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Midtone Machines Chromabox Automatic Processor

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AndrewBurns

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Mike,
  • Currently this machine can't support an 8 reel tank and I decided early on to keep it smaller initially to avoid bumping the price up too much. I do hope to expand eventually though but no firm plans yet
  • Yes it's self cleaning in that it performs an automatic water flush between each chemical and there's a 'cleaning' recipe that you can run if you're done using it for the day
  • It uses a wide-voltage power supply so the same machine will work just fine at either 110V or 220V, no need for different versions
  • Planning on a kickstarter or similar crowd-funding campaign to get pre-orders eventually, but before that I want the design to be pretty much finalised and have had people using the beta test machines under real-world conditions for some time first
 
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AndrewBurns

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Michael Firstlight said:
Brilliant - keenly following. Definitely looking to learn more about the how and why's of linking a densitometer as well - maybe a blog post?

Mike
Click to expand...

Mike, to be clear I'm not linking a densitometer to the machine, I was simply using one to analyse the C41 process control strips I developed to ensure that the pre-programmed recipe would be within the Kodak specification. I intend to do the same thing with E6 when I get a chance, probably won't for ECN2 though as I don't know if you can even get test strips for that in a reasonable price/quantity.

Of course you can always edit the pre-made recipes or write your own, but I want to make sure that baseline recipes produce the best possible results with the chemistry I'm testing with.
 

Michael Firstlight

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I was wondering how they might interact...makes sense.


Mike
 
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AndrewBurns

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Mixed up a batch of QWD (Quiet We're Dreaming) ECN-2 chemicals and ran some test shots through the Chromabox, results were pretty good IMO, way better than I ever got processing cine film in C41. There was still a tiny bit of remjet left but the prebath got rid of 99.9% of it, better than I could ever get it when manually wiping it off.



Two shots of the same colour target, digital camera on the left, Kodak vision 3 250D on the right. Cine film DSLR 'scanned' and inverted using negative lab pro and all of the 'auto' settings (no manual colour correction). The patch colours in the digital photo are more accurate but I think the ground is a little too red, I kinda prefer the cine film to be honest.

Another random shot from the same roll, very bleak overcast morning. Some weird light leaks to the left of frame but otherwise good results.



Overall really pleased with how the machine worked and how the chemicals did, now that I have the ECN-2 I think I'll be shooting cine film a lot more than I was, which is good because I still have about 1/3rd of a bulk roll left in my fridge (and I might buy another one when I've used it up).
 
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AndrewBurns

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It's a big day for me because my first beta-test Chromabox is now boxed up and ready to ship to a local film lab on Monday! Can't wait to see what they do with it, hopefully they don't find many issues but if they do all the better that I get to make improvements now and not after I've already sold a bunch of them. Unfortunately the whole country is in strict lockdown here or I'd be going with it to help him install and set up, but in a way it's an even better test that I can't because now he'll just have to read the user manual and I'll see if he can figure it out himself.







 

mshchem

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That's wonderful! What an accomplishment. Are you going to be making this regularly. I've got a bunch of Jobo stuff but nothing this automatic. Might make a nice Christmas present for me.
Best Regards Mike
 
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AndrewBurns

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mshchem said:
That's wonderful! What an accomplishment. Are you going to be making this regularly. I've got a bunch of Jobo stuff but nothing this automatic. Might make a nice Christmas present for me.
Best Regards Mike
Click to expand...

Cheers Yes I've been talking to a distributor in the USA so hopefully you'll be able to buy directly from a local supplier by the end of the year!
 

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Great work and very impressive.
How long before you get results from the beta test at the local lab?
Have the thread bookmarked and best of luck.
 
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AndrewBurns

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The first machine is shipping on Monday, I figure I'll get some first impressions within a week of that and some better idea of what it's like to live with in the weeks after that. Looking to get the USA machine shipped too so that I can get a bigger range of impressions.
 

moshin

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Congrats on your endeavor! Amazing machine! Crazy what you made as a one man band! Please keep us posted! I´m interested on your machine to buy it with a friend for a small lab we want to open!
 
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AndrewBurns

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Actually I've recently changed my mind about that and I'm now planning to start sales directly through distributors. This has the following benefits:
  • You can buy something which exists and is in stock with a local distributor vs. donating money via kickstarter and waiting months or potentially not getting anything at all
  • I can ship a large number of machines to the distributors at a time, reducing the per-machine shipping costs
  • The distributors can provide local after-sales support rather than everyone having to come back to me with questions
  • The distributors can help out with marketing and advertising, which leaves me more time to actually develop this and other future products
I think that Kickstarter can still be good if you need to raise money before you can build something, but in my case I had enough initial capital to develop the idea to where it is now and a certain percentage of pre-payment from the distributors for each order allows me to stock up on components. I think if I had to handle every aspect of shipping, marketing and support like I would if I did the Kickstarter it would take a lot longer and probably just be too much workload for me right now.
 

mohmad khatab

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Congratulation
This is a really great machine, God bless you. I am happy for you and wish you all the best.

But my brother needs rich clients.
My brother, as for Russia, it feels the needs of the poor people, and this is the general culture rooted in the people of Russia, when an engineer designs any device or machine that you find automatically tends to reduce costs.
Allow me to publish the experience of a Russian friend named Engineer/ Sergey , that machine costs no more than $200.
It is a semi-automatic machine, meaning that the user has to fill and empty the tank manually., but the design can be developed in order to become fully automatic,

In fact, what I understood from that engineer, was that he invented this machine and he wasn't thinking about commercial goals. Rather, he wanted to manufacture a machine for his personal use in order to develop his films comfortably.
But he does not mind making the machine for his colleagues for a fair wage. .
I do not know what he thinks, but in general he is a respectable and kind-hearted man and he gave me the complete design so that I can implement this machine in my country, but unfortunately I stumbled because I am somewhat sick and it takes a lot of effort.
I really don't know, maybe this engineer wouldn't mind helping enthusiastic colleagues build a machine like it. Maybe he will guide them.
 

moshin

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Nice to hear that, specially that there is lot of issues with photography products on kickstarter, hope we can buy them soon enough!
 

moshin

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Hey, do you have any updates on the guys who received the first machine? Thank you.
 
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AndrewBurns

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moshin said:
Hey, do you have any updates on the guys who received the first machine? Thank you.
Click to expand...

The box was picked up on Saturday, about a week after it was supposed to be picked up due to the lockdown we're having over here. It should be arriving at the lab today I hope. I'll definitely update the thread once I get some feedback about it!
 
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AndrewBurns

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The first beta test machine has made it to Wellington Film Lab and has started testing! I've made a blog post about it for those who are interested:

http://midtonemachines.com/news/beta-testing-begins/

Overall looking good, made it there in one piece, documentation seemed good for setting up and using it without any help from me, early testing results with ECN2 chemistry and film looking good too.
 

foc

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Thank you for posting the beta testing blog link.

I am delighted to hear you only had a few problems, it all sounds very positive. Best of luck with further testing.

Your scanner idea sound good. Are you think along the lines of a flatbed scanner or something a bit more automated (for complete or partial film strips) something along the lines of the Pakon F135 Plus type scanner?

Scanners like the Pakon or even the Fuji SP3000 are often let down by their old software like XP, NT or 2000.
 
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AndrewBurns

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Still up in the air at this point, I'm going to try to gather as much information from people as possible about what they actually want a scanner to do, what features/functions/specifications they want out of a scanner etc. As much as I might want to go down a particular path there's no point doing that if nobody else wants it (other than for the fun of doing it, which is still tempting!).

So yeah, I know a lot of older lab scanners in particular are significantly hampered by old proprietary software that locks you into weird limitations like ancient versions of windows or difficult peripheral busses like SCSI (or CD's in some cases...). However there's a lot to be said about the power of modern DSLR scanning and flatbeds for larger formats, also there are still dedicated film scanners like the Plustek's available. So ultimately if I were to do something it would have to provide a meaningful point of difference over the existing alternatives for people to actually want to buy and use it.

So there are some different ways you can attack that.
  • For example do you go for outright quality at the expense of speed and ease of use and make a modern drum scanner?
  • Do you attempt to improve on the linear CCD concept like used in the Plustek/Coolscans/flatbeds (and if so, what's the improvement you could offer)
  • Do you attempt to focus mainly on increasing speed and streamlining workflow, which for example could be useful to a lab churning through a lot of film. So for example automatic feeding of film, detection of frames, good robust automatic colour inversion of negatives etc.
No doubt there's no solution that perfectly meets everyone's requirements so it will come down to feeling out what most people are looking for and comparing that to my capabilities and strengths as a company to see which is the best path forward. In the mean-time I'm having fun with photodiodes, op-amps, A/D converters, LED's and lenses on my desk when I get some spare time!
 
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AndrewBurns

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A few 4x5 photos I developed with the machine and some Kodak flexicolor chemistry yesterday.









Perfect results, as should be the case with fresh chemistry. I've also spent a lot of time over the last few weeks dialling in the ECN-2 process and I now have that reliable and repeatable. I also processed a Kodak C41 control strip yesterday which I'll get measured with a densitometer to see how close to ideal I'm processing. I also need to get onto dialling in the 6-bath E6 process soon, I've had some chemistry waiting to be mixed for a while now and an E6 process control strip, just need to find the time.
 
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