Dalsa step closer to digital cinema
therecord.com
Waterloo company lands $1.2M in funding to design camera
Saturday September 21, 2002
RON DERUYTER
RECORD STAFF
Dalsa Corp. president Brian Doody (centre) shows digital cinema semiconductor chips to Kitchener-Waterloo MP Andrew Telegdi (left) as John Coghill, general manager for Digital Cinema, holds a model of a digital cinema camera.
WATERLOO -- Dalsa Corporation is going Hollywood with the help of the federal government.
The Waterloo company announced yesterday that it is getting $1.7 million from Industry Canada to finalize the design of a digital motion picture camera that it says will revolutionize the film industry.
"We will deliver some really exciting digital image products that will take the motion picture industry from film to the digital age," said Dalsa president Brian Doody.
"It is our dream that some time in the future, after you have enjoyed the splendid picture quality of a digital movie, you will see the words 'Captured in Dalsa-Vision' displayed on the screen in the production credits." Hollywood has been slow to adopt digital technology because of the limited performance of existing technologies, said Doody.
He said Dalsa's digital camera captures images at twice the speed and four times the resolution as the high-definition television or HDTV technologies the industry has been testing.
"Dalsa's performance advantages are expected to break down the remaining barriers for digital image capture in mainstream movie production," Doody said.
In addition to the digital camera, Dalsa is developing a device, called a film digitizer, that converts archived films into a digital format.
Dalsa has been doing work in digital cinematography since the late 1990s when Japan's national broadcaster, NHK, invited it to use its expertise in image sensor technology to develop new digital products.
It redesigned the first generation image sensor -- the heart of the camera -- last year, and focused on making advancements in camera electronics, optics and data storage this year. Doody said the company will unveil its camera and film digitizer next April at the National Association of Broadcasters trade show in Las Vegas.
"It is the largest trade show attended by the key decision makers in the movie world," he said. Doody said the digital cinema group will generate sales next year. However it is too early to say how much or comment on the size of the market.
"The total market we expect to capture could certainly become a significant part of Dalsa's revenue stream," he said in an interview.
Doody said the company, a manufacturer of semiconductors and provider of imaging products, primarily for the electronics, semiconductor and life sciences industries, has learned a lot about image capture technology as a result of the digital cinema project. "We hope these new skills will find applications in other parts of our company creating that spin-off effect we all like to see," he said.
Kitchener-Waterloo MP Andrew Telegdi announced the funding -- it comes from the Technology Partnerships Canada program -- on behalf of Industry Minister Allan Rock.
He said Dalsa's involvement in digital cinema, together with the research being done at universities and Toronto's reputation as a film-making centre, strengthens southern Ontario's status as a digital motion picture cluster.
"It lays the foundation for the creation of a world centre of excellence in 10 years," he said.
Dalsa, a publicly traded company on the Toronto Stock Exchange, employs 650 people, including 250 in three locations in Waterloo.
rderuyter@therecord.com |
