Homebuilt 16mm & 8mm film processor

[kuparikettu]

Some time ago I wrote about a friend of mine who has been set out to build a film processor for processing 16mm and 8mm film (ECN-2, E-6, etc..). Well, now he has finished it. Take a look at this video (in Finnish, sorry) and enjoy the latest steps taken towards more options in the Northern Europe for film shooters!

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wLM9-F370bU

[richard p. t.]

Brilliant! what a good job he did.

[woods01]

Yes! Having been inside a few professional labs his setup looks very impressive. Hopefully he can get enough regular customers to cover the cost of chemistry.

[Nicholas Kovats]

This is a brilliant Finnish DIY initiative! Congratulations!

[peaceman]

Fantastic! And I totally love the flute music, wherever it comes from.

[aj]

Sure it looks nice working on the leader

Is he using a spray on technique for chemical baths? The basins seem awfully huge and otherwise may seem to need 25 litres or something. What is on the computer screen? Replenisher statistics or such?

It appears he built the remjet remover box more or less from the Kodak ECN information.

[kuparikettu]

Here's the first film running through: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SfV_p-mijwM
And then the film, transferred with a digital camera (apparently painful -- yes -- and slow and not that high quality, but something to look at). Note: the test film was old stock, shot some five years ago and stored in the fridge. That's the reason why there is so much visible grain. Unfortunately this piece doesn't give much information about the machine, it's just some test footage for the initial testing of whether there are some parts which could damage the film.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=evEu3mh6frg

Since the first developed film my friend has been improving some parts which required it and building other parts which weren't necessary for the first run. He is using spray on technique for chemical baths. The basins are huge in order to take large amounts of film ;) The idea is to replenish the chemicals automatically. The screen has the temperatures of the baths and settings for warming them up.

The machine has been built according to Kodak information. Due to material costs not all specs are up to the ideal, but even then quite close to them (which will be enough to satisfy most people's needs).

When he has finished building the processor, the next projects on the list are 2K scanner (the work on that one has been already begun, Kodak 2K line scanner CCD, leds..), contact printer / 16mm blowups from super-8, 16mm led printer.

The funny thing is, this is the first laboratory capable of processing super-8 in Finland -- at least first in decades. At the same time it will also be the only laboratory to offer 16mm processing, since the professional lab became bankrupt last summer. Sad, but interesting times -- latter mostly because of my friend.

(Oh, and the flute music is from a traditional Finnish Christmas play Tiernapojat, which depicts the Magi and also...includes the Russian tsar. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Star_boys% ... nd_Finland & https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nMOT0ISH_c0)

[kuparikettu]

My friend has updated the website of his upcoming lab business, there is now some English content as well http://alhoslab.fi/english.html although quite little for the time being.

[peaceman]

Just awesome. I am deeply jealous about that machine and wish him all the best for his business!

[kuparikettu]

Here some test footage of mine, processed as part of early lab tests before opening the business: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SnQVRe38xPI

[peaceman]

Nice. Quite some scratches though -- any idea where they come from? They aren't that straight, so I would not guess camera...

[kuparikettu]

Scratches came from the processing -- and according to the lab owner, this was very good test run, because it helped him to find out what must not be done ;) The problem was that the films were stapled together in a wrong fashion, this leading to the film getting stuck and at some point jumping off the film path. Now, it's not that surprising that there are some scratches when the film has run around metal instead of the right film path... (what's more surprising is that there are so few scratches!)

That and other problems and their causes have been identified and necessary steps are being taken to fix them. More tests are going to be run until there are no scratches or other problems.

EDIT: This film was processed with other films. It was a run of 300m of 16mm and super-8.

[peaceman]

Superb. Crossing fingers!!

[kuparikettu]

I'm happy to share with you that my friend's lab business has been thus far quite successful. After the tests mentioned above the problems have been solved and processing machinery improved a lot. Both ECN-2 and E-6 processes are available, both super-8 and 16mm can be processed. In addition to that a new 2K scanner solution is now online

Here's some footage processed and 2K scanned @ Alhoslab:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kZrNsBJXWwE