How much is a JK Optical Printer K-104r worth?

[Konton]

I got a local guy looking to sell one of these. He doesn't have the animation motor, but he does have the Super 8 and 16mm gate. Any thoughts on how much I should give him for it?

[robbie]

i purchased jk optical printer for $500. only had 16mm gate, but did have motor. i had to purchase the super8 and r-8 gate from Jaako. is the sequencer with the model you may purchase? that may raise the amount.
$ 500 was a very good price. sure he could easily get more.

[robbie]

oh wait, that is a later model k-104r. they sold for $4,ooo just three or four years ago. i'd say it;s worth $1,500 - $2,000. if in working order.
good find. let me know if you decide not to purchase.

[ericMartinJarvies]

it all depends what it has installed on it/as part of it, and what the additional/optional componants may be. for example, the gates sell for $800-1k new from jakko.

also, how old is it? the newer ones jakko has built are obviously better then the older ones he has built, as revisions and considerations have been made/implimented as per progress/customer feedback/request.

the ideal setup would be to have a jk printer with a nice dSLR camera, and a workprinter with a canon xl2 24p camera. use the workprinter with 24p camera to perform fast telecine transfers, and use that footage to edit down. then, when you have your final cut, go and use the jk printer and capture frame by frame the scenes that have actually made the cut.

eric

[MovieStuff]

I got a local guy looking to sell one of these. He doesn't have the animation motor, but he does have the Super 8 and 16mm gate. Any thoughts on how much I should give him for it?

JK makes reallllly good equipment. But, then again, Mitchell made terrific pin registered cameras. You can pick up a used Mitchell 16mm camera for about $200-500 on ebay. I picked up a pin-registered 35mm camera for about $1000. These cameras were well over $10,000-$25,000 when they were popular. Why are they so cheap now? Because there really is no use for them anymore due to digital effects taking over the market place. I would say that the JK units fall into this same category.

How much to pay is always a tough call because you, as the prospective user, see a different value that the guy selling it because you envision a use for it that he doesn't or he wouldn't be selling it! You may intend to make money with it but there is no guarantee that you will and, certainly, the more you pay for the unit, the harder it will be to make money at all. JK may be asking a certain dollar amount for these new but, realistically, I can not imagine how many they are selling these days at their asking price, especially since there are so many on the used market. I've seen at least a dozen show up on ebay over the last couple of years. I have to imagine there are many more in storage somewhere. You can not get blinded by how cool the machinery is, which is a big problem for people like you and me. And if the seller knows you are intoxicated by the machinery, that will be what you pay for; not what the market value really is. It's an item from a past era, even if you have a present day use for it. The price should be based on what the seller could NOT do with it, not what you intend to do with it. Frankly, I would lowball it to the max.

Hope this helps!

Roger

[Konton]

Thanks for all the responses! I'm going to look at it tomorrow. We'll see if it's any good. I was just reading v8n1 of Super8Filmaker where is talked of "The Joys of Optical Printing." That story from the end of 1980 used the JK 103 Optical Printer. We'll see how different this one is.

[ericMartinJarvies]

assuming you want to purchase the jk optical printer for digital transfer of your film to dslr camera, then you will need to be able to control the camera, like a canon digital rebel for example. if the jk printer you are looking at has the bolex motor control, you can take and modify(or have modified for you) that little tethered control, wherein you use an off the shelf canon dslr remote cable, and a switch(in place of the 1:1 stepper motor), and then you have camera control, wherein it will trigger the shutter release of the dslr camera, instead of turning a bolex camera.

another option would be to purchase a used Rank gate(on ebay last week for under $200.00), couple this with a canon macro bellows(the good one with exacting linear control), and a transport system(steppers), and you could essentially have a nice film to digital transfer machine. the most important part of the process is the gate/film alignment/registration. the film transport system is also important, as is the lens ... and i beleive the macro 55mm lens is the best bang for the buck, in terms of smpte chart readings and cost of the lens(used on ebay).

i would REALLY like to see how the new canon xl2 24p camcorder works with a realtime projector/workprinter/telecine setup. right now i am able to capture high resolution images one frame at a time with my own dslr film transfer telecine machine, and am very pleased with the quality of the images and the registration of the frames. but it is very time consuming. i want to be able to telecine all of my footage in realtime, and once edited down to the final cut, i would then like to go and use the dslr to perform the final high res capture of the frames/scenes that made the cut. this would simplify matters.

assuming i had a crystal controlled motor turning a projector/transport system for the film at 24fps crystal, and a canon xl2 24p camcorder attached via bellows and taking lens, what do you think would be problemattic with this setup as it relates to the transport system(with 5 blade, etc.)? do you think a crystal 24fps transport system and a 24p canon camera would lock up correctly(no flicker or fall off) and provide a good realtime telecine transfer? inquiring minds would like to know.

eric

[ericMartinJarvies]

konton ... also, if you do not purchase the jk printer, or you do purchase it and do not want the super 8mm gate, i would purchase it as i am in need of a s8 gate. let me know.

eric

[Konton]

Okay. So I went over to the guy's place selling the thing. He's got a K-104, The Quartz Halogen Lamphouse, the sequence control, both the Super 8 and the 16mm gates (the Super 8 gate was in prefect never used condition), some mirror for arial image projection, a Nikkor 50mm lens, bellows, and some other junk. He could not find the p-200 motor for the bolex, but said he would look around the house. I offered him $500 for it all and he agreed. If he finds the motor I might give him $700. However I'm starting to wonder if I need the motor. I guess that would depend on what camera I'll use with it. Anyway it looks to be very interesting.

[reedsturtevant]

You dog! That rig should keep you busy for a while.

[super8man]

Would a digital image kill ya to post it for me to see?? pretty please? Sounds very coooool. old school, but cool.

[Konton]

As soon as I buy it! Ya gotta give me time. I'll see if I can scan an old school picture of the damn thing.

Hey, I had a lame idea. I used to own a Konvas and I was always thinking it would be great to hook one of these up to a optical printer to make 35mm prints of Super 8. Now since I don't have a camera or an animation motor to get this going, maybe I could buy it all for pretty cheap. What's a Konvas 1M going for these days? And check this!
http://www.commiecam.com/intervolameter.html

So let's see . . .
$500 for the Optial Printer
$500 for the Konvas 1M http://cgi.ebay.com/ws/eBayISAPI.dll?Vi ... 61903&rd=1
$500 for the TTL Motor http://www.tobincinemasystems.com/page17.html
And alot of time to waster . . . .total $1500 . . . hmmm . . .

[ericMartinJarvies]

konan ... are you going to use the jk for optical printing to another larger format motion picture camera? or are you going to use it for digitizing your film, using a dSLR camera or industrial camera head?

the 1:1 motor that would normally control a bolex or in some cases a mitchell(i beleive jaakko sells for both of them), can be used as intended, and also can be opened up and modified wherein you tether a remote cable to your dSLR camera for remote operation. this will, in effect, automate your jk printer wherin the film advances, instructs the camera to shoot a photo, and then it repeats the process for as many frames as did you enter into the control panel.

if you have a canon dslr, like the rebel(inexpensive, more then enough mp's) , take and bore out a hole in the middle of the body lens cap, and use that as a attachment to the bellows(you will need to senter tightening screw, etc.) this will give a direct mount solution from the bellows to the dSLR, so you do not need to purchase a more costly metal mount adapter, which is harder to modify then plastic, assuming you do not have tooling.

i think the jk printer is good in design, as is the workprinter. it would be nice to see those two come together in a smaller footprint, wherei nthe gate and camera, once attached, become one continues assembly(eliminates shake/vibration/movement of film in gate). then, taking and having a small, compact clip on transpost system/stepper motor(with optional crystal 24fps motor), and expandable upper and lower reels for taking small or large reels, and finally, having a diffused lens with a halogen on the back side that also connects to the assembly ... 1 - 2 - 3 main componants, making one assembly, and about the size of the canon xl1. not including the feed and take reels. desktop indeed.

i finally located an inexpensive 1920x1080 24fps(24p, with variable up to 60fps!) camera head for under $3k. with this camera head, and a crystal 24fps transport, REALTIME film to high res digital will finally be a reality on the desktop. purchasing a less expensive ntsc 24fps camera head, and using it as a video tap, one would truly have frame accurate dailies, wherein rough cuts could be made prior to receiving the processed film back ... and therefore you would only need to digitize those frames/scenes that made the cut.

the possiblities are endless

eric

[christoph]

i finally located an inexpensive 1920x1080 24fps(24p, with variable up to 60fps!) camera head for under $3k. with this camera head, and a crystal 24fps transport, REALTIME film to high res digital will finally be a reality on the desktop.

i guess that depends of how huge of a HD raid you can put on your desktop ;)

and since 99% of super8 is shot on 4:3, a 1500x1000 pix camera would make more sense for most purposes.

++ christoph ++

[ericMartinJarvies]

i finally located an inexpensive 1920x1080 24fps(24p, with variable up to 60fps!) camera head for under $3k. with this camera head, and a crystal 24fps transport, REALTIME film to high res digital will finally be a reality on the desktop.

i guess that depends of how huge of a HD raid you can put on your desktop ;)

and since 99% of super8 is shot on 4:3, a 1500x1000 pix camera would make more sense for most purposes.

++ christoph ++

it is best to optically capture a 16:9 image inside of a 4:3 s8 frame of film(or 16mm for that matter). doing this digitally results in the image being compromised significantly. if you take an digitize an s8 frame at 1500x1000, you will then have to crop out a 16:9 image from within that digital frame of film. then you will need to enlarge it to 1920x1080. this will result in pixalated images or poorer quality.

if you MUST do this digitially, then i would advise capturing your s8 4:3 frame of film at a higher resolution, like 2000x1500 pixals, for example(or the applicable number that is greater then the resulting cropped area of 16:9 within the 4:3 s8m frame). naturally, this also depends on the imagine device/sensor you are using. a 1/3" sensor(or 3ccd 1/3" sensors) cannot rightly compare to a single 35mm wide sensor. remember, the larger the sensor, the better(assuming the increase in mp's per the same amount of area is also proportinalty greater).

capturing a 1600x1200 image on a 3.3 megapixal camera is not going to give you the same image as if you were to capture a 1600x1200 image on a 13 megapixal camera, for example(note: these are bullshit numbers, as most dSLr cameras have differant capture res settings, but for sake of simplicity and example, i used 1600x1200).

when you deal with video image, sensors on a video camera, like a 3ccd 1/3" camera that is capable of providing 800 lines of res, compared to one that is also 3ccd 1/3" capable of providing 500 lines, the same principal applies. in any case, and single dSLR sensor will ALWAYS provide a better image then a video camera single or 3 sensor, the differance being the procesing time per image, naturally being faster on a video camera then it is on a dslr.

light is the best way to enlarge an image ... doing so with a high resolving lens is the BEST route to make a 16:9 crop out of a 4:3 frmae of film. light is constant until it is overcome by the darkness. anything prior to this threshold will maintain a CONSTANT, which means no image loss as the image gets larger, and up and until the point of fall off of light. so by way of lumination and optics, making a 16:9 from a 4:3 is the BEST and most IDEAL route. doing it the digital/pixal way AFTER the fact is NOT the desired way.

eric