Film Scanner Captures Academy Award

Volker Massmann, Markus Hasenzahl, Klaus Anderle and Andreas Loew of the Germany-based company Digital Film Technology Holding GmbH won this year’s Academy Award for the company’s Spirit 4K/2K film scanner, which has become the industry standard for converting film to digital and video formats.

Each year, the Academy honors the achievements of scientific and technical innovators whose work has had a significant and lasting impact on the motion picture industry. The Scientific and Technical Awards ceremony generally takes place approximately two weeks prior to the main Academy Awards ceremony, which was held on March 7. The Sci-Tech awards recognize the critical role played by science and technology in the moviemaking process and celebrate the technical advances in film processing, sound, lighting and special effects.

Dalsa’s IT-J4-4112 sensor.

The Spirit 4K/2K incorporates a continuous-motion transport mechanism enabling full-range, high-resolution scanning at much higher frame rates than noncontinuous transport scanners. Dalsa Corp. of Waterloo, Ontario, Canada, provided a custom-built dual-line scan sensor that is a key element of the award-winning scanner.

The Spirit products are high-speed, high-precision devices that scan film images in 4K or 2K resolution to convert the film to a digital media format for editing, compositing, distributing and archiving. Digital Film Technology has installed more than 450 systems of the Spirit family worldwide and is considered the market leader in fast, high-end film scanning. Dalsa has an ongoing, long-term relationship with Digital Film Technology as an image sensor technology provider.

Dalsa's custom dual-line scan sensor was developed specifically to meet Digital Film Technology's demanding technical requirements for the Spirit film scanners. It is a very high-precision sensor that achieves exceptional image quality. The sensor was also designed with antireflective properties to eliminate surface reflections during the film scanning process. As a result, according to the company, the Spirit scanners permit high-resolution multiformat film scanning with unrivalled precision, stability and image quality.

“DFT's Spirit 4K/2K film scanner has become the de facto standard in digital intermediate post production systems,” said Gareth Ingram, Dalsa's vice president and general manager of digital imaging. “For 30 years, Dalsa has been engineering digital imaging technology with unrivalled precision, stability and image quality. We are extremely proud to have been able to supply the advanced imaging technology needed to develop the world's best high-resolution, multiformat film scanners.”

“The continued cooperation with Dalsa in the design phase of the sensor enabled us to achieve the challenging performance goals for the Spirit 4K/2K imaging sensors,” added Markus Hasenzahl, project manager for the Spirit 4K/2K.

For more information, visit: www.dft-film.com