Passive film take-up chamber

Abstract

A passive take-up chamber for temporarily receiving and storing photographic filmstrips in the transport path of a film scanner for digitizing images on the filmstrips. The take-up chamber has a cavity defined by parallel side walls and a generally circular, lateral connecting wall with a plurality of shaped interior surface segments formed in and spaced apart around the interior surface of the lateral wall and generally defining a circular path for the filmstrip within the cavity. A further plurality of guiding rollers are mounted to extend between the first and second side walls adjacent to the interior surface of the lateral wall, for rotation on contact with the longitudinal edges of the filmstrip. The further plurality of guiding rollers are interspersed between the plurality of shaped interior surface segments, so that the shaped interior surface segments guide the longitudinal edges of the filmstrip tangentially onto the guiding rollers, and the guiding rollers rotate to decrease friction of contact of the longitudinal filmstrip edges with the shaped interior surface segments. The take-up chamber is preferably attached fixedly to the translation stage of the film scanner for receiving a filmstrip during a first pass, low resolution scanning and digitizing of the image frames. The filmstrip is withdrawn from the chamber during a second pass, high resolution scanning and digitizing of the image frames. The fixed attachment allows the segment of the filmstrip within the chamber cavity to remain stationary during translation of the image frame thereof past the scanning gate.