Hi, I have been a film collector for many years. My collection exceeds a thousand reels of film with some unique prints. Recently I have started scanning some of my films, I have a couple friends who have scanners. I will eventually be buying my own machine. I am a mechanic with a fair amount of fabrication skills. If I can find a design that works then I would rather fabricate my own machine. I think you have a solid design and would like to add my experience and skills to help your design become better.
Welcome, @Jeffcrowl! Can’t wait to hear what you have in your collection. I could definitely use the help improving this design. This is a good place to start. It gives an overview of the components and major design decisions so far. There’s also the wiki, and of course these forums.
Didn’t have a chance to use it, but I know Solidworks pretty well (got a certificate from Dassault and all). I don’t mind learning how to use it though if its necessary for the project 
Hello everyone !
I’m Jeremy from France. Some years ago i digitalised my inlaws super 8 movie by projecting them right onto my MkII sensor, it worked quite well with some post production. At that time i was also a member of Zebralab, an associative darkroom based in Geneva (i still am, and i live on the border between france and switzerland), both for photography and cinema. As regulations and film cost evolved, it was difficult and expensive to shoot/process. So we built two machines to turn 30m of double super-8 films into 4 15m super-8, we also found a way around chemistery to lower the total cost. Zebralab purchased a Moviestuff Retroscan, so we can digitalize what we are shooting and processing, but, i’m not quite satified with the quality, so here i am, looking to build a Kinograph with a full frame sensor and some macro lense with extenstion tube to have super-8 in 4K !
what brought you to Kinograph ? Google and the need of better resolution than retroscan.
what are you most excited about ? Building it and craft some amelioration if i can.
what skills/knowledge can you offer others on the forum ? I can share knowledges about the two machine we built (its crafty, it work, but i’m no engeineer, so there is probably a better way to buil i do not know) as well as for black and white darkroom, bleaching process, etc.
Happy new year as well !
Cheers,
Jeremy
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Bienvenue toi dis donc ! Welcome my dear Jeremy !
Welcome, @jeremysp! We’d love to see your machines if you’re willing to share some pics. Can’t wait to see what you build next
Hi,
I had been toying with digitising my S8mm films for a long time and finally started work on my own machine about 2 years ago. The project has been on the back burner as other things took over. Anyway I have finally finished the “prototype” (they all are really…) and produced my first scans a few days ago. I intend posting details so won’t bore you here…
I worked for the British Antarctic Survey from 1978 to 2007 with some time off for good behaviour. The cine film cover the first few years and contains a lot of memories. I recently finished scanning my slide collection (approx 15k) and I want to combine these, recent video and the cine onto a set of dvd’s for posterity. A really big project but plenty of time available at the moment !.
It would have been easier (and much cheaper) to have the cine scanned for me but being a retired engineer I welcomed the challenge. My scanner has some features that may be of interest.
Cheers
Pat
What a cool career! Do they have film archives?! Welcome to the mix
Bienvenue Jeremy! My first iteration of this scanning project was projecting right onto my MkII sensor too! But the lens in the projector was in terrible shape so I ended up buying a proper macro lens. I’m using the Venus Laowa 2.5x-5x and I don’t need any extension tube.
Hello everyone.
I am a retired engineer from Spain.
I have at home a collection of old family movies in Super8 format that I haven’t seen in a long time. For this reason, two years ago, I set out to build a machine that would allow me to digitize films.
After the appropriate research on the Internet, I found a project that coincided exactly with what I wanted to do and during the summer of last year I began to obtain positive results that encouraged me to improve both the machine and the software that made it work.
The camera used was a Raspicam V1 compatible camera, which was affected by the lens shading problem, which in my case became very evident after a change in lighting.
My arrival at Kinograph has been motivated by the impossibility of eliminating the problem.
Searching in Google, I found this forum that I have found an excellent source of information and experiences of other people with my same concerns.
I have thought about completely replacing the camera and the optical system.
At the moment I am already in possession of a new Raspberry Pi HQ camera and a Rodenstock Rodagon 50mm f 1: 2.8 lens, and I am waiting to receive the rest of the components (extension tubes, coupling rings, etc).
What I find most exciting is being able to manage via software, the taking of images and control the movement of the film and finally obtain a digital film that defies the passage of time.
I can offer other forum users my experience in machine building and software development.
In the appropriate thread I will leave photos and a video of my device.
The original of this text is written in Spanish and translated with Google Translator. I apologize if there is any wrong expression in English.
Greetings.
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Howdy!
My name’s Justin and I’m a cinematic fanatic. I run a boutique Blu-ray label called GOLD NINJA VIDEO (www.goldninjavideo.com) and while we’ve done around 30 releases, they’ve all been either previous public domain SD transfers or films that were digitally shot - with a focus on poverty row films, 70s martial arts cinema and micro-budget work. The gimmick of the label is that we treat every film like it was Criterion Special Edition by crafting new special features for each release, and giving attention to films that often are found gathering dust in bargain bins, or even better, get to highlight a new filmmaker that for a number of reasons (mostly low budgets) their film never had a chance to be seen by an audience. Thankfully, I have a loyal fanbase thanks to a podcast I’ve hosted over the last few years called THE IMPORTANT CINEMA CLUB (Stream The Important Cinema Club music | Listen to songs, albums, playlists for free on SoundCloud), so I’ve been able to keep doing releases because people keep buying 'em!
It’s always been a DIY operation and the final frontier was acquiring 16mm prints of forgotten films, scanning them, and releasing them on Blu-ray - so I’ve always been obsessively looking over the last few years at options that are available to me which led me to stumble onto this very useful forum! I look forward to reading a chatting with you all 
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Welcome, @JustinDecloux . Glad to have you with us. Love the idea of your label. Sounds like a heck of a lot of fun. Hope to have a 16mm solution for you by the end of the summer.
Hello!
My name is Dylan. I am a 16mm film collector and have been collecting since October 2012. I’m also quite young, in my 20s. I’m not a filmmaker or big-shot editor, I’m just your average dude with a film collection. I first found out about Kinograph in 2015. At the time, I was only familiar with V1 and thought it was intriguing. I ultimately never got around to building one for myself. I ended up forgetting about the project until I rediscovered it in November 2020, and I’ve been following along ever since. My collection consists of television syndication/network prints.
In the last nine years, I’ve only had two transfer machines. The first one I purchased was in March 2018. It was a modified Bell & Howell 3585 projector with a five blade shutter and a 480p, 1CCD camera. It did the job even though the quality wasn’t that great, but at the time it was just what I needed. I then purchased a Moviestuff Retro 16 Pro in August 2019, but sold it one month later because I was unsatisfied with it. I am currently waiting for the completion of Kinograph V2 to be able to finally purchase a film scanner that I know I’ll be satisfied with.
I have a bit of knowledge about mechanical engineering and electronics, but I’m afraid it probably wouldn’t be of much help (my father, however, is very knowledgeable about that stuff since he went to school to study it), but I can try to add to the conversation any way I can. My area(s) of expertise mainly have to do editing (self-taught since 2011), software, and different types of film stocks.
My ultimate goal is to purchase a Kinograph and scan all of the 16mm prints I currently have. I have been eagerly awaiting to purchase a good film scanner since I first started collecting, and now I believe that time is almost here. I just cannot wait to finally scan these films to digital and be able to do work on them in post and to be able to share them with others that would like to see them.
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Welcome, @DPXTIF . I personally can’t wait to see all the films you have collected. ANd I’m glad to have you and your Dad with us to make Kinograph as good as it can be. Can’t wait to see what you do with it. We are doing our best to get you a machine that will do what you want it to.
Hi there,
I am a film production student in Derby, UK with a keen interest in analogue film. I am just looking through the design and notice that the scanner uses a normal dslr shutter to capture the images on the 35mm roll? Has this been solved yet? Apologies if this has already been sorted, I just couldn’t find it reflected in the designs.
How come it doesn’t use a rotary disc shutter like motion picture cameras use? You could have the shutter controlled via timing belt? Unless this has already been tried and failed for whatever reason.
Thanks
Floyd
Scanning is digital. You have a choice between: CCD or CMOS, rolling shutter or global shutter, Bayer or monochrome, area or line sensor, express or GigE, optical low-pass filter or not, camera manufacturer, and choice of lens.
Are you looking to build a scanner?
Hello, my name is Garrit and I am very new to this community. I got my first 16mm camera 2 weeks ago and finished the reel of Vision 3 500T. I plan to develop this weekend. I am looking at options for scanning in the future and had a question. I see all these DIYs with projectors or taking pictures of individual frames.
Is it not possible to just use a light bed to project the negative and use a digital camera to shoot 4K “X” Frames per second. All else equal framing could be an issue but if there was a way to sync?
I’m not sure I understand the question. If you’re using a projector you can build a “projector telecine” that involves removing the shutter, putting in a good LED light and then pointing a camera at the gate. Past designs used video cameras which weren’t very good, but you can get very good quality machine vision cameras now which aren’t that expensive. If you’re using a projector you just put a small magnet on a gear that rotates once every frame and use a hall-effect sensor to trigger the camera (see this diagram). You can capture at realtime (24fps) or even faster using that method, but that will also depend on the choice of camera the resolution and the data speed. Negatives have a thinner base compared to prints, but a decent projector should still be fine handling negatives in decent condition as your transport.
Beyond that most modern scanners ARE just a camera pointed at the film at the heart of it. There’s a bit more involved, this shows you how the Filmfrabrik scanners work:
And this is just the stuff that’s in the direct line of the camera:
That part is exactly the same design that’s in the Lasergraphics Scanstation and the Blackmagic Cintel. Camera, Lens, Gate, Integrating sphere/cube to diffuse light, RGB LED light, heatsink.
Welcome to the community!
Welcome @Floyd_Parker ! The current design does not use a DSLR. The most (not very at this point) up to date specs can be found on the wiki: https://wiki.kinograph.cc. That will be updated in the coming weeks/months as more component designs are finalized.