The biggest pains of film scanning are in the post process color balance and dust removal. Unless this can improve those parts of the workflow, it's only going to be a minor improvement. I like the continuous reel movement of this scanner vs a flatbed though, that can improve the physical workflow quite a bit.
As someone who has a mirrorless scanning setup for my film, and pondered getting a dedicated scanner... the price of this is quite steep given how inflexible of a tool it is.
A second hand DSLR setup is going to be roughly the same price or less. I'm also not sure what kind of workflow improvements it actually offers. If you want fancy and experimental, filmomat has arguably a more interesting but pricier offering.
But naysaying aside, I hope they manage to find a niche that allows them to survive as a company, and keep the analog photography revival alive.
I'd never run film at claimed top speeds unless it was a disposable copy print, but seems exciting. Long way have we come from linear array cameras and telecine to these. Different light sources would be useful for dust and scratches mask. $1k price is also insane. For full mechanical assembly with casters etc it probably comes within five or ten, but still a bargain. I wrote here years ago where I had a side hustle scanning and processing ye olde reels with an absolute beast of a scanner (think room sized) that did 2k in real time with an SGI and Hippi fiber network. Tech almost interesting as films themselves. :)
I applaud their intent to be repairable, but would really like to see a commitment to open sourcing the software under specific conditions (time, EoL, acquisition, closing down, etc).
> “Is Knokke open, repairable, and long-term supported?”
> “Absolutely. We're committed to building a scanner that lasts decades.
All schematics and repair manuals will be publicly available, replacement parts can be purchased directly, and the software will remain supported for as long as possible.”
When it comes to the light source, it's a huge missed opportunity. The next wave of film scanning involves capturing Red, Green and Blue separately (separate narrow-band LEDs) to better isolate C-41 layers and counteract crossover on the image sensor. And yes, it should have an IR pass as well, for dust removal.
With that said, I'm happy to see new film products released in 2025/2026. Hopefully this is just the first at-bat.
Hmm, does seem pretty expensive but sounds interesting. I've got an old Canon FS4000 for 35mm, which works ok for me. I'm curious what people recommend for 4x5 film.
Disappointed to see that the first reactions on HN are so dismissive.
I'm both amazed and really pleased to see anyone attempting to launch a totally new scanner in 2025, and genuinely hoping the actual scans are really made at the resolution and color-depth claimed in the text: too many recent scanners are simply upscaled, lower bit-depth devices marketed with exaggerated specs.
I also have a Nikon Coolscan 9000, so I'm not immediately in the market for this. But I don't expect the Coolscan to last forever, and the Firewire connections on the machine are already abandoned by Apple, who chose not to support the cables in their latest Operating System - so eventually I won't be able to connect it to a new computer.
For example I wanted to look at the first picture in the horizontal gallery that scrolls horizontally when you scroll vertically. However, there is no way for me to view the whole image. Either it is cutoff at the bottom, or it starts horizontally scrolling. Switching from vertical to horizontal scrolling is awkward and I just want to skip the gallery.
scrolling on that page feels slow, sluggish, and if you switch to spacebar, you actually miss significant content since it only loads/becomes visible halfway into the page.
Like others have said, dust is a huge issue. Some film labs cut film into short strips. some film is just a single image (for example if previously cut to fit into slides).
The film is designed to form into a coil. So, if there's grit or any hard material you'll end up with scratches on the negative itself.
--is it only 35mm as well? I don't think I see any mention of formats it supports. So I can only assume it's just 35mm.--
EDIT: found the 120mm section in the FAQ.
I don't see any infrared sensor. This makes it drastically worse than the competitors on the market, as it's an essential sensor for dust and scratch removal.
Did they not research the competition?
I can buy a brand-new 7200 (virtual) DPI machine with infrared, proper color metering, wide software support, and multi-exposure system for $400, less than half the price of this offering.
It also supports slides and single frames, whereas this has a min. of 3 in a strip.
Film doesn't really make sense anymore outside the realm of luxury-budget art. And if so, why 35mm? Why not medium format / Hasselblads, or large format? Why not actually go for the format sizes where there's a reasonable argument that film can produce a better end result compared to DSLRs?
I still have an expensive Canon dedicated slide/film scanner from 20 years ago.
IIRC at some point their value started going up as they became rare.
Mine did something like 50MP scans of 35mm film/slides. The quality was more than enough.
But it was painfully slow.
This thing is not 100x faster, so I think it's still painfully slow. If it takes 5 minutes to do a roll of 24 that still means someone with hundreds of rolls needs to have a lot of time on their hands.
Not sure I can actually figure out software to get my old one to work FWIW, but I don't think I care to deal with it, I have a big enough mess dealing with the ~200k digital photos that are already on disk.
For the "this is crazy expensive" crowd: this competes with the Pakon F135 - an ancient lab scanner that involves booting up Windows XP, finding old drivers on a CD, etc
I gave up trying to read the article when animations started happening when I scrolled. It's annoying and I have better things to do than waste time waiting for your animations to stutter and finish moving around when I'm trying to scan the article. Good luck with whatever you're trying to do.
I'm glad this exists but at ~1k EUR I would be interested if it could scan 120 medium format negatives...but the fact that it does not is an absolute deal breaker for me. It seems like they are considering it. I hope they do figure that out sooner than later.
56 comments
[ 2.5 ms ] story [ 68.4 ms ] threadA second hand DSLR setup is going to be roughly the same price or less. I'm also not sure what kind of workflow improvements it actually offers. If you want fancy and experimental, filmomat has arguably a more interesting but pricier offering.
But naysaying aside, I hope they manage to find a niche that allows them to survive as a company, and keep the analog photography revival alive.
> “Is Knokke open, repairable, and long-term supported?”
> “Absolutely. We're committed to building a scanner that lasts decades. All schematics and repair manuals will be publicly available, replacement parts can be purchased directly, and the software will remain supported for as long as possible.”
With that said, I'm happy to see new film products released in 2025/2026. Hopefully this is just the first at-bat.
(I have submitted it earlier but no traction)
Is there such a thing as a cheap drum scanner.
I'm both amazed and really pleased to see anyone attempting to launch a totally new scanner in 2025, and genuinely hoping the actual scans are really made at the resolution and color-depth claimed in the text: too many recent scanners are simply upscaled, lower bit-depth devices marketed with exaggerated specs.
I also have a Nikon Coolscan 9000, so I'm not immediately in the market for this. But I don't expect the Coolscan to last forever, and the Firewire connections on the machine are already abandoned by Apple, who chose not to support the cables in their latest Operating System - so eventually I won't be able to connect it to a new computer.
For example I wanted to look at the first picture in the horizontal gallery that scrolls horizontally when you scroll vertically. However, there is no way for me to view the whole image. Either it is cutoff at the bottom, or it starts horizontally scrolling. Switching from vertical to horizontal scrolling is awkward and I just want to skip the gallery.
scrolling on that page feels slow, sluggish, and if you switch to spacebar, you actually miss significant content since it only loads/becomes visible halfway into the page.
Like others have said, dust is a huge issue. Some film labs cut film into short strips. some film is just a single image (for example if previously cut to fit into slides).
The film is designed to form into a coil. So, if there's grit or any hard material you'll end up with scratches on the negative itself.
--is it only 35mm as well? I don't think I see any mention of formats it supports. So I can only assume it's just 35mm.-- EDIT: found the 120mm section in the FAQ.
Did they not research the competition?
I can buy a brand-new 7200 (virtual) DPI machine with infrared, proper color metering, wide software support, and multi-exposure system for $400, less than half the price of this offering.
It also supports slides and single frames, whereas this has a min. of 3 in a strip.
I'm sure this will be on every photography youtuber's channel shortly, can't wait to see it in action.
IIRC at some point their value started going up as they became rare.
Mine did something like 50MP scans of 35mm film/slides. The quality was more than enough.
But it was painfully slow.
This thing is not 100x faster, so I think it's still painfully slow. If it takes 5 minutes to do a roll of 24 that still means someone with hundreds of rolls needs to have a lot of time on their hands.
Not sure I can actually figure out software to get my old one to work FWIW, but I don't think I care to deal with it, I have a big enough mess dealing with the ~200k digital photos that are already on disk.
This sounds excellent to me, personally.