Hi there,
I am based in the UK and have been looking at the amazing DIY machines people have created to scan their cine film. They are beyond my ability to make from scratch, but I would love to upgrade my commercial £400 scanner without going to the next commercial step which seems to be a £10k-20k+ machine.
Is there forum, market place, web site where these DIY scanners are bought/sold?
Welcome Michael.
I do not know of any marketplace. There are a couple of Facebook groups on the film scanning subject (Budget Film Scanner and DIY Cine Film Scanner Makers). Tscann 8 is quite popular as a DIY project, and a branch in github mentions a Discord group.
Two broad groups in DIY:
On the second group, if you have access to a 3D printing shop and drilling (or laser cutting), you would not be starting from scratch.
The scanner that I built -in my opinion- is a bit simpler transport than Tscann-8, better results, and longer scanning time. One of my goals is to provide documentation as open-source for others to build it (similar to what Tscann has done). But until now have been using most -of the limited time I have- improving on it, mostly to get the scanning done at the quality that I was targeting (not the scanning speed). Mine is in the low-cost group, probably under $800 (with ebay lens).
There are some higher-speed higher-quality higher-cost (mostly the camera) projects here, such as Roland’s All format scanner.
In summary, the short answer is no marketplace, but the long answer is maybe some alternatives to look into.
That’s great info, many thanks for your reply. Your sub £1k build is in the ballpark for what I was looking for. I do own a laser cutter which might help with a build if I go that route.
From what i have read on forums the project to build your own scanner often seems to take many months and sometimes years. I understand that this is probably only working on it on and off, but I didn’t want the project to become building the scanner as opposed to scanning the films.
I will definitely have a look at the links you posted to see if there are any for sale, or if the build instructions seem comprehensive enough to give it a go.
Many thanks again.
Basically, a scanner consists of a film transport system, a lighting system, and a camera with its corresponding lens, all coordinated and controlled by appropriate software.
As @PM490 has rightly pointed out, I belong to the group that has built its own scanner using an old projector modified with a stepper motor for film transport. The reason is simple: although I have plenty of manual dexterity, I don’t have a workshop or the appropriate tools to build the scanner from scratch.
Using the projector makes things much easier, and you can have a good quality scanner in a short amount of time. Once you have all the components, it’s just a matter of a few days of work.
You can find several examples on this forum, including my own device.
As for the software, you can freely download my own DSuper8 software, which is free and open source, and is also published on this forum.
Here’s a link to a video of an enthusiast who built his projector-based scanner in just one day:
Good luck with whatever decision you make.