From: davidas@mbunix.mitre.org (southard)
Subject: Low-cost 35mm digital film recorders (SUMMARY)
Organization: The MITRE Corp., Bedford, Ma.
Date: Fri, 13 Nov 1992 16:06:44 GMT

Disclaimer:  The following opinions are my own, and do not
             reflect an official view of The MITRE Corporation.

Thanks to everyone who replied to my query about low-cost 35mm
digital film recorders.  To recap:

> Are there any low-cost 35mm digital film recorders that can be attached,
> either directly or via ethernet, to SGI machines?  The application
> is 35mm color transparencies (slides), to be used for presentations, etc.
> 
> Requirements are:  system cost less than $(US)12k;  include all driver
> software for SGI workstations;  accessible to heterogeneous workstations
> over the net;  horizontal resolution of 4k lines.
> 
> Any product or system recommendations, experience, or anecdotes will be
> welcome.

I found that most responses were, like me, looking for information 
rather than dispensing it.  There was a review of digital
film recorders in Macworld.  My criticism of the article is that
it placed too much emphasis on print time, which in most cases
depends mostly on the source graphics format (TIFF, PostScript, 
what-have-you) and the rasterizing software that runs (in most cases)
on the host platform.  So this was primarily a test of the software
and the host platform, not the film recorder itself.  I would
have liked to have seen more tests on the resolvable resolution,
center-to-corner sharpness, color balance and uniformity, and banding.
For those interested, the reference is:

James A. Martin (Aug. 1992), Slides While You Wait, Macworld 9(8) 146-152.

While there are certainly a number of systems costing 
over $(US)20 000, these seem to be aimed at
professional service companies and/or cine animation shops.
Also the image quality of film recorders costing around 
$(US)10 000 seems to vary quite a bit.  Caveat emptor.

Some systems are designed to attach to the workstation's RGB video
lines.  This type of interface allows easy connection to a wide
variety of workstations, with no software drivers needed.
The film recorder captures what you see on the CRT monitor.
However, my experience with this type of interface for color
printers convinced me that digital was the only way to go.
First, the image quality captured from an analog video signal is
inferior to the original digital image.  Second, you don't have
the same flexibility for croping and scaling the image, because 
what you see on the CRT is all you get.  Third, you are limited to the
displayable resolution of your CRT, which means you can't print a
2048x2048 image at full resolution.

Finally, I wanted a system that would be available to any workstation
on our local network, not just to the one workstation to which it
was directly connected.

In short, we have decided to purchase the following system:

 Lasergraphics Personal LFR Film Recorder
 Graftel EM100 Network Color Device Manager with Film Recorder Option.

The Graftel box connects directly to the network, and supports
rasterization and device drivers for both a color printer and 
a digital film recorder.  If I understand correctly, it will look 
like a BSD lpr network printer, and so will be available to 
heterogeneous workstations in our lab.  The whole system comes in
at $(US)12 000, which was just our budget.

Since we have yet to recieve and test this equipment in our own lab,
I am not posting vendor names and address, but I will respond via
email for those who wish to check things out for themselves.
If there is interest, I will post results from our hands-on experiences.