no idea what the best post processing steps are, ive gotta research that 😭

Regarding how long it takes to scan a 50ft reel... Well the answer is, To fucking long.

Ignoring the first 5 frames, which are REALLY slow and used as learning frames, I would say on average its taking about 10 seconds to capture the frame, That doesnt include moving / aligning the film.

So, assuming around 2900 frames per 3 minute (50ft) reel, it would take 8 FUCKING HOURS.

Heres the thing, Im not sure how much i can do to speed that up. Moving the film doesn't take a massive amount of time, so its not like i can cut the move time down a great deal. The main time hog is the capturing process.

I will admit, i think what im doing at the moment is probably overkill, but i would rather do to much than not enough and end up having to capture the whole reel again.

This is what im doing...

Each frame is captured using 5 HDR brackets: one at normal exposure (0EV), plus two overexposed (+1EV and +2EV) and two underexposed (-1EV and -2EV). I based that off some posts ive seen on the kinograph.cc forum, which seems to suggest that 8mm film has a pretty high dynamic range.

The biggest speed increase would be knocking it down to 3 exposures from 5.. i think.

I set the first film to digitize last night. It mostly worked, but there is some issues.

First of all, The gate, I had to take the gate apart this morning as there was just the tiniest gap inbetween from and back of the gate, the film would slightly slip into the gap and cause some unnecessary friction. Ive took it apart and put a tiny little bit of super glue along the bottom edge, put it back together and run some cardboard through the gate to make sure its a clear path for the film, I only just did that, so i haven't tested it yet.

Second thing is the rollers for advancing the film, it works most of the time, but sometimes it slips and isn't able to move the film, however, im hoping the modified gate will reduce that friction and give the rollers more of a chance to advance the film.

I changed the spring for the roller clamp arm thing to a tighter(?) spring, so now it puts more pressure on the film and should grip it better?🤷‍♂️

I havent actually done any of the take up reel side of things, im just letter the film gather for a little bit then manually rolling it on a reel. Primarily because the frame for the machine was only designed for a 3inch (50ft) reel, not the larger reels. I havent really decided what im going to do regarding larger reels, but i really dont wanna rebuild the entire thing again, so ill probably see if i can design an extender or something, which would give more room for larger reels.

I tell you what annoys me, When you see a big ass spider crawling along the wall, then kill it and take a picture to show someone how fucking big it is, and its all curled up into a tiny ass ball 😭

Absolute bargain 🤡

I swear to god that half my stuff goes in the bin when its "gone missing".

I was just about to put a strip of PEC-PAD on the wetgate and i couldn't find the PEC-PADS anywhere. Then i remembered that someone (not me) decided to "help" by "cleaning" my desk and somehow thought that a brand new pack of white cloth was just rubbish and threw it in the bin.

So i just had to dig through the wheely bin filled with nasty shit like fucking sanitary pads 😒

They cost me 17 fucking quid.

I replaced the vgrove roller thing from an old 3d printer with one of the rubber rollers i purchased for my scanner design from last year.

It was working quite well, but last night i was testing something and noticed it cant slip a little, so 2 rubber rollers should work better right?

I added a little handle to pull the springy part up on the wetgate i made. I drastically underestimated how hard it would be to actually insert the film 😂

The finger pull thing prints separately and is superglued in place.

i tried to add a usb drive to the pi to increase my storage, but the pi kept freaking out when its connected, probably because of the power the monitor is sucking up too.

Ive added network storage support for smb shares.

I havent tested it yet because ive left my film out of reach and im to lazy to get it. But it basically captures x number of frames and then transfers them to the network storage. If no network storage is configured, then the internal storage will be used.

Im thinking about how best to do the takeup reel stuff.

In the original python code he is using math to work out how much to turn the take up reel, but i think thats a little unreliable. If the thickness of the film, or the diameter of the center of the reel changes, it will mess up the calculations.

Im considering just adjusting the stepper motor vref to something high enough to be able to turn the reel, but low enough to slip when there is no film to take up. And just running that every 10 frames or so.

Ive spent all day boiling hot, thankfully not sweating tho.
But ive also been working on the gui, and i think most of the main functionality is up and working.

It should be pretty self explanatory. the layout sucks ass, but it works and i wont be look at it all the time anyway.

So when you start the app, you have to turn the camera on, I dont know why i decided to have it boot without the camera on, but i did, so... 🤷‍♂️

After turning the camera on, you can control the motors, (still need to implement the take up reel stuff).

The frame counter is more of a "session reset", the idea is that when you put a new film on the machine, u reset the counter.
Resetting the counter resets the frame count back to 0, but also changes the output image names to the current date/time. Behind the scenes, it also resets the learned count for that reel.

When you are ready to start scanning, press the "Find Frame" button, it will then advance the film very slowly until the sprocket holes are both detected. The start capture button will be enabled.

When pressing the Start capture button, it will capture the first frame immediately, it will then "learn" the film. Basically all it does is advance the film really slowly, counting the steps, when the next frame is found (the sprocket holes), it will capture the frame, and then slowly go to the next frame. It does 5 frames like this (or whatever you set it to in the config), then it uses the average number of steps on the motor it took to reach the next frame, and uses that (minus an offset) to get to the next frame. It saves a decent amount of time over the length of a reel of film.

I haven't finished yet, and i haven't tested how fast it is.
I will continue to work on it, but at the moment, im going to eat a fab lolly.

Just saw a massive fucking spider crawling along my ceiling. I went to kill it with a broom handle and missed, then it fell on the floor and now i cant find it😭

Just put the Pec Pads (Stupid name) in the wet gate

I cut them down to size, and used some double sided tape to hold the strips in place.

Those pads btw cost a fortune for what they are, it was like £17 for 100, im probably gonna use like 20 of them at most😭

Havent really touched the film scanner today, I did modify some code for the gui though.

This is what ive been working on. Mainly the "wetgate" thing, the base and modifying the 2 winder things i found on thingiverse.

Ill tell u more when im not so... relaxed...😂