[MacDV] Re: Film Scanners

[Danny Grizzle]

On 12/31/02 1:39 AM, "Richard Brown" <richard at go2rba.com> wrote:

> Having had a bunch of experience with
> slide duping, we even added some improvements to some of the originals
> when possible. We found we could dupe these shows with time to spare.
> There was no second chance, as the slides left with the doctors, same
> day. The "operation was a success" and was completed without breaking a
> sweat.

<snip>

File this under, "That Was Then, This Is Now."

I, too, started in the film era, working in a filmstrip production company,
handling tons of 35mm slides, etc. I personally hand developed tons of E-4
Ektachrome in a temperature-controlled sink line, plus handled duplication
chores with a Bogen slide duplicator, complete with contrast control unit.

Duplication and cataloging are two separate issues. Duplication has *always*
been fast & easy. Heck, slide duplication is fast, but filmstrips...
probably tens of thousands of images per hour.

But filmstrips involve a mastering processes, and outsourcing duplication to
a film lab. Slide duplication may *seem* fast... until you consider film
processing, mounting, collating, keeping things strait (right side up &
correct left-to-right), loading Carousel slide trays, distribution prep...
it adds up.

Now consider the ease of simply duplicating a PowerPoint file, analogous to
duplicating a slide show. Burning a CD is certainly easier, faster, and
cheaper.

> You must keep in mind that
> non-High Def television is of astonishingly low resolution. The dupe
> process I speak of will be far in excess of TV resolution, and with
> good down sizing and prep for TV, should be fine for this purposing.

I tell people that my Olympus E-10 4 megapixel still camera is my first
HiDef video camera.

> <<various good points about high speed still image digitization>>

I don't know that we will ever see high speed still image digitization. I
think costs to develop such a digitizer would be high, and it would not hold
much potential as a mass market device. The public is not beating the doors
down to have their family photos converted to digital files, no more than
they are driving a high quality super speed 8mm & Super 8 film to DVD
movement. Sure, the service is available, but the volume does not support
exotic devices in every Eckerd's. Somebody might create a trade-service, but
the costs of marketing/revenue sharing with retailers would get complicated.

Besides, what technology would this be based on? There are super scanners
that are rarely seen by the public. For instance, the Dallas Morning News
maintains editorial, advertising, and page makeup functions in their
traditional downtown Dallas headquarters. But their ultra-modern robot
controlled printing plant is located in Plano, the next county to the north.
There's no courier, no film in their process. Finished pages are scanned at
extreme resolutions downtown, very rapidly, and transmitted by microwave
link direct to the printing presses. I'm not sure about the Dallas Morning
News, but most printers are now direct-to-plate, bypassing film separations
and press registration.

Quality photographic scanning, on the other hand, is still excruciatingly
slow, one image at a time. Far from high speed, video level resolution,
quality scanners are not just going for resolution, but density matching &
color correction. No color casts, and tremendous shadow detail. At the
highest end, this includes individually hand cleaning each transparency, and
mounting it on a drum scanner in an optical oil suspension, which fills in
scratches & defects from handling the film. Definitely not a process that
lends itself to high speed production.

Danny Grizzle