Image recorders - advice wanted

[Tim Monks]

There has been some illuminating discussions on digital image recorders
in comp.graphics over the past days. Unfortunately there has not been
too much said by users of these beasties, and their (positive/negative)
comments on their experience.

Our group is in the market for a medium to high quality hard copy unit.
We have limited our attention to photographic units, as I believe that
other technologies such as thermal transfer and dry silver can't yet 
give continuous tone copies at high enough resolution to suit our needs.

What do we need ?  Basically the ability to make slide and print copies of 
our images which would then be used for documentation, presentation and 
analysis. We work with images typically 512*512*24bits, up to 1024*1024*24.
We haven't yet had any call for larger images. Our work uses Silicon 
Graphics workstations and PC's.

We have looked at the ImageCorder Plus from Focus Graphics. This is an
analog system which takes RGB analog and displays it on an internal CRT 
at 1400 line 'resolution'. It claims to have <1% geometric distortion
and <1% linear distortion. It comes with a variety of camera backs, inc.
35mm, 8x10 & cine. Exposure times ~15s for 35mm, 1min for 8x10. Cost 
is $US10k + (camera back cost $1.5k for 35mm, $2.5k for 8x10).

OK enough of the blurb. Can anyone answer any of the following questions:
	- Has anyone used one of these beasties ? Comments ?
	- What is the advantage gained with a digital image recorder ?
	  (We can put up with the problem of having to take the whole
	  screen image, ie not being able to specify a window). 
	- What are the other downs ?
	- Are there any competitors to this machine at this price ?
	- What is everyone else using ?
	- Anything else I should know ?
Thanks for your contributions,
			      Tim


-- 
Dr. Tim Monks                                

Image Processing & Data Analysis Group   |   (direct) (+61-3)566-7448
BHP Melbourne Research Laboratories      |   (switch) (+61-3)560-7066
245 Wellington Rd, Mulgrave, 3170,       |   (fax)    (+61-3)561-6709
AUSTRALIA                                |   (EMAIL)  tim at merlin.bhpmrl.oz.au