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| Formerly | Aaton |
|---|---|
| Company type | Private |
| Industry | Motion picture equipment |
| Founded | 1971 |
| Defunct | 2024 |
| Headquarters | , |
Key people | Jean-Pierre Beauviala, Founder, Jacques Delacoux, CEO |
| Products | Movie camera, Audio recorders, Audio and post production software |
| Website | www |
Aaton Digital (formerly known as Aaton) was a French motion picture equipment manufacturer, based in Grenoble, France.
Aaton was founded by Eclair engineer Jean-Pierre Beauviala, whose efforts have been primarily focused on making quiet, portable motion picture hardware suitable for impromptu field use, such as for documentaries. A model for all motion picture cameras they have produced is the "cat-on-the-shoulder", a small, light, quiet motion picture camera.
In the late 60's Beauviala was working as a professor of electronics in the University of Grenoble. With the project to make a movie about the evolution of the city and of its architecture, but unable to find the proper tools, Beauviala decided to create the camera himself. Though the movie would eventually be abandoned this led to the creation of Aaton in 1971. [1]
After several initial prototypes, the Aaton LTR 16 mm movie camera became available on the market in the late 1970s. It has been succeeded by several improved models, including the LTR, LTR 54, XTR, X0, XTRplus, and XTRProd.
Aaton also pioneered the linking of timecode between film cameras and sound recorders in the acquisition stage. Aatoncode was one of the earliest schemes for encoding a timecode signal in the frame margins of 16mm film, allowing rigorous synchronization of audio and film in post-production.
As of January 2015, the camera line [2] offers the 16mm Xterà (along with its still used predecessors the XTR Prod [3] ), the A-Minima (a small camcorder-sized 16mm camera) and the 35mm Penelope (along with the still in use 35-III [3] ).
In 2004 Aaton introduced the Cantar-X, a multichannel digital audio recorder designed to be used on location. [4]
In 2005/2006, the company started to test and exhibit the successor to the 35‑III, a quiet 35mm camera called Penelope. [5] [6] Specially designed with a native 2-perf camera system (with an optional kit to switch to 3-Perf), the Penelope eventually became available for purchase in October 2008. [7]
During the 2010 NAB Show Jean-Pierre Beauviala and AbelCine officially announced Aaton's first digital camera, called Delta Penelope. A fully functional prototype was exhibited at the NAB Show two years later, with plans for a limited test run in 2012 and an eventual release in 2013. Evolving from a variation of the Penelope (with a digital mag) to a new concept, the camera most notably featured a "cat-on-the-shoulder" inspired design and a Dalsa Super-35 CCD sensor (with a native 3.5K resolution) mounted on a specially developed/patented mechanism designed to bring unprecedented image quality, closer to what film provides. [8]
On 26 April 2013 an official statement was issued by founder Jean-Pierre Beauviala announcing that due to quality issues involving the Dalsa sensors for the planned Delta Penelope, the company had to declare bankruptcy so it could have time to find a new investor. [9] In May 2013 Beauviala sent an e-mail detailing the situation of Aaton and explaining that despite the recent troubles the company was still functioning and mainly developing its next digital audio recorder (tentatively called Cantar-X+), and a digital-camera aiming at documentary-style filming (called D-Minima). [10]
On 18 June 2013 Transvideo acquired Aaton through its holding company ITHAKI. Still based in Grenoble and with the same development team, the new company now named Aaton Digital was then focusing on the release of their new digital recorder (the Cantar-X3) and planning the release of a new "cat-on-the-shoulder" (sic). [11] [12]
On 22 October 2013 Jean-Pierre Beauviala left Aaton Digital/Transvideo where he was working as a consultant. [13] This latest information engage only Jean-Pierre Beauviala as he never had any kind of formal cooperation with Aaton-Digital.
In March 2014 Aaton Digital officially introduced the Cantar-X3, the next successor in their line of on-field digital audio recorder. [14] In March 2015 the first commercial Cantar-X3 is delivered to the NoyzBoyz in Amsterdam, more than 100 products are in order confirming the fantastic interest of the audio community for this new sound machine and also the creativity of Aaton's engineers.
In March 2017 Aaton Digital launched the CantarMini and the same month won the "best of Show Award" at the "NAB show" in Las Vegas.
On February 15, 2024 Aaton-Digital was ended by a court judgment. [15] In a statement on their home webpage, the company indicated that recent years of slow business, caused by the covid-19 pandemic and the 2023 cinema strike, had forced them to liquidate. "We thank all our users and partners for their commitment and passion during the ten years we have gone through together." [16]
Widescreen images are displayed within a set of aspect ratios used in film, television and computer screens. In film, a widescreen film is any film image with a width-to-height aspect ratio greater than 4:3 (12:9).
16 mm film is a historically popular and economical gauge of film. 16 mm refers to the width of the film ; other common film gauges include 8 mm and 35 mm. It is generally used for non-theatrical film-making, or for low-budget motion pictures. It also existed as a popular amateur or home movie-making format for several decades, alongside 8 mm film and later Super 8 film. Eastman Kodak released the first 16 mm "outfit" in 1923, consisting of a camera, projector, tripod, screen and splicer, for US$335. RCA-Victor introduced a 16 mm sound movie projector in 1932, and developed an optical sound-on-film 16 mm camera, released in 1935.
A movie camera is a type of photographic camera that rapidly takes a sequence of photographs, either onto film stock or an image sensor, in order to produce a moving image to display on a screen. In contrast to the still camera, which captures a single image at a time, the movie camera takes a series of images by way of an intermittent mechanism or by electronic means; each image is a frame of film or video. The frames are projected through a movie projector or a video projector at a specific frame rate to show the moving picture. When projected at a high enough frame rate, the persistence of vision allows the eyes and brain of the viewer to merge the separate frames into a continuous moving picture.
Nagra is a brand of portable audio recorders produced from 1951 in Switzerland. Beginning in 1997 a range of high-end equipment aimed at the audiophile community was introduced, and Nagra expanded the company's product lines into new markets.
Betacam is a family of half-inch professional videocassette products developed by Sony in 1982. In colloquial use, Betacam singly is often used to refer to a Betacam camcorder, a Betacam tape, a Betacam video recorder or the format itself.
A film recorder is a graphical output device for transferring images to photographic film from a digital source. In a typical film recorder, an image is passed from a host computer to a mechanism to expose film through a variety of methods, historically by direct photography of a high-resolution cathode ray tube (CRT) display. The exposed film can then be developed using conventional developing techniques, and displayed with a slide or motion picture projector. The use of film recorders predates the current use of digital projectors, which eliminate the time and cost involved in the intermediate step of transferring computer images to film stock, instead directly displaying the image signal from a computer. Motion picture film scanners are the opposite of film recorders, copying content from film stock to a computer system. Film recorders can be thought of as modern versions of Kinescopes.
Hi-MD is a magneto-optical disc-based data storage format. It was a further development of the MiniDisc. With its release in later 2004, came the ability to use newly developed, high-capacity 1 gigabyte Hi-MD discs, in the same dimensions as MiniDisc. The last recorder and player was discontinued in 2011. Blank discs stopped production in September 2012.
Negative pulldown is the manner in which an image is exposed on a film stock, described by the number of film perforations spanned by an individual frame. It can also describe whether the image captured on the negative is oriented horizontally or vertically. Changing the number of exposed perforations allows a cinematographer to change both the aspect ratio of the image and the size of the area on the film stock that the image occupies.
Sigma Corporation is a Japanese company, manufacturing cameras, lenses, flashes and other photographic accessories. All Sigma products are produced in the company's own Aizu factory in Bandai, Fukushima, Japan. Although Sigma produces several camera models, the company is best known for producing high-quality lenses and other accessories that are compatible with the cameras produced by other companies.
Red Digital Cinema, LLC is an American camera manufacturer specializing in digital cinematography headquartered in Foothill Ranch, California, United States. On March 7, 2024, Nikon announced it had agreed to purchase Red and make it a wholly-owned subsidiary.
The Dalsa Origin was the first camera designed and built by Dalsa Corporation to be used specifically for digital cinematography.
Arri Group is a German manufacturer of motion picture film equipment. Based in Munich, the company was founded in 1917. It produces professional motion picture cameras, lenses, lighting and post-production equipment. It is cited by Hermann Simon as an example of a "hidden champion". The Arri Alexa camera system was used to shoot several films that won the Academy Award for Best Cinematography, including Hugo (2011), Life of Pi (2012), Gravity (2013), Birdman (2014), The Revenant (2015) and 1917 (2019).
Techniscope or 2-perf is a 35 mm motion picture camera film format introduced by Technicolor Italia in 1960. The Techniscope format uses a two film-perforation negative pulldown per frame, instead of the standard four-perforation frame usually exposed in 35 mm film photography. Techniscope's 2.33:1 aspect ratio is easily enlarged to the 2.39:1 widescreen ratio, because it uses half the amount of 35 mm film stock and standard spherical lenses. Thus, Techniscope release prints are made by anamorphosing, enlarging each frame vertically by a factor of two.
Anamorphic format is the cinematography technique of shooting a widescreen picture on standard 35 mm film or other visual recording media with a non-widescreen native aspect ratio. It also refers to the projection format in which a distorted image is "stretched" by an anamorphic projection lens to recreate the original aspect ratio on the viewing screen. The word anamorphic and its derivatives stem from the Greek anamorphoo, compound of morphé with the prefix aná. In the late 1990s and 2000s, anamorphic lost popularity in comparison to "flat" formats such as Super 35 with the advent of digital intermediates; however, in the years since digital cinema cameras and projectors have become commonplace, anamorphic has experienced a considerable resurgence of popularity, due in large part to the higher base ISO sensitivity of digital sensors, which facilitates shooting at smaller apertures.
Auricon cameras were 16 mm film Single System sound-on-film motion picture cameras manufactured in the 1940s through the early 1980s. Auricon cameras are notable because they record sound directly onto an optical or magnetic track on the same film as the image is photographed on, thus eliminating the need for a separate audio recorder. The camera preceded ENG video cameras as the main AV tool of television news gathering due to its portability–and relatively quick production turn-around–where processed negative film image could be broadcast by electronically creating a positive image. Additionally, the Auricon found studio use as a 'kinescope' camera of live video off of a TV screen, but only on early pre-NTSC line-locked monochrome systems.
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Aaton also previewed a prototype of Penelope, a compact switchable 2-, 3-, and 4-perf "quiet, quiet, quiet" sync-sound 35mm camera, a complete redesign that also incorporates twin batteries.
next release will be the Cantar-X3 audio recorder. After that, you can expect to see a new "cat on the shoulder"!
JP Beauviala Sveridge Film Institutet Stockholm 1972. First public presentation of the Aaton 7A. Photo Anders Petersen.[ permanent dead link ]
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