[HN Gopher] LaborBerlin: State-of-the-Art 16mm Projector
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LaborBerlin: State-of-the-Art 16mm Projector
Author : audionerd
Score : 206 points
Date : 2025-06-21 20:08 UTC (1 days 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.
| DidYaWipe wrote:
| And they typically suck. It's a different story if you want
| to properly scan 8mm from edge to edge and get TIFFs (or
| similar) for each frame.
| EvanAnderson wrote:
| Oh, do they ever suck. I did some Super-8 transfers to a
| Digital8 camcorder in the early 2000's. I tried one of
| those Kodak-branded 8mm digitizers in my public library
| last year. The 20 y/o SD Digital8 transfers done with an
| optical transfer box look better.
| DidYaWipe wrote:
| Yeah. I was always pissed that none of the dedicated
| still-photo film scanners offered a movie-film adapter. I
| had a Nikon LS-2000 (which sucked, BTW) and it had a
| film-feed mechanism... but only for 35mm still film.
|
| Then again, those scanners didn't have sufficient
| resolution for 8mm. I think the LS-2000 was something
| like 2700 DPI... which would only yield 800 or so pixels
| across. So it would have also needed an additional lens.
| p3_1080 wrote:
| https://www.kinograph.cc/
| 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.
| ethan_smith wrote:
| The discrepancy likely stems from projector-specific optical
| constraints - while LEDs are more efficient at converting
| electricity to light, they emit omnidirectionally requiring
| complex collimation systems that lose significant light,
| whereas halogen bulbs with parabolic reflectors can direct most
| of their output through the projection path.
| schobi wrote:
| I agree, this seems really odd. The solution should not be a
| modern projector with 1kW electrical power converted into heat.
|
| The Cob array of leds is the problematic choice, while on paper
| you get a lot of light, you don't get a point source.
|
| If you look at the large theater projectors, I remember laser
| sources (but no speckle, is this pumped phosphor?) or expensive
| xenon bulbs. At least 10years ago...
|
| I remember a solution (car headlights?) of decoupling the
| phosphor (for converting uv to while light) from the UV Led. So
| you have multiple diodes pumping a small piece of phosphor for
| a nice bright point source. Not sure how this can be replicated
| open source.
|
| Another approach (studio led lights) wasomething with glass
| mixing rods? You insert the light of multiple leds into a glass
| rod, and a uniform beam emerges. But I guess this was more to
| improve CRI, rather than to increase brightness/point source.
| yapyap wrote:
| Question: the blogpost mentions archivists needing 16mm
| projectors. Now I assume they would use these projectors to
| archive 16mm film but how / why?
|
| Why not scan film in instead of.. projecting it on a wall and
| filming that to archive?
|
| At least thats what I'm extracting from the blog with my fair but
| limited knowledge, if someone could enlighten me it'd be greatly
| appreciated!
| sublinear wrote:
| I don't know much either, and this is all way before my time,
| but I'm going to guess that getting sound off the film (if it
| has it) has got to be one of the reasons.
|
| The other being that just operating a suitable projector as
| intended is the simplest and most accurate way regarding timing
| compared to finding or writing software to handle scans. I'd
| think they'd want to do both.
| DidYaWipe wrote:
| The sound retrieval is a good point. I don't think of sound
| on old movies.
| gwbas1c wrote:
| > Why not scan film in instead of.. projecting it on a wall and
| filming that to archive?
|
| It's a different experience: When viewing film, the picture
| flickers and shakes. Film grain is substantially different than
| pixels.
|
| As much as I enjoy modern digital formats, it's important to
| appreciate the goal of preserving _viewing_ film.
| sublinear wrote:
| If it's to be archived it's going to end up encoded as
| pixels.
|
| I think the question was more about the capture of fine
| detail. A scanner will digitize much more image detail than
| any capture of the projector output. Although, reading the
| article it seems an emphasis was placed on color accuracy.
| I'm not sure if a scanner is necessarily as good at that.
| cameron_b wrote:
| There are some scanners good at that but not at the scope
| of a 2 hour film.
|
| The other factor is that a projector is the first part of
| allowing others to view films, and getting the light source
| nailed down could open the doors to making new prints of
| those films - a different path to archiving.
| kmoser wrote:
| If you're archiving motion picture film, there are no
| pixels, only film stock. The archive process _may_ include
| digitizing, but even then you still have to deal with the
| original film media, which is the primary task of a film
| archivist.
| nebula8804 wrote:
| When you play it back, you don't get the same look of a
| physical medium rapidly moving through a mechanical
| machine. You just don't.
| charcircuit wrote:
| >the picture flickers and shakes
|
| This can be emulated with a post processing effect.
|
| >Film grain is substantially different than pixels.
|
| The grain can be recorded at a high enough resolution that
| the human eye will be unable to tell the difference when it's
| being projected.
| DidYaWipe wrote:
| He asked why a projector is relevant for archiving, not
| viewing.
|
| The only answer I can imagine is for viewing newly-discovered
| film to determine its content and condition, in order to
| decide whether it's worth scanning.
| gwbas1c wrote:
| Curious: Why do they need to support all those different frame
| rates?
| luckystarr wrote:
| Some films were recorded with a lower frame rate due to some
| reason. As for variable and standstill, I think this would only
| be needed when investigating a recording in detail. Not sure if
| they really need it. Perhaps they just want it to cover more
| use cases.
| sockboy wrote:
| From what I gather, projecting preserves the viewing
| experience which is part of the film's value, not just the
| image. Plus, sound extraction and timing sync can be simpler
| with a projector. Scanners capture detail but might miss some
| nuances that make film unique.
| neckro23 wrote:
| Silent films used several different speeds. The rest are for
| telecines.
| jcrawfordor wrote:
| Silent films were inconsistent on frame rate, especially early
| on. The cameras were hand cranked and so the frame rate was
| determined by the operator. It wasn't unusual to speed up and
| slow down the frame rate within a scene to achieve a desired
| effect. The person cranking the projector, in the early days,
| had to make a similar judgment. As hand cranked projectors have
| way to electrically powered ones, handling abnormal speeds
| became difficult, which lead to standardization. Early silent
| films almost always run too fast when projected on modern
| projectors. As a result, variable speed has always been a
| desirable feature for projectors used for historic films. Film
| preservationists would often modify projectors to provide it.
|
| It can similarly be very difficult to find aperture masks to
| fit the unusual aspect ratios of older films, so a
| projectionist might have to fabricate one. Fortunately that's
| pretty easy with a file.
| luckystarr wrote:
| Interesting that the film material had better color retention
| than the old projectors. I never thought about it before and
| assumed that the washed out colors of old 16mm projections came
| from bad recordings.
| p3_1080 wrote:
| The pink tint of the left-hand projections near the bottom of
| the article is actually the film print itself shifting colors
| due to (relatively mild, in this particular case) vinegar
| syndrome, which can happen when film prints are stored over
| long periods in relatively warm (unrefrigerated) conditions.
| This color shift is all down to the individual film print and
| really has nothing to do with a given projector itself -- but
| until this project I believe there haven't been film projectors
| that can compensate for color-shifting on-the-fly
| (projectionist and programmer in a space that regularly
| screened 16mm & 35mm prints for about a decade). Now, instead
| of throwing one's hands up when trying to project a color-
| shifted print, films can be projected and possibly
| preserved/digitized in something closer to their original
| state. For the film preservation field, this project feels
| quite important and could signal a major shift in the way the
| field operates.
| ilamont wrote:
| Former 35mm projectionist here (see
| https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=35887809). I also worked
| with 16mm projectors and cameras as a student.
|
| It's cool to see that people are still interested in this media,
| and trying to fix a number of problems. There are a couple things
| about this proposal that are admirable, such as switching to
| dimmable LEDs and open-source/3D printable parts.
|
| I also liked the bit about not trying to reinvent the wheel ("We
| believe that especially the central mechanical elements of the
| old projectors - claw mechanism, shutter wheel and film transport
| - are in most cases so well engineered that a new development
| here would be a waste of time and energy.") But what follows is
| an extensive list of new specs that would make the project vastly
| more complex.
|
| 16mm/35mm is already fading, with a finite population of prints
| that dwindles every year as film deteriorates or reels are
| lost/destroyed. Some of the technical features ("Manual vario-
| speed from < 1 to 30 FPS") are a niche within a niche. Really,
| how many artists or experimental studios are there who want to
| play back a 16mm print at .75 FPS? Who would watch them?
|
| This project would be far more realistic if such features were
| scaled back and the focus was on getting a bare-bones, open
| source projector that works with 16mm optical film (the majority
| of existing stock) as well as some of the low-hanging fruit on
| the list. I think is doable. Low cost, simple plastic film
| projectors were once a thing with another type of film (Super 8,
| see https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Super_8_film)
|
| If hard stuff is added to the list, at least focus on
| practicality for a wider range of people, such as a tool to
| safely evaluate print quality before playback at normal speeds or
| some sort of print cleaning mechanism for reels that have been
| sitting in someone's basement for 30 years.
| nebula8804 wrote:
| >16mm/35mm is already fading, with a finite population of
| prints that dwindles every year as film deteriorates or reels
| are lost/destroyed.
|
| They are still publishing films in 35mm and at least in popular
| US cities the format has a following. For example in 2021, Last
| Night In Soho was printed in 35mm. To be fair the 35mm print
| was only exhibited in some select locations and only for
| special screenings. But then we also have 70mm IMAX that
| despite only has X number of screens left, still manages to
| attracts sold out screenings for weeks whenever a film (Like
| Oppenheimer) appears. I also spoke to the people running the
| Barrymore Film Center in Fort Lee, NJ (They screen 16mm, 35mm
| and 70mm and they promote Fort Lee as the birthplace of the
| American Motion Picture Industry). They told me that you can
| order up thousands of different 35mm films from studio's
| storage centers (I think there are only two left in the
| country) and the main issue is delivery costs make it usually
| not worth it to screen most films.
|
| I am closer to middle age but I have met a lot of youngins who
| are die hard film people.
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