First of all, thank you to all of our backers for helping bring this project to life.
As I'm writing this, 90 backers have contributed just under €80,000 to the project, which is more than we had expected.
The Indiegogo campaign is now nearing its end, and during this time we have collected a lot of useful feedback, ideas, and testing data, both from our own development work and from people using the prototypes.
In this update, I want to go through some of the things that have come up during testing, explain how we plan to address them, and also show you one extra thing we have been working on but haven't shared yet.
Reel
The double-disc reel is at the heart of Fränk. Our initial design was largely based on the proven Lomo reel, but testing has shown that a few changes are needed to improve processing quality with continuous rotary processing and to make the reel better suited to the Fränk concept.
Splitting 16 mm Film in Half
This is the biggest concern from people who want to develop 16mm. To process a full 100 ft roll of 16 mm film, it needs to be split into two 50 ft lengths and loaded onto the two reels.
First problem was that attaching the second half to the reel would use up a few frames of film. We wanted to avoid losing any footage, so we have developed a small film holder with hooks that catches the film by its perforations. This allows the second half to be secured to the reel without sacrificing any frames.
The roll should be split using a film splicer, which allows you to cut precisely between frames without sacrificing any footage. After development, the two sections can simply be spliced back together with film splicing tape. So while processing a 100 ft roll requires one extra step, you don't lose a single frame of your footage and can confidently process the full cartridge in Fränk.
Fitting a Full 100 ft Roll of 16 mm Film
A double-stacked Lomo reel holds almost exactly 100 ft (30 m) of 16 mm film. The problem is that Kodak and other manufacturers actually load more than 100 ft onto their 100 ft spools, typically around 109 ft (33.2 m).
Fortunately, the solution was quite simple: we increased the diameter of the spiral to accommodate the extra film. We had enough unused space inside Fränk to make the reel larger while keeping the required chemistry volume below 1 liter.
Underdevelopment on 8mm
We have occasionally noticed small areas of underdevelopment on 8 mm film where the film sits inside the reel groove. This appears to happen when part of the film's surface comes into contact with the groove, limiting chemistry flow.
We compared our reel with the Lomo design, which performs better in this area. This gave us a good indication of how the groove geometry needs to be improved for the final reel design which we are confident it will be solved.
Flickering
Some sharp-eyed viewers noticed slight flickering in the highlights of footage developed with Fränk, particularly with B&W film.
We have traced the issue to the spokes of the reel's pressure disc, which appear to create turbulence as they rotate through the chemistry, causing slight variations in development.
Our current pressure disc is 4 mm thick plastic. In the next version we are replacing it with a much thinner 1–1.5 mm stainless steel disc, which should create considerably less turbulence. We will validate the new design during the next round of testing.
Lid attachment
Initially, we designed the lid to be held in place with magnets. It seemed like an elegant solution, but after using Fränk ourselves and getting feedback from testers, it simply didn't feel secure enough.
If the processor were accidentally knocked over, there was a risk of the lid coming off and exposing the undeveloped film inside. We decided this wasn't a risk worth taking, so we went back to our original idea and added mechanical latches on both sides.
It may be a little less elegant than magnets, but it feels much more secure, and sometimes that's simply more important.
Handle
A handle was something I always wanted Fränk to have. I liked the idea behind the original Apple iMac. Adding a handle somehow made a piece of technology feel more approachable and friendly.
It also has a very practical purpose. Fränk is a device you are going to be moving around and being able to pick it up easily with one hand will make carrying Fränk around better.
It then will feel almost like a briefcase. Load your film into Fränk in one room, then carry it to your sink.
Optional Heat pad
Active heating is something AGO users have been asking for E6 processing. While Automatic time compensation works wonderfully well for C41, black-and-white and for shorter processes in general.
Longer processes like E6 where the first developer typically runs for six minutes or more, during which the chemistry temperature can drop by as much as 4°C (7°F) from initial 38°C (100°F), is where a little Active Heating can help make the final results even better.
The heating pad becomes even more useful when using chemicals that don't have a time compensation formula available in Fränk, or when experimenting with your own processes. In these cases, keeping the chemistry close to the target temperature helps keep the results consistent.
The heating pad is not intended to bring cold chemistry up to processing temperature. You still need to preheat your chemistry to developing temperature. Instead, it gently maintains the chemistry close to the target temperature throughout the process.
Combined with Fränk's automatic time compensation, this gives us the best of both approaches: keep the temperature stable and compensate for the small changes that still occur.
What's next
The things you have just read about are the exact reason why we wanted to get Fränk into the hands of real users before locking down the final design. None of the issues above require us to rethink the basic concept, but testing has helped us find the small details that can make a big difference in the final product.
The next step is to build these changes into the new prototypes and put them through another round of testing. The reel in particular will get a lot of attention, as we want to be confident in the final geometry before moving towards production tooling.
The Indiegogo campaign is coming to an end, but for us this is really where the next phase begins. Thanks again to everyone who has backed Fränk, tested a prototype, shared footage, asked difficult questions, or sent us ideas. A surprising number of the improvements above came directly from those conversations.
We'll keep sharing the development as Fränk moves from prototype to production.
More soon!