DALSA and 4K – we go way back.
Although 4K is a relatively new term in the field of cinematography and motion picture archiving, it actually dates back to the late 1980s and the early days of industrial inspection and machine vision. Join us on a journey into the 4K archives.
Late 1980s:
DALSA’s “TurbosensorTM” 4K
CCD line scan image sensor
Always the innovator in digital imaging, DALSA released the world’s first commercially available high performance 4K (or 4096 pixel) CCD linescan image sensor in the late 1980s. The appropriately named “TurbosensorTM” was designed to scan various materials from beer bottles to letters to widgets on an assembly line at very high resolution. The availability of reliable, high performance 4K scanning technology was a boon to the burgeoning machine vision industry.
1997:
In 1997, NHK asked us to develop a custom 4K x 2K, 60fps, split frame CCD image sensor.
Fast forward to the late 1990s. In 1997 Japanese broadcasting giant NHK asked us to work with them on a research project to develop a prototype Ultra-HDTV system. We immediately questioned the artificial restrictions of a 2/3” sensor and the limitations of the lenses it requires, and we convinced them that a bigger sensor was the way to go. The 8 megapixel, 35mm sized image sensor was a success, delivering unparalleled resolution, fidelity, frame rate and dynamic range. NHK’s proof of concept camera was technically impressive but it was impractical for real-world use. However, it proved to be a spring board for the eventual development of the DALSA Palomar sensor and the DALSA Origin 4K camera.
1999:
In 1999, we developed a custom, high performance 4K line scan image sensor for the leading manufacturer of celluloid film scanning equipment. This development and the successful deployment of the customer’s product would help usher in an era of affordable, high quality 2K and 4K film scanning and lead to the successful restoration of a number of film classics and the digitization of new projects as the motion picture industry moved toward the digital intermediate process.
2003:
Prototype DALSA Origin 4K camera announced at NAB 2003.
At NAB 2003, we introduced a revolutionary new camera, the DALSA Origin. Instead of a standard 3 chip design, we built a camera that had a single 35mm-sized, 8 megapixel, high dynamic range image sensor chip that could accommodate standard cine lenses and incorporated a real optical viewfinder, just like on a film camera. The DALSA camera, whose development was guided by the wish list, wisdom, and practical experience of industry veterans, Ed DiGiulio and Denny Clairmont, was a revelation for the industry. All of a sudden, here was a camera that had real resolution and real dynamic range.
2005:
In 2005, “Postcards from the Future” was the first feature project to use the DALSA Origin 4K camera. Click here to download the Quicktime trailer.
photo by Dan Katzenberger © 2005
Director and visual effects guru, Alan Chan, was the first to shoot a feature project, “Postcards from the Future”, using a production version of the DALSA Origin 4K camera. Utilizing a fully digital film-less workflow, the visual effects intensive project took advantage of the Origin’s high quality, 4K, 16-bit output. During shooting, Chan was able to go straight from onset green screen work directly into the digital domain.