Hmm. I haven’t tried this technique.
My RetroScan is fairly new. I bought it in December 2017, and it has been very lightly used. I used it a few times after I bought it, but I was never happy with the stability of the scans.
Then in January, Roger announced the LightPin upgrade, and it was like he was fulfilling a personal request that I had made for the RetroScan. I bought the upgrade immediately and then, like you, waited three months for him to get it together.
As of this writing, I have been using my LightPin-modded 16mm gate for a week, but I don’t yet feel confident to post a review. I’ve only transferred one 16mm television commercial from 1964. I’ve been spending a lot of time trying to decide what the best “flat scan” settings are so that I have good dynamic range when I do color correcting in my nonlinear editor (for me, Final Cut Pro X). As a result, I’ve transferred that same commercial FIVE times trying to develop settings that are satisfactory.
Even then, I noticed that horizontal registration started fluctuating near the end of the reel. I added some leader film at the end hoping to solve the problem. No luck. The film print was in perfect condition. New in the box when I opened it last week. It’s not warped or damaged.
I need to transfer more films before I can feel confident passing judgement on the LightPin gate modification. One 60-second commercial is not enough of a sample size to write a review. So I’ll transfer a few more short films and see how I feel about it after that.
Always great to hear from another RetroScan owner! After all, I have zero interest in building this gear myself. Personally, I would rather be turning vintage film content into money rather than engineering a film transfer solution. But even the RetroScan is a challenge to operate, because there are so many different film stocks, and they all have their own problems!
Good luck solving yours! —Todd Ruel
P.S. There’s a RetroScan users’ group on Facebook. If you’re not already a member, look for it, and join the club! Roger is on it regularly.