New Spectra Full HD Scanner?

[Tscan]

Has anyone had a transfer done at Spectra lately? They were building a new scanner specifically for S8 full HD scans. Last summer i was told it was almost ready but don't see any word on their site that it ever got finished?

[Vanessa]

I just called them the other day to ask about this, apparently it's not up and running yet. The person I spoke with said "we have plans to do this"...

[Will2]

I spoke with the same guy that is building the Super 8 Gate for their Spirit. He wants $80,000 to build it. Seems hard to justify when the HD Spirit itself can be had with 35mm & 16mm gates and DaVinci panels for $40,000 or so.

That being said, it will be a really great way to scan Super 8 if they ever get it running.

[Andreas Wideroe]

It's a tremendous task to make a Super8/Reg8 mod for this machine since it was never designed to do this. What Mike (the technician) is doing is making a new physical gate aswell as reprogramming the machine together with new electronics. It's a huge and very complicated job. There are only a handful of people in the world who can do this. Mike did almost the same job for us when he built us a Small format gate for our Quadra telecine.

[Tscan]

Yes, I heard it was a new custom gate designed specifically for S8/8mm. There will be no blow up of the frame, it should be pretty awsome when it's ready. I've been holding onto some spools ready to transfer when it's ready.

[Will2]

There will be no blow up of the frame, it should be pretty awsome when it's ready.

It's blown up optically vs. "up-resing".

The few Super 8 gates that Thompson made were modified 16mm gates from what I understand; so they had to zoom in on 1/4 the size of the 16mm frame.