[filmscanners] RE: 3 year wait

["Laurie Solomon" <laurie@advancenet.net>]

Arthur,
I make no claims to expertise or to being even all that knowledgable with
respect to film recorders.  I recently picked up cheap on Ebay a Polaroid
Digital Palette 5000s film recorder to play araound with and learn something
about film recorders and recording.  It is obsolete and 35mm; and may have
been a bad buy since it looks as if the lamp inside may be going which may
cost a couple of hundred to fix or replace.  It claims to be a 4K recorder,
but I suspect that it is probably more accurately a 2K + recorder only
capable at its maximum 4K setting of nominally achieving 4K.

>From my research which entails mostly asking questions of those who own or
operate film recorders, manufacturers, distributors and sellers, and others
as well as reading liturature on some of the distributors', sellers', and
manufacturer's web sites, I have been lead to believe that the RES
specification for film recorders (2K,4K,8K and 16K) are lines per inch (and
possibly line pairs) more akin to that which one achieves when deterining
the halftone line screen of a scan given the scanner optical resolution used
to do the scan than to ppi, dpi, or spi which reflects the scanner's raw
(non-dithered or halftoned)optical resolution.  However, since the amount of
written literature available on film scanners is so small and limited, it is
difficult to get a reliable single reference source as one can on scanners
and scanning or on printers and printing  so as to verify my conclusion.

In point of actual practical fact, I doubt if most films max out at even the
standard 4K if it is representative of line per inch and certainly not at
what it seems frequently passes for 4K in the film recorder business.  My
assumption is that the 4K film recorders max out before the film does.  The
only collateral support that I have or could find was from something written
in the FAQ page of one of the film recorder web sites which suggested that
as one went up the standard from 2K to 16K with respect to 35mm films the
output would be cleaner from noise and artifacts, richer in detail and tonal
depth, and capable of greater enlargement before breaking down.  It also
implied that with respect to 35mm film there is a law of diminishing returns
as one proceeds up the resolution scale.

You did answer the MP quesation.  Not dealing with digital cameras, the term
or abbreviation was not familiar to me.  I was inclined to think it was an
error and should have read MB; but then that would not really have made much
sense in the context.

-----Original Message-----
From: filmscanners_owner@halftone.co.uk
[mailto:filmscanners_owner@halftone.co.uk]On Behalf Of Arthur Entlich
Sent: Sunday, May 12, 2002 3:10 AM
To: laurie@advancenet.net
Subject: [filmscanners] Re: 3 year wait


Hi Laurie,

Sorry for the misappropriated quotes.  It was bad editing on my part.  I
was trying to respond to your questions about the several different
measures being used, but I fear I might have further confused the
matter, as I was trying to convert it all into ppi, rather than lpi.

Am I then incorrect in my thinking that the 4K figure for the
filmrecorder is in ppi?  I believe you are stating it is lpi, which
could well be correct.  I only worked with a film recorder twice, and
that was many years ago.  If that is the case, then your numbers would
make for more accuracy.

If your numbers are closer to the amounts film scanners claim for 4K,
then I really find it hard to accept that film maxes out at that resolution.

Hopefully, at least, I answered what the MP acronym stands for ;-)

Military Police?
Member of Parliament?
Mega-Pixel?
Mainly Playing?

Art

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