Digital Effects with Slide Projectors

Back in 1997, digital cameras were new and rare. Typical camera resolution was only 0.5 megapixels. You could get 10 megapixels, but it would cost you $15,000. If you needed digital, you probably relied upon a film lab with a scanner to convert film images to digital. Most scanners were very expensive drum scanners, but Kodak provided us with the cost-effective Kodak Photo CD system; price for a scan was only a few dollars.

Well, here is a nifty trick from 1997. This effect was included in a slide show using two 35mm projectors and a dissolve controller.

The original image was a 35mm color transparency, which was scanned to digital (Kodak Photo CD). I digitally manipulated the image to a line drawing, like a child's coloring book, and filled in some color. Then the digital image was output back to a 35mm slide using a digital-to-film recorder.

Under the direction of a dissolve controller, one slide projector faded out while the second projector faded in. Projected onto a big screen, it was a really great effect.