Message-Id: <mailto:199410092041.PAA05115@library.wustl.edu> Date: Sun, 9 Oct 1994 15:43:00 CDT From: "Hendershot, Gary" <mailto:GHENDERS@JA2.JSC.NASA.GOV> To: Multiple recipients of list IMAGELIB <mailto:IMAGELIB@ARIZVM1.BITNET>
A friend of mine here passed this clip below to me via E-Mail. I guess that this from a forum on electronic imaging from somewhere out there on Internet. Maybe not. But, I've added a response after the reply below from Dirk-Uwe Bartsch at UCSD..........Update: Mr. Bartsch just enlightened me to this list. I'll give it a try.
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>From: Dirk-Uwe Bartsch PhD <mailto:bartsch@EYECENTER.UCSD.EDU>
>Subject: Film Recorder
>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:>mailto:dbartsch@ucsd.edu >(no financial interest in film recorders, their manufacturers or
distributors) >
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In 1987, I designed a "film recording facility" here at the NASA Johnson Space Center that would provide institutional film recording support for JSC in the form of business, scientific, and engineering graphics. I started off with a Lasergraphics MFR film recorder -- which used an RS-232 serial port for input. A year later I traded that in on a Lasergraphics LFR film recorder which had both SCSI and parallel interfaces. A year after that I added a Matrix QCRZ and another Lasergraphics LFR. About two years later I "upgraded" both Lasergraphics LFR film recorders to LFR Plus film recorders. This year I ditched the old Matrix QCRZ for a Management Graphics 16XPS film recorder.
The new Management Graphics can image up to 16,384 pixels on a long edge (4x5 ñ6,384 x 13,107 pixels). It is very fast and accurate, but it is expensive -- about US$70,000. The Lasergraphics LFR Plus film recorders are about US$9,000 for a "dual host" model -- one that has both SCSI and high-speed parallel interfaces to allow a Macintosh or Sun and a PC to simultaneously interface the film recorder. The Lasergraphics film recorders are very easy to work with. Their interface software for Macintosh, Windows, and Sun is excellent in terms ease of use and functionality. Working with most other film recorders is not as easy as with the Lasergraphics. Also, film backs -- such as a 4x5 sheet film, 120/220, or bulk capacity (long-roll) 35mm -- are less expensive for the Lasergraphics than those for Agfa/Matrix or Management Graphics, in that the RGB color filter wheel and calibrating electronics are not integrated into each film back, but inside the film recorder. Lasergraphics also has a relatively new 8,000-line film recorder called the Mark III. It is quite fast. The same film backs that fit a LFR or LFR Plus also fit a Mark III. Lasergraphics also sells an affordable external rasterizer called the RISC Rascol, which can have a dual-host option (SCSI & high-speed parallel) or an upcoming Adobe PostScript Level-2 interpreter. It uses two microprocessors inside: A Motorola 68000 for handling communications and spooling on its internal hard drive, and a 20MHz or optional 40MHz MIPS R3000 RISC processor to perform RIPping -- and believe me, it can rip! For imaging slides from a Macintosh/Quadra and/or PC running Windows/Windows for Workgroups in a low to medium volume environment, an LFR Plus and a RISC Rascol work quite well. With a LFR Plus film recorder and a RISC Rascol you can interface up to two Macintoshes and several PC systems; one Mac connects to the LFR's SCSI port, another Mac connects to the RISC Rascol that is connected to the LFR's parallel port, and several (I have four) PC's can connect to a parallel printer switching box that could feed data to the RISC Rascol's parallel input port. If you need to image exacting 4x5 artwork, the Lasergraphics LFR Plus starts to fall a bit out of the race. I haven't seen high-res art work from the new Lasergraphics Mark III, but it probably doesn't compare with what you can do at the same resolution (8K-lines) on the Management Graphics or Celco film recorders because of their CRT size. Speaking of Celco, they have 16K-line, 32K-line, and 64K-line CRT-based film recorders. They are all very much hyper-expensive devices!
-Gary H-
++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++ mailto:GHENDERS@JA2.JSC.NASA.GOV NASA / Johnson Space Center, Image Services Branch Digital Imaging Laboratory Gary L. Hendershot, (713) 483-2144 NASA / JSC, Building 8, Room 244, PS4 / RMS, Houston, TX 77058-3691 USA ++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++