Workprinter XP to Sniper (Kinda)

[gaugefilm]

Hi Roger, just sent you a message, no worries about the delay, completely understand.

Kevin

[super8mm]

eBay seller (jiakgong) has 4-way Macro focusing sliders for $48.99 including free shipping! I have purchased from them in the past and they are reliable. It's a great price if you've been contemplating converting your standard Workprinter to an HD capable machine. Let me know if you need assistance with your conversion!

This ebay sell is still around but is Tom still around? I have sent him several emails and have not heard anything back from him.

I am interseted in doing this to my workprinter XP. MovieStuff has already rebuilt it for me with the upgrades and I have it working with HD but I like the small foot print this can provide.

[granfer]

My own experience of these "4-way Macro Slides" is that they are rather sloppy and of too coarse a resolution for cameras with small sensors. Ideal for Medium Format and just about OK for 35mm, but nothing smaller. It's down to the helical gears and racks.
I removed the gears and racks from mine and drastically modified them with M6 studding and nuts to produce movement in both axes that give me about 0.05mm resolution (or better)) and a positive location.Makes a world of difference.
If you can afford them two-way "tool slides" from small or medium lathes are even better, or precision X/Y tables the best of all..

Addition: I should also have said that the Helical Gear drive doesn't "lock" when left; it is too inclined to move with the slightest touch.

[super8mm]

Thanks ganfer, I do have a Mill Vice but it may be a bit to heavey, but I am not opposed to reworking something either

I will spend the next couple of days reinstalling everything, I installed Cyberlink software thinking it would also author disk burning but it didnt, it also didnt work very well so I uninstalled it. well to my shock to took the Windows items that it hooked to and delete them too and last night it got so bad that I would loose my desktop every 5 minutes or so 8O

[catalano]

Hi There,

Just wondering if you ever heard from Tom/filmmaker8? I sent a question via their website contact form several days ago and never received a reply. Then yesterday I purchased his conversion guide from the website and didn't get any kind of a download link. I sent him a note about that and didn't hear back either.

This ebay sell is still around but is Tom still around? I have sent him several emails and have not heard anything back from him.

I am interseted in doing this to my workprinter XP. MovieStuff has already rebuilt it for me with the upgrades and I have it working with HD but I like the small foot print this can provide.

[super8mm]

It did take him about a week to get back with me but he did things right.

I need to get the time now to put it all together but I have a job that keeps getting in the way

[catalano]

Sorry to keep this old thread alive, but if anyone is still monitoring it maybe you could chime in. So I ended up giving the mod a try. I only have the Workprinter XP, so most of Tom's document didn't really apply. The bottom line is I just swapped out Roger's 1.5" pvc legs for approx 2" pvc legs which put the projector up high enough to line up with the lens on my Canon HF20 (once it was mounted on the slider). So the projector is still mounted to the original moviestuff board and the slider is mounted to that as well. If the experiment pans out I'll move everything to a sturdier piece of wood as the original has developed a slight bow over the years. So back to my main question - has anyone tried this setup and been able to get a large enough image with R8 film to film the frame? The Canon has a 15x optical zoom and even with the Raynox dcr-250 I'm not quite getting a full frame as you can see from the attached screenshot. Right now the edge of the macro lens is probably about 1/8" away from the edge of the projector.

Also for those interested, I'm using Capturemate HD. I think this may work without a RAID. FWIW, I've been capturing for years with a Mac Powerbook (non-Intel) and the original Capturemate and have actually been capturing to the internal stock HD! No frame drops, no pull-down blur. So this may work. My initial capture attempt worked without any frame drops but there was some blur. So I have to figure out if the timing disc needs to be adjusted or if there's something else at play. I'm using the Intensity Thunderbold edition to get into my iMac and there are some settings there that need exploring.

I'm going to send a small segment of the capture over the Ben at Capturemate and get his input. But I'm curious as to whether or not other folks have been able to get a larger image captured.

Thanks All,
Chris

[super8mm]

Thanks for the update,

[catalano]

Ok, so another update regarding my conversion attempt. After conferring with Ben over at Bensoftware we figured out that I needed to change the frame rate on the Canon from its default 60i to PF30. So that cleaned up the slight blurring problem. I'm ignoring the inability to zoom in close enough with R8 film to fill the frame because when placing the captured file in a Standard Def timeline, its plenty big enough. We'll probably only ever export R8 to dvd anyway. But the real issue here is the focus, or lack of it. I just can't seem to be able to get a sharp enough image out of this setup. Ben's suggestion was to move to a higher aperture (f8) in order to have a larger depth of field and also to help mitigate any slight misadjustment in terms of the camera being exactly perpendicular to the projector gate. Unfortunately when doing that I start to get this top to bottom jiggling effect with the capture. I can actually see it on the monitor while the capture is taking place. I played with other aperture settings, but couldn't seem to completely eliminate it. On this camera when you go into Aperture priority mode the shutter speed gets set automatically, so I'm not sure if that's part of the problem. Basically I have to go into Program AE mode in order to eliminate that jiggling. I also think the slight vibration of the projector is introducing just enough shake to the camera to contribute to the less than sharp image. Not sure what to do about that as I have the WP mounted on the extension tubes to the board and the macro slider mounted directly to the board as well.

I'm not holding out much hope here and am about ready to call this conversion method a failure. I've asked the author for some camera setting tips since we're using the same basic camera, but I never heard back from him. So not sure what he did to get decent results, but its just not happening here.

[super8mm]

are you using the Velocity-HD software? I was able to get it set to remove the jitters and do my timing.

you might try adding weight to your mounting board if you think the camera is getting vibrations from the projector.

[catalano]

[att'm on a Mac and am using Capturemate HD and it doesn't have any settings like that. I think solidifying the overall unit is something that needs to be done. I'm not sure if I should add separate mounting blocks for the projector and camera on the existing board - thinking that vibrations wouldn't transfer as easily if there's more connection points between everything. If you look at the pics from the original conversion document you can see how many different objects there are between the camera and the projector. Compare that to what I'm doing in the attached photo. No matter what I have to raise the projector by about 1/8" because the alignment is just not quite right as I have to use several clicks on the frame control to get the image centered in the camera. I guess my initial measurements were off a bit. So I was going to try a metal washer on top of each plastic riser. While I'm sure that would address the height issue I'm not sure if that helps or hurts with the vibration. Do more pieces in the path increase or decrease the transmitted vibration??

One thing I do have to do is to reassemble the original work printer and transfer a few of the films that I've been experimenting with. This way I have a reference point to see if my conversion is better or worse.

Cheers,
Chris

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