New lab scanner option: Auralab

Jon Buffington · Jun 12, 2023

Ran across this today on the kodak pakon group on FB. Looks like a commercial lab option, brand new product on the market. Pricing is still TBD but from comments from the advertiser/developer, it will be spendy. Anyways, I know there are a few on here that have labs so this may be an option vs using older/ancient lab scanners.

https://auralab.photo/en/?fbclid=IwAR0p-nTcWKd5b0PH0x2n7i4HPHebsSIjWgKj533R35MyrKimdI4IY38XW5Q

Archiloque · Jun 12, 2023

Let's wait for the first prototype. As of now, all I see is a "non contractual" 3D render and unverifiable promises.

Jon Buffington · Jun 13, 2023

Archiloque said:
Let's wait for the first prototype. As of now, all I see is a "non contractual" 3D render and unverifiable promises.

Yeah, I get this. Not sure if your on the FB pakon group but if not, a copy/paste below from a fruitful discussion with someone with very similar questions/skepticism as you.

"
- The plan is to write the order management software from scratch. Fundamentally, the scanner keeps a raw image and statistical data of the entire strip in memory or saves it to a file to then be used for frame extraction, color correction and export. This means that nothing is really locked down so it keeps a lot of flexibility for an order queue. We also plan to add hooks for plugins that could add functionality like order tracking, triggering a payment on a website after the scan is done, printing... Writing something from scratch allows us to use modern technology and to tailor it to the feedback we get, as many people have a ton of experience with their current systems and can see ways to improve them. Fr maybe two years the team has been small and focused on proving that it could work at all. Now, we have a hardware consulting company helping us with mechanical aspects and electronics, while we keep the imaging side. Now is the time where we are starting to prepare the proper software, hence why we are looking for feedback and things are still subject to change. I have an engineering degree and have been working around imaging for a while now, especially around scanners and color calibration for cameras. We will be joined by a good friend and talented sw engineer soon to make good progress on the software now that the money is on the table to take this to the pre-series stage.
- Color correction will be built-in. I have reached out to old players in this field to see if they can find documentation and licensing information for what I suspect are OEM color conversion tools but I am not holding my breath here, also why I will remain vague for this one. I am fully aware that good color conversion is no easy task, but then again we are not doing it because it is easy

Having to use external software is a workflow killer so this is not an option here. We have gotten pretty convincing results from early iterations, and I hope that this can carry to the new prototype, and we can keep improving upon it. The scanner can also be calibrated really well for consistent results between units.
- The kind of hardware we plan to use comes mostly from the industrial machine vision field, think inspection cameras for production lines. This gives us access to incredibly sturdy and high quality hardware that is simple enough to integrate with our software without having to hire an entire department of electronics engineers or needing to sell thousands of units per year just to be able to buy the bare sensors. Regarding the 12-bits depth, this is also where this limitation comes from. These industrial cameras are maybe 90% monochrome and mostly work with 8-bit as their typical applications need speed more than precision or color depth. There are only two options for color cameras that we could find that offer a convenient interface (USB3 or GigE Ethernet, other use mostly CameraLink which requires expensive frame grabbers) that cost less than 5k per unit, so we are working with what we can get our hands on. In our testing, the dynamic range is appropriate and I believe that it will be enough for the intended use. Even Noritsu 16-bit files only have 12 bits of information in them. Ultimately, the bit depth is not a huge concern as it already gives us enough flexibility for histogram stretching operations and the dynamic range is enough for film. Funny enough, it seems to be harder to find CMOS sensors that do 16-bits, when it used to be fairly easy to use 16-bit frontends with analog CCDs. But the results should still be nice, as the CMOS gives a very low noise floor and fast speeds.
Happy to answer more questions, should you have any. I am looking to be as transparent as possible with our approach and the current information I have access to and can confirm is relevant. "

Hopeful as all the legacy commercial scanners are very long in the tooth and at some point, if film is going to remain a viable product outside of home dark room printing, a new commercial scanner will need to enter the market. I also think there may be a market as smaller labs are growing again with film resurgence. Just my observation, I don't work in the industry but I shoot a lot of film and appreciate the ease and convenience of having a lab scanner.

To add: further down the thread the OP addressed the concerns of this being vaporware.

" I have personally been working on this project for about 3 years now, and we are putting this information out now to get some feedback, suggestions and a feel for the market. We are already deep in prototyping and are expecting our first industrial prototype to be ready sometime next month, after two years of more frugal testing. This is a critical moment for us, as the investment needed to take this scanner from an industrial prototype to a sturdy product is pretty massive, so we do need to get a feel for the market, even if it is not ready to hit the shelves just yet. That said, we are moving fast, and we are expecting to deliver the first pre-series (almost same as mass-market models if there is such a thing at this volume lol, and hand-assembled) scanners sometime around Q1 2024."

Archiloque · Jun 13, 2023

It's actually a pretty sensible message and I can't wait to see more.

A see a few caveat : the first being the 12 bits limitation even though it might only be apparent with some very difficult/underexposed slide film pictures. With negative film it will be perfectly fine.

No, the main caveat is that Noritsu is still selling very popular scanners. The professional scanner market isn't totally empty. Yes, the Pakon and Frontiers of the world are certainly on their last legs. But Noritsu is very much alive. But a little competition won't hurt.

Jon Buffington · Jun 13, 2023

Archiloque said:
It's actually a pretty sensible message and I can't wait to see more.

A see a few caveat : the first being the 12 bits limitation even though it might only be apparent with some very difficult/underexposed slide film pictures. With negative film it will be perfectly fine.

No, the main caveat is that Noritsu is still selling very popular scanners. The professional scanner market isn't totally empty. Yes, the Pakon and Frontiers of the world are certainly on their last legs. But Noritsu is very much alive. But a little competition won't hurt.

Yup! Competition is good. Especially in the new market, Keeps the used market prices lower. Heck, I bought my f135+ for 250 back in 2012 or so, hr500's were going for around 500 and I thought that was too much then. Passed on a sp2500 for a little over 2k that was offered to me. The prices on all those are astronomical in comparison today.

brbo · Jun 13, 2023

Archiloque said:
No, the main caveat is that Noritsu is still selling very popular scanners.

Really? Not what you hear from lab owners. If they are to be believed, Noritsu hasn't been offering new scanners for a few years now...

foc · Jun 14, 2023

Noritsu lists scanners on their website but they aren't new and they run on Windows 7.

https://www.noritsu.eu/hardware/noritsu-film-scanner.html

The professional market for Frontier/Noritsu type scanners is quite limited. They were never mass market items.

The Pakon is a very simple and good scanner but you need two of them, one to use and the second to cannibalise for parts.

Moose22 · Jun 14, 2023

Yeah, and Noritsus are... well, they're crap. Color's bad, only output relatively low res JPEG, they don't handle a lot of situations well, like adding banding to blue skies. They take a lot of babysitting and even then you can't fix crap like the banding issue. If I could get a decent 24MP RAW or TIFF without all kinds of crap being wrong I'd happily give the many hundreds of dollars I spent on my home scanning rig to the lab to do it for me.

The Noritsus haven't been updated in a generation, there is obviously no active development or improvement going on, software or hardware. But especially software.

At the very least, if this new upstart hits the market it'll spur some competition. Though it's a big "if" there.

brbo · Jun 15, 2023

Moose22 said:
Yeah, and Noritsus are... well, they're crap. Color's bad, only output relatively low res JPEG, they don't handle a lot of situations well, like adding banding to blue skies. They take a lot of babysitting and even then you can't fix crap like the banding issue. If I could get a decent 24MP RAW or TIFF without all kinds of crap being wrong I'd happily give the many hundreds of dollars I spent on my home scanning rig to the lab to do it for me.

The Noritsus haven't been updated in a generation, there is obviously no active development or improvement going on, software or hardware. But especially software.

Noritsu scanners can output hi-res (4.000dpi) TIFs with no problem, banding is only noticeable on units that need to have service done (failing LED light source, uneven film transport...), latest software works on Windows 11...

Moose22 · Jun 15, 2023

brbo said:
Noritsu scanners can output hi-res (4.000dpi) TIFs with no problem, banding is only noticeable on units that need to have service done (failing LED light source, uneven film transport...), latest software works on Windows 11...

I'm surprised there aren't places here offering tiffs as standard, then. Good to know, but I still have yet to get a good scan from a noritsu.

As for the banding, I'm gonna be that guy on the internet. I don't believe you. Multiple machines at the local, including RIGHT after they were serviced, and tried other places. Still got banding.

So maybe every Noritsu in California needs maintenance. Or the guy who services them in Southern California is incompetent. Either of which is actually plausible, now that I type it, but my experiences were bad enough for me to spend stupid money and waste many many hours scanning my own.

brbo · Jun 16, 2023

Then I'm gonna be that guy on the internet (that actually has a Noritsu scanner at home) that tells you that banding on Noritsus is not an inevitable "feature" of all Noritsu scanners. But it is a problem on some scanners, made more pronounced by poor maintenance and with certain features enabled in EZ Controller (Noritsu scanning software). And I don't believe routine service in labs will address poor LED light source since they can't get new parts.

So, yes, situation on hardware part of those machines will only get worse with time. EZ Controller software also drives the printers that are used for printing (from digital files or scans) and this software is still actively maintained by Noritsu so labs are at least not forced into maintaining legacy hardware to drive the scanners and printers.

I hope a new lab grade scanner does see the light of day. Soon. Labs don't really have much options now, they are running old equipment that will only be harder and harder to maintain and the new solutions that can work fairly well for amateurs (camera scanning) are not really suitable for labs with lots of traffic.

foc · Jun 16, 2023

Moose22 said:
As for the banding, I'm gonna be that guy on the internet. I don't believe you.

Hi, do you have a sample of the banding that you could post here, please? Maybe the scanned image and an image of same on the negative strip?

I used Frontier scanners for over 20 years (professionally) and never had any banding problems. It would suggest a maintenance/software problem. I know the Frontier is different from the Noritisu, BUT a scanner is a scanner and they all work in a similar way.

Considering the competition between Fuji and Noritsu back in the day, both companies were on the top of their game with their scanners and software.

brbo · Jun 16, 2023

Noritsu scanners have line sensors while Frontiers have area sensors so banding isn't a problem on Frontier scanners.

halfaman · Jun 16, 2023

Still too many things pending for this Auralab. I hope they succeed labs can have a modern and in service altenative to old Noritsu and Frontiers.

foc · Jun 16, 2023

brbo said:
Noritsu scanners have line sensors while Frontiers have area sensors so banding isn't a problem on Frontier scanners.

Not quite true. The Frontier SP3000 has an area sensor but when the automated 35mm carrier is used the scanning transforms into a line scanner. Of course, this can cause banding but if cleaned and maintained daily, then it's not a problem.

brbo · Jun 16, 2023

foc said:
when the automated 35mm carrier is used the scanning transforms into a line scanner

What do you mean?

With automated 35mm carrier it takes in the entire frame length of film at a time, exposes the area sensor with entire frame in one go (or multiple "pixelshift" captures for higher resolution scans), and then moves on to the next frame. SP500 works the same. The point is that film is stationary during the capture of one frame.

This is not how scanners with line sensors work where any oscillation in light source, film transport, sensor gain etc. during the scanning of one frame will cause banding.

foc · Jun 16, 2023

The auto 35mm carrier I had (can't remember the code) for the Frontier SP3000 accepted the roll of negative on the right, it stopped at each frame to make the exposure for the thumbnail for the screen and continued to the end.

As soon as the thumbnails (6 at a time displayed) were either manually corrected or accepted, the scanner then moved the negative at a steady speed, this time for the high quality scan.

I have cleaned that negative carrier so many times, admittedly years ago, so I know what area of the carrier was for used for area capture and what was used for line capture

faberryman · Jun 16, 2023

With a lease option you know the Auralab unit is going to be expensive.

Steven Lee · Jun 16, 2023

Nice looking device! Hopefully not too expensive for home use. However, I call false advertising on this part:

60 to 80 times faster scans compared to existing devices at similar resolution.

The existing device I use scans a 36exp roll in three minutes. I can't believe Auralab can scan a roll in 3 seconds.

brbo · Jun 17, 2023

Steven Lee said:
Nice looking device! Hopefully not too expensive for home use.

They already said it will definitely be too expensive for home users.

Steven Lee said:
The existing device I use scans a 36exp roll in three minutes. I can't believe Auralab can scan a roll in 3 seconds.

Which 4.000+ dpi lab grade scanner does a roll in 3 minutes? Anyway, they said scanning part will take 20s for 36exp roll.

Steven Lee · Jun 17, 2023

@brbo they didn't say "lab grade scanner", they said "device". My 60mp mirrorless camera and the lens definitely qualify!

braxus · Jun 19, 2023

Having used both a Kodak Pakon scanner and also a Noritsu lab scanner, I much prefered the color output of the Noritsu. Scans off the Pakon using Kodak software was the worst color I've ever seen off a professional lab scanner. It really made film look like crap. The rez may have been ok, but if the color isn't good, what's the point? Also the Pakon needed longer strips of cut film to put into it without jamming. The Noritsu allowed shorter strips. So I wouldnt have high hopes this new Kodak scanner would be much better. I also dont know why 120 keeps getting forgotten with Kodak. Last time I saw a Kodak Pro scanner be able to use 120 is with the HR500, and that scanner is well over 20 years old now. At least the Noritsu scanners (some of them) had the option for 120 trays.

brbo · Jun 19, 2023

braxus said:
So I wouldnt have high hopes this new Kodak scanner would be much better.

This scanner has nothing to do with Kodak.

braxus · Jun 19, 2023

brbo said:
This scanner has nothing to do with Kodak.

Ok. The last one I used had Kodak written all over it. My mistake.

brbo · Jun 19, 2023

The OP got the news of this scanner (which is not even at a prototype stage at the moment) in Pakon FB group. That doesn't mean it's got anything to do with Pakon/Kodak. The people behind it are just trying to get a feel for the market and are posting news of this Auralab scanner project left and right...

New lab scanner option: Auralab

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