Modding the Kodak Reels 8mm Film Digitizer (Firmware Hack)

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jackmonte1987 said:
Here is my side by side. The 0dan0 custom FW recording is on left and the MAC84 FW on the right, I feel that this is the closest i was able to getting color in these overexposed frames. You can see later in the video it does a much better job with the color and matches the right side more. With the MAC84 firmware, I am able to see more color in the overexposed frames. Maybe i'm just not cut out for all the manual settings in the custom fw lol. There are some nice frames at the very end you can compare

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You just have the white balance wrong. You have the White Balance at 0, is should be +1.5 or +2.0 for this film. The white balance is reset with each firmware update.
 
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0dan0 said:
You just have the white balance wrong. You have the White Balance at 0, is should be +1.5 or +2.0 for this film. The white balance is reset with each firmware update.
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I will try it again when I get home, but I messed with the settings for about 10 or 15 minutes and that was the best I could get.
 
jackmonte1987 said:
I will try it again when I get home, but I messed with the settings for about 10 or 15 minutes and that was the best I could get.
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If you still have a blue shift when you set a +2.0 WB, that would mean I have to increase the range in the firmware. So that would be useful feedback.
 
Sometimes, people used tungsten film outdoors, and if they forgot to use the orange filter, it caused a strong blue tint. My father has some footage with that noticeable blue tint, and the white balance setting can't fix it. Some cameras automatically applied the orange filter, while with others, it had to be done manually.
 
Set the white balance to +2 and start recording. The auto exposure is not running during preview on any of my firmware. It will start to correct for the exposure once recording. Then share the recorded file.
 
0dan0 said:
I never found this lens from a US supplier. It likely does exist here, but I not found it.
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Many thanks to @Mac84 for starting this effort and to @0dan0 for the incredible firmware improvements that I can't wait to try when my Reels arrives next week. I have no knowledge / experience to share on the firmware front, but I think that I have located a US supplier for the 12mm macro lens recommended by @0dan0. RMA Electronics is currently selling the Azure Photonic AZURE-1228MAC for $84 here:
https://www.rmaelectronics.com/azure-photonics-azure-1228mac

If I'm not mistaken, all of the specs for this AZURE-1228MAC lens are identical to those for the Scorpion Vision SVL-1228MAC lens.

RMA Electronics is quoting me a price around $14 to ship the lens to my Midwest US address via UPS ground, resulting in a total cost of around $100.

I hope this info proves helpful to some of us US tinkerers.
 
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sheider said:
Many thanks to @Mac84 for starting this effort and to @0dan0 for the incredible firmware improvements that I can't wait to try when my Reels arrives next week. I have no knowledge / experience to share on the firmware front, but I think that I have located a US supplier for the 12mm macro lens recommended by @0dan0. RMA Electronics is currently selling the Azure Photonic AZURE-1228MAC for $84 here:
https://www.rmaelectronics.com/azure-photonics-azure-1228mac

If I'm not mistaken, all of the specs for this AZURE-1228MAC lens are identical to those for the Scorpion Vision SVL-1228MAC lens.

RMA Electronics is quoting me a price around $14 to ship the lens to my Midwest US address via UPS ground, resulting in a total cost of around $100.

I hope this info proves helpful to some of us US tinkerers.
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You have found it. That totally looks like the correct lens. And it's priced correctly, it's a nice lens, quality glass.
 
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At frame 16385 the black stripes appear. Not on display but in the file.
16385 the first of 5 stripes, then 10 frames without, then another 5 with stripes, 10 without, 5 with and so on ...
 
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Quick report on V6.9, type C.

Won't play back using the unit, although movies are saved to the card. When I press play on the unit it thinks for a second or two and then says Please Restart in bold text.

32GB card, FAT32. Already has 5GB of files saved files on it.
 
PaulOckenden said:
Quick report on V6.9, type C.

Won't play back using the unit, although movies are saved to the card. When I press play on the unit it thinks for a second or two and then says Please Restart in bold text.
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I believe this is a known issue because the unit can't handle the bit rate of the video. It should play fine on a computer
 
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No unit playback for about 6 months. I didn't even notice I had broken that for ages as it wasn't useful for high resolution quality testing. Goals have always been high quality, even at the expense of some convenience.
 
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0dan0 said:
I went through a lot of lenses. It has to be a macro lens, and they are rare (or at least poorly described.) Also with any lens you will need a spacer to move the lens further away from the sensor to focus. Optically a 12mm lens would be 12mm from the sensor to focus at infinity, here we need to be more than 12mm away (mine is ~20mm from the lens front) to focus ~28mm away. 7mm spacers are common-ish, but I found 5mm, which is what I needed.

View attachment 20277

All purchased from Scorpion Vision in the UK. Shipping is not cheap. The lens I used is the SVL-1228MAC

Lens: https://shop.scorpion.vision/products/m12-lens-12mm-f2-10
Spacer: https://shop.scorpion.vision/collections/optical-accessories/products/m12-extension-ring-5mm
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I'm wishing I purchased this several months ago before all the extra taxes hit with more to come. Does this lens have an IR filter on it do you know?
 
larryc39 said:
I'm wishing I purchased this several months ago before all the extra taxes hit with more to come. Does this lens have an IR filter on it do you know?
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See post #748 above for a US seller of that 12mm macro lens. Regarding your IR filter question, the spec sheet says "Design Wavelength: 400-950nm"... No mention of any filters.
 
7.0. Will have a fix for the issue would scanning over 16384 frames.

New ideas of v7.0 are welcome.

I want to add support negative film, as this setup currently does a very poorly. I was looking for the color matrix, figuring the Tint control might lead to something useful for inverting the image. I didn't, instead I found how to make a true black and white scan. So in 7.0, setting Tint at -2.0 will now remove all color. This is useful for scanning B&W Film, which would have a slight color cast in current firmware.

I'm ordered a 16mm Macro, to see if that is practical (trying AZURE-1622MAC https://www.rmaelectronics.com/azure-photonics-azure-1622mac/)
 
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What are the chances of having (fairly rapid) auto-exposure that varies through the capture? Set a level on a good frame then try to maintain the same luminance level throughout the capture.

Many old cine films have normal bits followed by overexposed bits followed by dark bits followed by.... Just a few seconds each. The only way to cope with it at the moment is to scan multiple times at different exposure levels, and then chop the scans up in Resolve of FCX or whatever, selecting the best version of each segment.

I know that AGC wouldn't be right for ALL captures - it would ruin some. But to have it as a selectable option would be really good.
 
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