Retro Scanner Changing

Overview Sometimes you find you need to change the Retro scanner.  Here are a collection of hints and changes:

Putting software in diag mode:

In the software's window, push the following to go into diag mode, and push again to exit:   <ctrl><alt><shft>A

This will show the window with sprockets and an 'A' in the window.

Lens on LED

The lens on the LED cluster focuses the beam of light and makes the beam brighter.  The issue we found with the lens is that the beam of light did not get completely diffused.  This caused an uneven cast of light which showed up badly on B&W negative with night time shots (the film looks almost clear....but when inverted in post, the black scene has light leaking in from the right).

Changing the aperature on the lens

After removing the LED lens the light dropped off to the point where we needed to crank the exposure to the top...but we do now have the light diffused!   We need to open the aperature of the lens:

  • unscrew the lens from the mount
  • find the 3 philips screws on the aperature ring and loose them
  • move the aperature ring to the lowest number ... 2.8
  • place lens back
  • now go to focus.....because aperature has lowered, the focus has become more narrow and more critical to be bang on

Now adjust the focus

  • loosen the thumb screw while the lens is not mounted
  • mount lens back in the socket
  • put the retro software into diag mode
  • on the Retro board, flip the 5th dip switch (this disables the motors from running during testing)
  • get a good focused film clip in the gate
  • make sure that the film clip is flat down on the gate
    • it helps to lock both the take-up and the feed reels and tighten the film between both reels
  • adjust the focus ring until the software screen shows sharp
  • BTW (in the diag mode, the screen will seem brighter)
  • hold the focus ring and tighten the thumb screw (while tightening make sure the focus ring does not slip).
    • This action is not simple.  The thumb screw cannot be tightened while the lens is mounted.  This means that you need to remove the lens while not changing the focus ring!  Then you can tighten the thumb screw and remount the lens.
  • Double check the focus and make sure it has not changed.