tim@bhpmrl.oz.au (Tim Monks) (05/09/90)
There has been some illuminating discussions on digital image recorders in comp.graphics over the past days. Unfortunately there has not been too much said by users of these beasties, and their (positive/negative) comments on their experience. Our group is in the market for a medium to high quality hard copy unit. We have limited our attention to photographic units, as I believe that other technologies such as thermal transfer and dry silver can't yet give continuous tone copies at high enough resolution to suit our needs. What do we need ? Basically the ability to make slide and print copies of our images which would then be used for documentation, presentation and analysis. We work with images typically 512*512*24bits, up to 1024*1024*24. We haven't yet had any call for larger images. Our work uses Silicon Graphics workstations and PC's. We have looked at the ImageCorder Plus from Focus Graphics. This is an analog system which takes RGB analog and displays it on an internal CRT at 1400 line 'resolution'. It claims to have <1% geometric distortion and <1% linear distortion. It comes with a variety of camera backs, inc. 35mm, 8x10 & cine. Exposure times ~15s for 35mm, 1min for 8x10. Cost is $US10k + (camera back cost $1.5k for 35mm, $2.5k for 8x10). OK enough of the blurb. Can anyone answer any of the following questions: - Has anyone used one of these beasties ? Comments ? - What is the advantage gained with a digital image recorder ? (We can put up with the problem of having to take the whole screen image, ie not being able to specify a window). - What are the other downs ? - Are there any competitors to this machine at this price ? - What is everyone else using ? - Anything else I should know ? Thanks for your contributions, Tim -- Dr. Tim Monks Image Processing & Data Analysis Group | (direct) (+61-3)566-7448 BHP Melbourne Research Laboratories | (switch) (+61-3)560-7066 245 Wellington Rd, Mulgrave, 3170, | (fax) (+61-3)561-6709 AUSTRALIA | (EMAIL) tim@merlin.bhpmrl.oz.au