Digital Film Technology has launched its Wet-Gate technology for its latest Scanity HDR film scanner, which is designed to provide a real-time organic solution for the ingest and management of difficult to solve historical film transfer issues – such as dust and scratch removal.
The new Scanity HDR Wet-Gate has been designed to address the needs of archive owners who require a scanner that’s able to handle a range of problematic and historically aged film issues. The combination of DFT’s Scanity HDR and new Wet-Gate provides an elegant solution that handles everything from warping, buckles, shrinkage, weak and/or damaged splices through to missing or broken perforations, notched or broken edges, and vinegar syndrome. The system also works with both colour and black and white film stock.
Unlike other infrared scanning technology available on the market, the Scanity HDR Wet-Gate works as a fluid tank that the film runs through. This eliminates the need to work with complex vacuums systems, which are not only prone to reliability issues, but also expensive to maintain. The fluid tank removes the risk of bubbles being introduced, and the usually complex setup and management of a scanner are a thing of the past. The film enters the fluid filled gate through a pre-chamber to make sure that no air and dust reaches the scanning area. The film is then run onto an air filled glass roller, which includes all the necessary components to illuminate the image scanning aperture and the area for the perforation/hole detection, ready for scanning. Finally, the film leaves the gate via a drying unit.
Simon Carter, DFT sales director, said, “We’ve worked hard to develop a simple yet elegant solution to the most common and critical problems faced by archive owners. The Scanity HDR Wet-gate enables them to maintain the quality and originality of film material, while at the same time saving valuable time and downstream processing, because the majority of issues are addressed at the scanning stage itself.”
The Scanity HDR Wet-Gate system is made up of two main components, a Lens Gate Assembly, available for all 16mm or 35mm films, and a Supply Unit. The wet-gate can be mounted like a standard ‘dry’ LGA and is connected to a supply unit, comprising a tank, filters and pumps to supply the fluid, as well as electronics to control the LGA and the fluid stream. The entire system fits neatly in to two 19”enclosures and is installed in a standard 19-inch electronic rack.
DFT counts major archives worldwide among its customers, among them the National Library of Norway (NBR), National Film and Sound Archive of Australia (NFSA), Library and Archives Canada (LAC) and The Slovak Film Institute (SFÚ), the Film Institute Netherlands (EYE), National Audio-visual Archive of Finland (KAVA) and the Royal Thai Archive.