Designing Camera Origination Films for Scan-Only Applications in Television and Digital Intermediate

With the growing popularity of digital intermediate in the feature film market and the continuing development of improved telecine technologies for television, the notion of traditional camera origination film design optimized around direct optical or contact printing is radically challenged. For scan-only film image capture systems where the camera film will be scanned exclusively to video or data and never directly printed, a very different approach is taken to sensitometric curve design. Rather than focusing on tonal characteristics, which yield acceptable and preferred results for overall contrast, grayscale neutrality, and shadow and highlight detail in a traditional printing paradigm, the film curves must instead be drawn to optimize the quality of signal provided to the digitization step in the film scanner. Further, standard constructs of color reproduction are also open for modification as the film's spectral sensitivity and color-enhancing chemistries are changed to better mesh with digital color-processing capabilities.

Print ISSN

1545-0279

Electronic ISSN

2160-2492

Published

2006-04

Content type

Original Research

DOI

10.5594/J12251