[HN Gopher] LaborBerlin: State-of-the-Art 16mm Projector
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       LaborBerlin: State-of-the-Art 16mm Projector
        
       Author : audionerd
       Score  : 87 points
       Date   : 2025-06-21 20:08 UTC (2 hours ago)
        
 (HTM) web link (www.filmlabs.org)
 (TXT) w3m dump (www.filmlabs.org)
        
       | moonshinefe wrote:
       | Thanks for sharing. I was a projectionist at a local theater in
       | my 20s, and I have very fond memories of working with the older
       | machines. There was something so satisfying working them on
       | Summer nights in the booth alone.
       | 
       | The move to digital projectors everywhere was very shortly after
       | I left.
       | 
       | Always cool to see people help keep the medium alive.
        
         | PaulHoule wrote:
         | Circa 1990 I was on the movie committee of the student council
         | at my undergrad school and had the job of periodically checking
         | out a 16mm projector from the library and lugging it across
         | campus to the student union building where we'd show a movie
         | every Friday. I remember showing _Rebel Without a Cause_. We
         | had a video projector in the same room though and had found it
         | was cheaper to get a license to show VHS tapes which was a lot
         | easier on the projectionist although it was much worse quality.
        
       | M4rkJW wrote:
       | Neat stuff! I have a ton of 8mm and some 16mm film to archive,
       | perhaps this is a good first step towards an open-source film
       | scanner.
        
         | Animats wrote:
         | 8mm film scanners are so common they're available at Walmart.
         | There are lots of DIY film scanners described on Youtube. They
         | don't have to run fast and they don't need a pull-down
         | mechanism, so they're simple devices.
        
       | sho_hn wrote:
       | Super awesome project. As an embedded engineer who grew up in the
       | arthouse/program cinemas of Berlin, I wish I had heard about this
       | two years ago. Would have loved to help out.
        
       | sandworm101 wrote:
       | Be careful about using AOI cpu coolers for other purposes. They
       | are enclosed units subject to evaporation and air infiltration.
       | Fluid levels will drop over time and refilling is difficult.
       | Also, be wary of orientation. You want to make sure that the
       | inevitable bubbles are not repeatedly drawn into the pump. So you
       | want to position the radiator with the in/our ports lower, giving
       | a low-turbulence chamber towards the top of the radiator for
       | bubbles to accumulate.
       | 
       | Opinions differ, but 800+watts through a 2-fan radiator, in an
       | already hot environment, is likely not enough. If this was an
       | 800-watt CPU I would be going with either some wickedly powerful
       | fans or 2x as much radiator.
        
       | the_third_wave wrote:
       | One thing seems odd: it takes an 800W LED to double the light
       | output of a 250W halogen bulb. Normally LED is far more efficient
       | than halogen so I wonder why the opposite is true for this
       | project.
        
         | Animats wrote:
         | The LED lamp system they built looks like it was designed by an
         | overclocker.
        
         | sandworm101 wrote:
         | An 800w LED is not as perfect a point source. They are loosing
         | lots of light that isn't focusable. See how in the comparison
         | picture that there is insane light bleed out the side from the
         | LED projector. The older projector benefits from a hundred
         | years of optimization of how to focus a lightbulb into an
         | image. The LED rig is starting from scratch with a source that
         | isn't meant for focus onto an image.
        
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       (page generated 2025-06-21 23:00 UTC)