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The Photographer's Digital Workshop

5/19/97

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CRT (Cathode Ray Tube) film recorders produce an image on transparency or negative film by photographing a high resolution black & white CRT. The film recorders software pre-separates the image into it's RGB (red, green, blue) components. Each separation is sent to the CRT individually and a built in camera shoots the appropriate separation through the required filter. I.e., The red separation image is photographed with a red filter. The three exposures (red, green, blue) are made without advancing the film, thereby triple exposing the RGB in perfect registration to produce a full color image.

One of the best CRT type recorders is the Solitaire®, made by Management Graphics.

These machines were primarily designed to output text and vector graphics for slide presentations. The Postscript RIP used to pre-process the information is slow when rendering photo image files, such as Photoshop® files. Therefore, the cost of a 4x5 photo image can run in excess of $40.00, where the service bureau would charge less than half of that ti image a 4x5 vector file.

The quality of these recorder is excellent for portrait work and such, where fine detail isn't required. When the ultimate in detail and sharpness is required an LVT or "Fire 1000" is a better choice. Also, usually, a 4x5 is the maximum size of a CRT recorder. Some can be purchased with an 8x10 exposure back, but loss of image quality in the corners is not uncommon.

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