Anyone ever use an inkjet laserprinter to expose film?

[slashmaster]

Seems to me that the laser portion of a inkjet laser printer is the same as what's on a real digital to film laser printer. Would it work if you modified one? Of course I'm not expecting it would work nearly as good as a real one.

[richard p. t.]

Surely a printer is either an inkjet OR a laser printer.
Am I right in thinking that a laser printer works by creating a 'static' image - just like a photocopier makes - and then attracting toner to that static - and then heating the toner with a corona wire (hot wire). In a photocopier, that static image is created on a drum or a plate. The image on the drum or plate attracts the toner.
And the toner is then pressed onto the paper. I wonder how laser printers work in that regard. I don't think they use a drum or plate. I wonder if they create the static image directly onto the paper and attract the toner directly to the paper?
Interesting suggestion. It would take a lot of work to transport movie film through a laser printer ... but you could perhaps try some larger film... Would be a hell of an excercise.

[wado1942]

They work on different principles as richard p. t. said. Even it you could make it work, your resolution would be reduced to something like 60 lines, which is not enough to recognize anything but the most basic of images.
I HAVE used an LCD to print computer graphics to film. It takes some practice and a bit of work to get the color/contrast right and avoid seeing the defects of the screen, but it works.

I do remember somebody using an inkjet to print Super-8 directly. He used transparency sheets and cut out the image with a knife, perforations etc. It was a very time consuming process and the image was, how shall I say, unique, considering the extraordinarily low resolution.

[slashmaster]

Yes Richard, I think they work something like that. But I would only have the film go over the roller for the laser. Not the toner and all those other rollers.

Wado, I saw the films you speak of and yes they have an interesting look! I'm still trying to figure out how he did the perforations. I'm wondering if he would be better off taping a bunch of leader into an A size sheet of paper and printing on that?

I've also tried an lcd monitor to film my titles! The first roll I tried was too dim so had to open the iris up more. So far I've only used trix black and white film to do this. I used "Windows Paint" to do this and slapped duct tape over the "Start" button on the bottom. What did you do? Do you turn up the contrast as high as it goes?

[wado1942]

Well, it starts with the monitor. Having a quality monitor that is even across the entire width and has low dot-pitch is desirable. Also, the native contrast ratio should be similar to what film can handle (about 12 stops for negative or about 4,000:1). You can adjust the contrast of the monitor itself to fine tune using a light meter, checking the difference between a black screen and white screen. Using a light meter is the key to proper exposure as well of course, as the light coming off of the monitor is polarized and will mess up many in-cam meters. The screen of course is bluer than even mid daylight, so a mild color correction filter is needed as well. My first serious experiment in this venture was to print psychedelic colors to film to burn into the black background of a stage for a music video I was shooting. I defocused the camera a little to hid the dot pitch & achieve smoother aesthetics as well. The animated movement of the screen was very slow, so I undercranked the camera to #1, make the image brighter (I was using tungsten film and used quite a strong color correction filter), #2, speed up the motion and #3, make the shutter enharmonic with the refresh of the display. I'm actually surprised that it worked as well as it did.

The perf outlines were printed onto the transparency along with the image. He manually cut out the holes with a knife. I think he could do just as well and save time by getting some junk film, stripping the emulsion off of it and gluing it to paper. But then, you'd run the risk of destroying the new ink image when trying to clean the glue residue off of the film. :roll:

[BAC]

Wado, what filter do you recommend for color correction. I've done titles on the computer screen quite a bit with good success. Sometimes I get a little blue tint but I find making it brighter seems to help.

[slashmaster]

Yeah, I would think filters are something you'd want to stay away from when filming a monitor. You say it was too blue? Did you try turning down the blue on the monitor? Is your monitor 1024 x 768?

[wado1942]

I think an 81A on top of my 85A did the trick for tungsten film. If you used daylight, the 81A by itself should be fine. I seem to remember changing the color of the monitor did something strange to the mid tones that the filter didn't do. Yeah, it was 1024 X 768.