Choosing Your Film Recorder ("Slide Printer")

The key components of a film recorder are:

	Color filter wheel (with Red, Green, and Blue filters)
	Lens
	Camera back
	Software for your computer,
	Computer circuitry, power supply, and other odds and ends to make it work.

Most film recorders are digital, therefore like printing to your laser printer, the film recorder works from the computer data, not the computer's screen. This allows phenomenal resolution.

Digital Photography: Removing blemishes and unwanted items (like a trash can in front of a picture of a house). Digital Photography: Adding text and graphics to images, creating special effects, and/or creating montages of multiple images and graphics. Prepress Publishing: Creating film of computer or film images destined to be dropped into desktop publishing documents at another site. Also for cleaning up product shots; adding or changing backgrounds, etc. also for publishing. Scientific Images: Outputting reorganized or enhanced scientific images.

1. How many slides do you currently produce a year?
2. Will you produce more slides if you can reduce the costs and turnaround time?
3. How fast do you need them? Would it be nice to get them in hours, rather than days?
4. How often is your presentation finished and ready to go to slides at least 3 days before you are presenting?
5. What is the largest size room or audience that these slides will be shown in?
6. Will your slides consist of "typical" text or charts with perhaps a few photos?
   Or, will you also have sophisticated illustrations done in programs like Illustrator, Freehand, Corel Draw, or Canvas? (It relates to software requirements.)
7. Will you need to have your film recorder be accessible to different types of computers (Windows 3.x, Win95, NT, Mac)? Will you want the unit tied into your network?
8. Do you want more control, faster turnaround, and less aggravation?
9. Price, what are your budget constraints? Think you spend more in services now than a system costs?

   How to Cost Justify a Film Recorder?

   The Hard Way: If you are sending your slides out to a service bureau, expect to spend $4 to $8 per slide with 48 hour turnaround (weekdays only). Faster turnaround can cost a lot more per slide. Being conservative, let's assume you get your slides done for $5 each. To justify a system on price only, with a 3 year break-even, you must produce about 350-400 slides a year. (One roll per month) Of course if you have been averaging $10 per slide or more... Consider another Advantage - Turn around time. Imagine you have just finished working on your presentation at 9:00am, and need to catch a flight at 3:00pm. With your film recorder in house, you can image the slides in an hour or two. Now all you have to do is find a lab. I have known occasions when people take the film out of the machine, catch their flight, and find a photo lab in their destination city to develop the film. In house film recorders allow you last minute changes. You just cannot find a service bureau that will image, develop and mount a roll of film, all in 3 hours. Actually, you might find one, but if so, prepare to pay prices more like $10 -- $20 per slide- or more. The more your presentations are finished at the last minute, the more you will appreciate having in-house capabilities.

   The Easy Way (if available): Pull ALL of your bills for the last 12 months, related to getting your slides produced. (Don't forget rush charges, couriers, related FedX charges.) Now you know what you have been spending.

   What Defines a Desktop System vs. a Commercial System?

   Desktop: Well, it's bigger than a bread box, but not necessarily by much. Actually, the desktop designation is more price and quality oriented. "Desktop" units typically list from $5000 to $9000 and produce slides that are not quite as sharp as "commercial systems." They also run somewhat slower, with most "desktop" systems producing between 15 and 50 slides/hour. In reality, most $5K to $20K commercial film recorders will also fit on your desktop.

   Commercial: They are mostly: Sharper, faster (not always), have more accessories including larger format camera backs (6x7 and 4x5 film formats), and are more expensive (thank goodness...we have a business to run!), starting from $10K to over $100K..

   Digital Imaging (Photography and Graphics)

   As special effects and sophisticated retouching are more widely used, many commercial photographers, ad agencies, marketing departments, etc., are relying more and more on digitally enhancing images. The computers do the editing, and now the final product needs to be printed. I am referring to outputting manipulated graphics and photos to film, such as creating a montage of several images and text, and producing film that in turn might be used to create photographic prints.

   Although you can use any film recorder for Digital Imaging of pictures, today's Polaroid film recorders image at a higher quality than any current digital camera can produce, so you've plenty of room over the years to enhance your output as cameras evolve. Most popular small commercial systems are considered entry level when used for Digital Photography. Top of the line film recorders cost into five figures, although most commercial photo labs with digital capabilities use systems in the $35K-$60K range, such as Management Graphics' Solitaire 8xp and 16xps systems.

   Don't be confused, virtually all Digital photography systems are commercial systems, but not all commercial systems are ideal for Digital photography. If your primary interest is Digital imaging and Photography, we suggest you also view our Advice and Info on Digital Imaging and Photography.

   Many organizations discover that once they have a film recorder in house, their volume of slides produced increases dramatically. Since incremental costs are now insignificant, many additional slide presentations are produced, that previously lacked the budget to be done at per/slide prices. The math is simple. Once you have the system in-house a 36 slide presentation costs you about $15 vs. $240 when sent out to a service bureau. When the costs drop to that of overheads, many users will upgrade their presentations to slides since the cost is nominal. This allows presenters to have higher impact, more effective presentations. No need to compromise because of prohibitive costs!