Vision 3 50D 200T 500T Retro 8 Sampler

[Tscan]

Here's a sampler I promised of all three Vision 3 super 8 stocks that I scanned on the Retro 8 from Movie Stuff. After the scan I edited in Sony Vegas 10 as an image sequence 720P capture and render. Some mild color correction, added contrast, some Neat Video noise reduction with profiles I made from grey card shots of the same stock. I made some errors with the 200T and 500T that I shot... I use an external 85B filter for daylight, but forgot that the new carts have a filter notch now and forgot to remove it on many shots and double filtered. The unit gives you a very low con, accurate color inverted image to work with. With a negative stock, you have a whole lot more information to work with. So here's a sample of my first rendition...
https://vimeo.com/72364968

[Andreas Wideroe]

I think it looks pretty good. Maybe a little more contrast, but I like the brownish look of the lowlights where the people are walking in the street. Also, where's the grain? Did it go away with the Vimeo compression or did the Neat video plugin take it all away? I like grain.

Thanks for sharing!

[bolextech]

Looks good but I'd still like to see that SMPTE registration test film transferred. ;-)

JL

[Tscan]

I think it looks pretty good. Maybe a little more contrast, but I like the brownish look of the lowlights where the people are walking in the street. Also, where's the grain? Did it go away with the Vimeo compression or did the Neat video plugin take it all away? I like grain.

Thanks for sharing!

The cool thing is, you can add as much contrast as you want. Unlike reversal scans, where it's really hard to take away. The V3 films are pretty fine grain to begin with, so the Neat Video plug in took it. I kinda wanted to show where you could go with it. The Retro 8 scanner and software give you a true positive image to work with and manipulate in so many ways you never could with a reversal scan. I plan to keep shooting a lot and playing with the possibilities. The 50-500ASA range is really expands the possibilities too.

[MovieStuff]

Looks good but I'd still like to see that SMPTE registration test film transferred. ;-)

JL

If you want to see how rock solid the registration is right off the machine, check out the end of the sample clip on our website:

http://www.moviestuff.tv

Roger

[jpolzfuss]

Thanks for sharing! It's really hard to tell apart the different materials without your "subtitles" (except for the more obvious grain for the 500T).

[Tscan]

Thanks for sharing! It's really hard to tell apart the different materials without your "subtitles" (except for the more obvious grain for the 500T).

Yeah, the Vision 3 200T can look like the 50D at times. I shot 4 rolls of 50D and 2 rolls of 200T. I can only pick out one roll of 200T based on memory, the other i can't pick out of the 50D batch.

[Tscan]

Just burned some Vision3 from the Retro 8 to Bluray and watched it on the flat screen. I'm just blown away right now, have never seen S8 look this incredible! I'd like to invite you all over to the house and see it for yourselves

[MovieStuff]

Just burned some Vision3 from the Retro 8 to Bluray and watched it on the flat screen. I'm just blown away right now, have never seen S8 look this incredible! I'd like to invite you all over to the house and see it for yourselves

Your latest sample looks sooooo much better now that you've got the frame blending turned off on your NLE during export. Very nice.

Roger

[Tscan]

Just burned some Vision3 from the Retro 8 to Bluray and watched it on the flat screen. I'm just blown away right now, have never seen S8 look this incredible! I'd like to invite you all over to the house and see it for yourselves

Your latest sample looks sooooo much better now that you've got the frame blending turned off on your NLE during export. Very nice.

Roger

Thanks- Now that I have it down fairly well on how to best handle the files... Image sequence (minus frame blending) edited and rendered at 24P, to a Bluray disc yielded some very clean results. It looked better than SD scans of 16mm on DVD. Very sharp, no ghosting, no interlacing artifact, no bleeding, image noise ect... The contrast and saturation was just perfect. Vision 3 and Bluray is the way to go with S8 right now. With all the capability of the new negs, NLE, and HD, my mourning of reversal film is coming to an abrubt halt.

[Will2]

Scan looks great, solid and surprisingly low dust/dirt for negative Super 8 scanned this way.

Hand it off to a colorist to make a few tweaks and I think it would be amazing.

Do you have a higher quality version (uncompressed as possible) you can share maybe through dropbox? I'm transferring some 16mm this week and it would be fun to have the colorist do some adjustments to see where he could take it if I have some extra time.

[MovieStuff]

Scan looks great, solid and surprisingly low dust/dirt for negative Super 8 scanned this way.

The Retro-8 has no formal "gate" like a regular projector. The lack of a pressure plate means there is nothing for lint or debris to catch and build up against during transfer. If you have a spec or a hair, it just floats right on by along with the film. Over the last two years while doing tests, I have run the same roll of film probably hundreds of times and it shows no wear at all in the picture. The film is handled only by the edges and there's no image area contact throughout the film path. So it stays very clean.

Hand it off to a colorist to make a few tweaks and I think it would be amazing.

A different colorist might make it look "different", of course, but I thought Tony's grading looked pretty good.

Roger

[S8 Booster]

Watching it with the perfectly calibrated Retina display makes it look awesome.

Shoot...

[Tscan]

Scan looks great, solid and surprisingly low dust/dirt for negative Super 8 scanned this way.

Hand it off to a colorist to make a few tweaks and I think it would be amazing.

Do you have a higher quality version (uncompressed as possible) you can share maybe through dropbox? I'm transferring some 16mm this week and it would be fun to have the colorist do some adjustments to see where he could take it if I have some extra time.

If you have a higher end NLE and fairly decent skills to go with it, there is no need for a colorist. With negative film, you have extensive head room to do whatever you want. I probably won't go farther than Vimeo for online viewing but i will say that a 600MB file on Bluray is the best example of S8 I have ever seen. After applying some mild noise filters to the 50D, I could not detect any grain and it was still razor sharp. If you like some grain, the unfiltered 200T came out very clean with a nice grain palate without looking "grainy"... just looked like film. I could not detect any digital noise or motion artifact with the Bluray rendition.