Wolverine-Hawkeye Telecine

[David Brown]

So if I add all 5 sonalerts in parallel will it be even louder! That's loud on your video Stan. I once ran the film loop avoiding the capstan so every few seconds the alarm would sound. It was like a bird chirping once outside my closed window.

If you watched the Amazon customer feedback video for the sonalert, it's also pretty loud when installed under a motor scooter's seat. It was a reminder to turn off his turn signals that both flashed and chirped.

All these new changes are ready? Time to review the flash tutorial again. I have 2 MSP40s, I'll flash the other one to be safe. Plus will need to print the switch table and glue it to the back cover!

[Kamel Ikhlef]

Thanks Stan and David,
All your configurations and dimensions are very useful for fine-tuning my settings.

Stan,
Thank you very much, but I have no problem with my 3D printed lens holder. It works very well.
I am happy that the capstan can operate at all speeds although I favor quality and therefore rather slow speeds.

I like having additional options. Thanks for all that work.

BTW: I ordered the small 25mm micrometer.
we'll see, otherwise I'll use it outside on my camera test board.
It will be easier.

maybe buy a new 4K camera. But that does not solve the difficulty of focusing.
just improve the quality of the captured image.

According your tests it's not that obvious to see the difference.
The ux226 is really too expensive in france. And I wonder if it's worth it...

[Stan Jelavic]

No need to install all 5 David unless you want to end up in a doggy house like I did with only one of them installed. I did one pass of tests with a new FW. Maybe you can wait for a day or so until I complete the tests. So far everything passes. I also increased the takeup tension.
Kamel, agree, there is not much difference in resolution between the two cameras based on tests that we did but the UX226 has a bit better overall color and somewhat better shadows and for high resolution it is easier to get both S8 and R8 aligned. I wanted to check if the bit depth in 2 exposure HDR will make any difference. I would expect 64 bit mode to be somewhat better but we will see.
Are you looking at getting the See3CAM_CU135 I am a bit concerned about pink glow. See this image:
https://www.e-consystems.com/blog/ca...See3CAM130.png

It has a bit of pink haze and not sure if that is due to lighting or pink glow. Will repeat this again... the sensors designed for cell phones have to work with very short focal lengths. That causes the rays of light to bend more and strike at a shallow angle and the sensors are not sensitive at that angle. So they install like a grid of small lenses above the sensor which is all a part of the die to optically amplify the shallow angle beams and that works very well for short focal lengths. The issue is when you stick a 16mm lens there the angles are higher and closer to the vertical and now the small micro lenses act as color filters and the scene gets a pink hue. Some of the Arducam camera drivers come with the pixel color compensation tables and that does work but it is very sensor specific. I asked e-con but they just say that it should work for the 16 mm lens without any further elaboration. When I told them what application we plan to use this for they suggested different low rez cameras... See3CAM_CU22 and Hyperyon^® (e-CAM22_USB)

[David Brown]

I saw the sample image with the pink haze and it reminded me of something I had seen.

Short story, 3 years ago I bought a Drone. 2 of the camera issues I remember were de-centered lenses and a "red hotspot". My drone had a de-centered lens which was attributed to quality control in the factory (15% of the right margin was not focused). I never had the red spot and I would have noticed it.

The manufacturer claimed it was a common problem with lens proximity also seen in cell phones and most people don't notice. Why would only a few have this problem? Could it also be QA? Could that be the same problem with the See3cam?

BUT

I searched for 4k cameras to use with Hawkeye, and found many available at reasonable pricing. I never chose one because of software.

If we purchase a camera outside of the Imaging Systems, how could it be used with this application?

[Stan Jelavic]

Compare the two cams in 2 exposure HDR mode. Not big difference. The BUC02 shadows turn reddish color and a bit noisier. It is more noticable in HDR mode and obviously UX226 is higher rez.

[Kamel Ikhlef]

Ok, thanks for your advice. I'll wait, then...
with your new HDR system it already improves the scans a lot (not yet tested).
4K would be interesting if we had real 4K in final resolution. If not, it is less interesting.

the image of the UX226 seems less noisy. Thinking...

[Stan Jelavic]

Kamel the 4k camera could work, I just got burned by pink glow before. This was a cheap Arducam.

Maybe should check the e-con return policy.
David, that looked like pink or red glow to me but other things could cause it also. If there is a very good 4k camera out there for a reasonable price then we just change the app or do own own.

[David Brown]

Kamel, I believe you said you have no R8mm films. You would need a 4K chip to capture both S8 & R8. They have different centers.

A 4K camera will not produce 4K video. The film needs to be over scanned since it is VERY hard to physically center the camera over the film frame, it must be done electronically. Maybe a 6K camera???

A Good & cheap 4k camera can be hard to identify! My concern with the software goes beyond the trigger function that most of them do not have. That can probably be overcome, its the image decoding that concerns me. My microscope camera is 4K and was not expensive. There is very little control over the image. From memory there is just manual color balance and exposure. The the image is output as a jpg that might not have very good raw decoding.

I also have a cheap webcam that came with no software and must rely on Microsoft Camera to take pictures or video. It uses the same sensor as the 72BUC02, but the tonal range and colors are not as good.

Here are some 4K cameras, some with a C-mount housing and C-lens, others with just a board and M12 lens. All these for $80-$110. Sony sensors.

https://elpcameramodule.aliexpress.c...il.100008.2.4c fe76303tadTi

Or hey, $24 & free shipping! I doubt it's a very good camera. Looks like 4K with USB2 is now heavily discounted.

I'm not recommending any of these cameras above.

I don't know how difficult image processing software would be to develop for you Stan, it would be impossible for me!

Is the new FW able to handle the HDR capture, or is the HDR app and Enfuse still needed?

[Stan Jelavic]

No David the new FW just provides the HDR in the same build but still needs the app and Enfuse. I am still testing it. Currently running with the UX226. Found out that the UX226 will not run 2FPS because the exposure time is > 0.5 sec. Bumping up the gain to 10dB (ISO) made it work, Surprisingly I have not found any appreciable difference in image quality. So for people that want to do a quick fast scan this seems to be a good option. Will have to rerun the tests with the BUC02 again and then I will release the FW. Probably another day or so.
For the 4K selection I like Kamel's suggestion but really concern about pink glow, so for $50 I ordered the Arducam from Amazon. It uses the same sensor and ISP. Will do a quick test as soon as get it and if I am not happy with it I will just return it back.
If it does pass the tests then we could consider the expensive USB3 version from e-consystems.

[Stan Jelavic]

Regarding ISP David, I did work at the very low level through the MIPI interface tweaking the biases and did the auto functions and managed to get a pretty decent quality. I believe some of that stuff is in the early posts. But would not recommend that we do that again. The camera that I ordered
https://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B08D3KRVLQ/
has on board ISP which is a great help.

[David Brown]

Stan, a quick question about the UX226. You and I may be the only users here. Have you noticed the camera dropping out?

This is during exposure adjustments when I notice the image doesn't update. Then placing my finger between the lens and film, find the image is frozen.
I think it is the Usb3 that is dropping out and hope it is not the camera. I switched to a laptop today and it only dropped once. Then for a few hours it was ok.

Anyway I will look to find a diagnostic for the usb. Driver is ok, at least Windows can't find a better one. All other usb 3 users are only portable drives or thumb drives that seem to be ok.

This is not a new problem, but I've not been testing for a while.

[Stan Jelavic]

I noticed that a few times. Did not really payed too much attention to it because it did come back every time but for a while it was gone. Maybe we can contact TIS about this issue. It never happened during normal scan but always when I am in settings and fiddling with the exposure.
On another note, I found out why the HDR image sequence is sometimes offset by 1. The MSP FW has a counter that is started by the run switch. Once the counter reaches a certain count it will trigger the camera. The counter gets reset by the claw sync and that way is aligned with the claw. But the instant when you turn the run switch on the claw could be anywhere. If the claw is far away from the start it could be enough time for the counter to hit the threshold before the claw resets it. In that case it will produce a single trigger before the claw sync i.e. will give one previous frame and make everything to go off by 1.
But, anyways fixed that after spending almost the whole day trying to figure it out. The new FW is available at:
https://github.com/vintagefilmography/msp430

Tested it in normal and HDR mode with the UX226 camera. Will retest with the BUC02 tomorrow but it looks very good so far.
I also added the 64 bit tiff save to the hdr app. It is available here.
https://github.com/vintagefilmography/hdr

The readme and the detailed word manual is also there.

[Kamel Ikhlef]

Thanks Stan for all these improvements.

Yes David, you have a very good memory, I have no R8 film. All of my films are S8.

I will redesign the motor mount for the capstan to integrate the sonalert mount.

My initial wish was to be able to scan my films with damaged perforations.
Also I would like to retest with my toothed pulleys.

Stan, Does my FW(V12) allow me to do this and also alert me with the sonalert?
I liked the old procedure with the resumption of the film by the capstan.
I will work on it again.

BTW : Here the New and old Capstan Motor Support with SonAlert Support STEP Files.

[Stan Jelavic]

The FW that you have Kamel will work. With the motor connected the sonalert alert will be very short because the tug of the motor is enough to trigger the monitor even with the jam present.

[Kamel Ikhlef]

Thanks Stan,

If I update to your latest firmware could still use with my cogwheel (old method) to hang and advance the film ?

sonalert can be very useful to warn in case of problem, the alarm should last a few seconds.
I have not yet tested.