Imax Projectors

[Smiffy]

I would say that it probably would be theoretically possible, however to all practical intents and purposes, not possible.

 

Cheers

 

Smiffy

[lightsource]

Remember as well, that not a single piece of space hardware can be seen on the moon, even with the Earth's most powerful telescopes.

 

Whils't I'm no expert on optics, surely any lens infront of the lamp, would have a massive viewing angle, by the time the photons reached Earth.

 

Just out of interest, there is an amazing insight to Imax in this weeks Science of the Movies show on Discovery Science channel.

 

The film version (rather than the Hard disk digital version) once assembled takes up to 6 people to load into the projector it's that big, as each film is split into many smaller sections for shipping.

[Dmills]

The film version (rather than the Hard disk digital version) once assembled takes up to 6 people to load into the projector it's that big, as each film is split into many smaller sections for shipping.

Splitting film for shipping has been standard for as long as there have been feature length film.

 

Back in the days of carbon arc lamps the typically 2,000ft shipping spools were often projected directly to minimise the amount of nitrocellulose around the projector if things went wrong (The old nitrocellulose film stock was explosive and the gate ran rather too close to its ignition temperature, it USUALLY only deflargated energetically, but still....) .

 

More recent practise moved first to running 6,000ft spools vertically (for 35mm an easy one man lift, bit heavy at 70mm), which requires one or two changeovers per average feature, to running 12,000ft spools vertically (heavy especially with 70mm) to finally moving to an open topped cakestand arrangement where the film is laced into an endless loop feeding from the centre much like an old NAB cart.

This platter arrangement has the advantage of no faffing about with rewinding, but it also makes film lubrication important and relies on several complex bits of mechanism working correctly (otherwise you get a "Brain Wrap" where the film gets tangled around the central running gear of the stand (annoying, time consuming to sort out and typically causes the FOH manager to have to refund at least one house (And the duty operator to miss last orders)).

 

Given that Imax runs the 70mm print horizontally with 15 perferations/frame as opposed to 8 for standard 70mm or 4 for 35mm and presumably runs off a platter, 6 people is entirely reasonable!

 

Regards, Dan.

[dbuckley]

Back in the days of carbon arc lamps the typically 2,000ft shipping spools were often projected directly...

I still do this :) No "back in the day" required!

[lightsource]

Given that Imax runs the 70mm print horizontally with 15 perferations/frame as opposed to 8 for standard 70mm or 4 for 35mm and presumably runs off a platter, 6 people is entirely reasonable!

 

Regards, Dan.

 

The spools were huge.

[allgoodnamesaretaken]

Well they're only gonna be upto 7kW, so I vote 'No'.

 

 

Actually they are 15kW in the film based systems as opposed to 6kw used in the christie's for the digital system.