FilmLight Partners Aaton For High Res Camera Launch

A company that produces film scanning, colour grading and colour management technology, FilmLight, has formed a strategic partnership with French firm, Aaton, a pioneering manufacturer of motion picture equipment, to market the new Aaton K 2K/4K ultra high resolution digital film recorder.
The Aaton K marks a giant leap forward in film recording technology, outstripping the latest laser film recorders in speed, resolution and cost of ownership. It was shown for the first time ever at the International Broadcast Convention, earlier this month, in Amsterdam.
FilmLight will handle sales, marketing, service and support for Aaton K, while Aaton will manufacture the system.
The partnership combines the marketing acumen and worldwide sales and support network that has made FilmLight's Baselight the best selling colour grading system in the world, with Aaton's leadership in optics and camera systems.
Additionally, it will allow FilmLight to bundle Aaton K with its Northlight scanner and Baselight 8 colour grading system to offer the industry's only end-to-end 4K workflow.
"The potential market for this system is huge," said FilmLight Founder Wolfgang Lempp.
"The Aaton K sets a new benchmark in film recording that totally outperforms current laser recording technology.
"So good is the Aaton K that the resolution it achieves on film with a 2K source file is comparable to what a laser recorder achieves with a 4K source file. And at 4K there is simply no comparison."
Aaton Founer Jean-Pierre Beauviala added: "Aaton K established a new standard for performance in digital film recorders.
"This system brings both higher speed and exceptionally high image resolution with extremely stable densitometric characteristics. Even when upgraded with the latest technology, laser recorders yield only half the speed of the Aaton K.
"For archiving film on black & white separations - an important business for years to come - the Aaton K is nine times as fast as current laser recorders."
AatonK employs a revolutionary telecentric lens and sensor system to record film faster and at higher resolution than laser film recorders.
The system, which employs no moving parts during frame exposure, records at twice the speed of laser recorders at 2K and yields a 15 to 40% improvement in speed over laser recorders at 4K. It delivers nearly twice the MTF (a measure of picture sharpness) at 4K for colour inter-negative and positive films.
Aaton has also designed the system to avoid some of the service issues that plague other film recorders.
"The AatonK has no moving parts and no lasers that require periodic replacement," said FilmLight Director of Sales Mike Grieve.
"That results in lower support and operating costs for the life of the machine."
See: www.filmlight.ltd.uk
(BMcC)