SONY's Instant Holographic Portrait System This is a quick page to supplement this weeks' HoloTalk show. I visited the SONY building in mid-town Manhattan to see a demonstration of this new instant holographic portrait unit. Here are a few notes, photos and diagrams: Here's a visitor waiting to have their portrait done. This unit was set up very much like the little photo booths that you find at the shore on the boardwalk. To the right of the photo is the area where the camera travels along the rail, taking 259 photos in 7 seconds. You can have up to 7 seconds of motion in your holographic portrait. Here's a shot of the printing unit. It is about the size of a desktop xerox machine. Inside this unit is contained the laser, optics, film transport (can be loaded via cassette), and vibration isolation system. Shown busy making portraits is Nobuhiro Kihara (right) and another engineer. Above is a block-diagram of how the system operates, moving from left to right beginning with image capturing camera to the image processing board and finally to the holographic printing unit. Another diagram showing the internal recording geometry of the holographic recording unit. The unit uses a frequency-doubled laser diode operating at 532nm. The images are recorded and exposed from a spatial light modulator (light valve by SONY's terms). Diagram of the film transport, which has been improved from a mechanical stage type system to utilizing pinch rollers for smooth and accurate operation. Here are a few specifications: * Reconstruction Color: 532nm * Printing Area: 59mm(h) x 78mm(v) * Viewing Angle: 57deg (h) x 40deg (v) * Number of Elemental Holograms: 295 * Size of Elemental Hologram: 0.2mm(=pitch) x 78mm(v) * Resolution of Elemental Hologram: 480(h=parallax images) x 640(v) * Printing Speed: 3 minutes * Printer Size: 1100mm x 700mm x 300mm Photo of Akira Shirakura, Manager, Research Planning Office, Frontier Science Laboratories, SONY, Japan. Photo of finished hologram portrait. These portraits that they are doing in NYC are sized at 30mm x 22mm -- or about the size of one of the larger postage stamps. Sony Wonder Technology Lab in New York 550 Madison Ave. (56th St., & Madison Ave.), NYC, NY Back to HoloPortrait Area of HoloWorld