However, talk of 4K isn't going to go away as the benefits above 2K are too obvious to ignore. The problem though is in making a 4K workflow commercially viable for client and DI operation.

And it's here that super 2K can become a viable mid-level alternative, with real benefit over the standard 2K approach, but without the overheads of 4K.

A normal 2K workflow means scanning the OCN at 2K, performing the DI process at 2K, and recording back to film at 2K.

The problem with this is that by scanning at 2K, the full MTF available within a 2K file is not maximised, due to a lack of Nyquist.

What this means is that as the original source image approaches 2K resolution, the 2K scanning device can't resolve the detail.

Consider the following:-

You have 2048 alternate black & white lines recorded onto an academy OCN film frame. This is probably the maximum resolving power of the film showing its maximum line pairs per millimetre. If you now scan this with a 2048 pixel CCD one of 2 things is likely to happen (ok, one of a varied number of results but the two extremes will show the theory).

If the CCD cells happen to align exactly with each black and white line the digital result will be perfect as shown below.

However, if the CCD cells are half a line out they will see half a black line and half a white line at the same time, with the result that the CCD will see near grey!

While this is an excessive example it does show how detail can be lost even if scanning [sampling] at the same maximum resolution of the source image.

If we now double the number of CCD cells to 4096 we are always going to see the underlying image detail and can then Nyquist sample down to the original 2K resolution while maintaining almost all of the frequency detail.

The above diagram shows a near perfect alignment but from it the reader can extrapolate what would be seen if the CCD cells were aligned differently – there would always be an output from the CCD that showed a good representation of the waveform from which a high quality 2K image can be generated.

Another way to look at this is via the MTF curves for the two approaches.

As can be seen there is a lot more 'area' below the curve with the Super 2K approach, signifying a better quality of image.