Film Recorder

Dirk-Uwe Bartsch PhD (mailto:bartsch@EYECENTER.UCSD.EDU)
Thu, 6 Oct 1994 11:28:33 -0800

Message-Id: <mailto:199410061833.NAA24826@library.wustl.edu>
Date:         Thu, 6 Oct 1994 11:28:33 -0800
From: Dirk-Uwe Bartsch PhD <mailto:bartsch@EYECENTER.UCSD.EDU>
Subject:      Film Recorder
To: Multiple recipients of list IMAGELIB <mailto:IMAGELIB@ARIZVM1.BITNET>

        Reply to:   Film Recorder
In respect to the following note:
>Date:    Wed, 5 Oct 1994 06:59:04 -0700
>From: Museum Informatics Project <mailto:mip-arch@GARNET.BERKELEY.EDU>
>Subject: Film Recorders, where are they?
>There are lots of regularly-appearing reviews/discussion about slide
>scanners in recent years. There seems to be very little (almost none?)
>discussion/review of digital Film Recorders.

We have a LaserGraphics Personal Film Recorder. We just love it. We run about 3 rolls of film per week, before meetings sometimes 3 rolls a night. The slides come out with a great resolution (4k lines) and I believe 33 bits of color, which is plenty for our purposes. The great advantage is the high speed, it takes only 2 minutes to make a slide, that, we found, is a very important feature. Usually, we have somebody desperately needing slides ASAP, and that includes me, too. If you have 36 slides and need to wait 5 minutes for each slide, you can wait three hours or just one hour with the personal LFR. The price was okay (around $7k, if I recall correctly). We had it for about 1 1/2 years, no problems (knock on wood). It doesn't have a bulk loader, but 36 in a roll is plenty for us. Overall I can recommend the product to anybody if you can live without a bulk loader, exactly as it says, PERSONAL laser film recorder (why they put laser in the name is a mystery to me). The company offers bigger LFRs (around 17k, I believe) that accept bulk loaders.

Dirk-Uwe Bartsch, Ph.D. UCSD Shiley Eye Center mailto:dbartsch@ucsd.edu (no financial interest in film recorders, their manufacturers or distributors)