It looks like a Brutalist piece of furniture, but it’s a scanner

Fortunately, there are technological products that combine bold design choices with niche applications. Knokke, a new 35 mm film scanner by Soke Engineering, fits perfectly into this category. The device looks like it came straight out of a spaceship in a science-fiction movie, yet it is actually a cutting-edge 35 mm film scanner.

Knokke can capture a roll in a few minutes by scanning every frame at 4046 DPI, 48-bit color, and with 120 dB of dynamic range. It sports custom optics and comes bundled with a scanning software program that runs on PC, Mac, and Linux.

“Each frame can have custom scan settings, repeatable across multiple scans for consistent results and tailored workflows”, says Soke Engineering. “The scanner can also skip directly to requested frames, massively accelerating scanning time and enabling fast access to key shots without unnecessary delay.” The Knokke is still in the development phase, and Soke is currently benchmarking it against Fuji and Noritsu scanners with the help of several film labs in Berlin. 

The startup plans to launch a Kickstarter campaign to fund production, with an initial price of 999€ for the scanner and software.