BUCKINGHAMSHIRE, ENGLAND – Digital Orchard (www.digitalorchardgroup.com) has completed the installation of a new DFT Scanity 2 film scanner at the Kodak Film Lab at Pinewood Studios. The location is where Digital Orchard and Kodak have partnered for film processing and scanning services. The installation brings one of the latest generations of high-end film scanning technology to a UK facility, helping to support productions and archive projects working with 16mm and 35mm film.
Developed by DFT, Scanity 2 captures film at native 4K resolution while combining RGB color information with infrared imaging. Its imaging system combines multi-stage, high-resolution TDI sensors with GPU-based image processing and optical pin registration. The unit can scan 35mm three-perforation film at speeds of up to 56fps in 4K RGB-IR, with different operating modes allowing facilities to balance image quality, dynamic range and throughput.
“What makes Scanity 2 special is the combination of new, updated optics, stability, processing, speed and quality,” says Dan Redrup, head of scanning at Digital Orchard. “It is setting a new benchmark in film scanning, with a lower signal-to-noise ratio, giving a clean, filmic image, alongside full-perforation overscan.”
The system’s three dynamic operating modes provide different levels of workflow flexibility within a single machine. Multi-stage TDI HDR technology provides the dynamic range of a high-end HDR system at realtime speed, while RGB-IR imaging provides an infrared channel that can assist with dirt-matte generation during restoration. Optical pin registration precisely positions each frame along the horizontal and vertical axes, providing pixel-precise frame positioning and touch-free image stability, including with damaged or missing perforations. Full-perf overscan provides full perforation capture for complete frame and audio-track coverage, with the near-edge-to-edge detail making Scanity 2 well suited to restoration work requiring large overscan images. A wet-gate option is also available for 16mm and 35mm film to help address surface imperfections during scanning.
