Film-o-clean

[tonewheels]

Hello,
Anyone know if the film-o-clean machine is still available? I used the "contact us" form at film-supply.com but my message was returned undelivered the next day. The site talks about a special introductory price through January "2010" so it looks like the site is not maintained any more.

Thanks for any info.

[joelpierre]

http://www.wittner-kinotechnik.de/katal ... oclean.php

[tonewheels]

Thanks a lot joelpierre.
419.00 euros now though, so that's not going to happen unfortunately.

[RCBasher]

Seems to have gone up a lot since I bought mine. Don't think I would bother now as although it can work quite well, it also can't be trusted not spill the cleaning material out onto the floor as soon as you turn your back.

In the middle of building my own transport system from scratch and thinking about using 3" PTR's for both guiding the film and cleaning at the same time. Four with spindles would cost about half the Film-0-Clean price and the rollers are supposed to last about 5 million feet, with reasonably frequent washing of course.

Frank

[tonewheels]

Thanks Frank. Having been advised to use 100% cotton material in another thread, I'm getting good enough results now anyway. Seems using a micro-fibre lens cloth was not a good idea. Thanks for putting me off of the film-o-clean, though the price did that already unfortunately.

Barry.

P.S. I'm almost 100% sure you're the Frank I think you are, if so I would love to see some photos on your site of the progress you make on your own transport system. Is it a continuous drive (if that's the right term)?

[RCBasher]

Hi Barry, Yes I am the Frank you probably think I am ;)

My website is somewhat out of date, the system development has moved on to now be a high speed RGB LED flash system combined with a capture program with some special features like auto-exposure working off of the highlights, live negative film handling, etc. The high speed nature of the flashes, just a few 10's of microseconds) does mean it is suitable for a continuous motion film transport and still achieve around 25fps.

Yes I am building my own CTS just as a test bed for some other ideas I have, but not really meant as a DIY project for all to copy.....well not yet anyway! It is early days and if and when I get it up and running I'll post more information, only spent £250 on it so far! In the meanwhile, I've modified a commercial CTS system for a company in Belgium and they are now using it for real. Also there are quite a few amateurs around the globe now using my solution, although mostly in stop-motion projectors as far as a I know as obviously there is less mechanical work to do. In this repect, the high speed nature of the flash has a secondary benefit, there is no need to modify the projector shutter as the exposure is very easily done between the gaps in the blade. I added my system to my Eiki Elf 16mm system in about half an hour!

Good to hear you have found a suitable cleaning solution.

Frank