
Panavision continues to modify its 3D glasses
Earlier this week Panavision took their first public steps into the 3D motion picture exhibition market by announcing a new system that will work with all projectors, film or digital, and all screens, white or silver. While we had already reported that Panavision was working on such a solution, this was their first official statement about the product. The company, primarily known for high end motion picture camera systems, will demonstrate the system next week at Cine Expo in Amsterdam on a screen 56 feet wide (17 meters).
Last Tuesday Panavision invited the press to their offices in Woodland Hills to see the 3D system in action. We were greeted by John Galt, Panavision’s Senior Vice President of Advanced Digital Imaging, Eric Rodli, Senior Vice President of Panavision and Bill Bevins, President and CEO of Panavision. They explained all the technical specifications about the system as well as some of the business details pertaining to its marketing.
First let’s quickly review some of tech bullets all of which are the same as they were back in March when we first saw a demo:
- The system uses spectral comb filtering, not polarization, to separate the visible light spectrum into ten band of even and odd wavelengths of light. One set of bands is presented to the left eye, the other set to the right eye.
- Dichroic passive glasses allow the viewer to view distinct images in each eye. Though the image reaching each eye is actually different, the viewer’s brain puts the images together providing the sensation of seeing a full color spectrum.
- No ghost busting, color correction or image processing is required.
- Film-based 3D uses an over/under method. Each frame of film contains two images, stacked on top of one another, two perforations high. The system will use the same film prints made for Technicolor’s 3D system. A specially designed split lens mounted on the front of the projector combines the images on screen.
- Digital 3D being shown on a DLP projector employs a split filter wheel placed before the integrator and in front of the lamp house that rotates at 4320 RPM to provide 144 flashes per second. For Sony’s SXRD projectors a specially designed split lens will be used to separate two stacked images from the 4K chip.
- The system will work with any digital projector on the market today.
- Panavision worked with Omega Optical to develop the product.
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