Imax Film Scan |top| «PREMIUM»

This is the most artistic phase. A colorist works with the original Director of Photography (if available) to match the digital scan to the original film print.

Unlike digital sensors with fixed pixels, 15-perf 70mm IMAX film captures images through countless microscopic silver halide crystals.

Here is a step-by-step breakdown of what happens in a professional IMAX film scan session.

For decades, the only way to see this film was on a screen five stories tall. But the projectors were dying, and the original negatives were turning to dust. Elias’s job was the "The Scan."

Maintaining the "look" of film (the grain) while cleaning up dirt and scratches without making it look "digital" requires skilled technicians. 5. IMAX Film Scan vs. "Digital IMAX" imax film scan

Because of the physical surface area—nearly nine times larger than standard 35mm film—it is widely cited by experts at IMAX Corporation as having a theoretical resolution equivalent to 12K to 18K . 2. High-Resolution Scanning Infrastructure

Modern IMAX scans utilize two primary sensor types:

Despite pristine laboratory environments, microscopic dust particles and minor scratches can appear on the negative. Because IMAX screens are so gigantic, a speck of dust that would pass unnoticed on a standard screen becomes the size of a beach ball on an IMAX screen. Digital restoration artists spend hundreds of hours meticulously cleaning the scanned frames. Mastering for Multiple Formats

A single second of 8K 16-bit uncompressed IMAX footage can easily consume several gigabytes of storage. Digitizing a full-length feature film requires petabytes of high-speed storage arrays (SAN/NAS) and massive computational bandwidth for color grading and visual effects processing. Production vs. Archival Scanning This is the most artistic phase

IMAX film is distinct due to its massive frame size. While standard 70mm film runs vertically with 5 perforations per frame, through the camera with 15 perforations per frame. Frame Dimensions: Approximately Aspect Ratio: A unique

Are you dealing with or newly shot negative ?

While many assume digital cameras rule the box office, the "Holy Grail" of image quality remains —specifically, the massive 15-perf/65mm negative. But celluloid is useless without a digital bridge. That bridge is the IMAX film scan .

For Avatar: The Way of Water , Cameron shot digitally. But for the Titanic 4K re-release, they performed a new 16K IMAX scan of the original 70mm negative. Why? Because the original 35mm anamorphic footage couldn't hold up. But the IMAX footage of the ship? The scan revealed rusticles on the bow that no human eye—not even Cameron’s—had ever seen in dailies. Here is a step-by-step breakdown of what happens

For damaged or warped IMAX film (common with archival prints from the 90s), wet-gate scanners are avoided. Instead, post houses use custom-built units where a high-resolution medium format digital camera (100MP+) photographs the film frame on a light table. This is slow—sometimes 30 minutes per shot—but it preserves the grain structure without mechanical scratching.

Designed to handle large, high-resolution datasets from each 70mm frame.

The raw scan is saved as a or EXR sequence. These are uncompressed (or losslessly compressed) log files. Even with modern compression, a feature film fits on a hard drive the size of a pizza box. But that drive weighs a lot.

For archivists, the challenge lies not in resolution, but in handling the physical film’s curl, splice tears, and the sheer data throughput. Yet when done correctly, an IMAX film scan yields imagery that humbles even the most advanced digital cameras: sharp, luminous, and breathtakingly alive.