Products: Aaton and FilmLight

Aaton has pioneered in developing and manufacturing innovative motion-picture equipment, but the small Grenoble, France, company that's headed by cinema legend Jean-Pierre Beauviala (pal Jean-Luc Godard turns to him to develop unique cameras) hasn't had the resources to do the sort of marketing necessary for much of its history.

That changed with the introduction of Aaton's AatonK, a 2K/4K high-res digital film recorder introduced at IBC 2008. United Kingdom-based FilmLight announced at the show a partnership to market the new product. FilmLight, of course, is well-regarded as a developer of film-scanning, color-grading, and color-management technology.

Besides straight sales of the recorder, FilmLight will bundle it with its own Northlight scanner and Baselight 8 color-grading system to offer an end-to-end 4K workflow. The AatonK employs a telecentric lens and sensor system (light rays remain perpendicular to the film plane without the skewing that degrades other systems), claimed to result in faster record times at higher resolutions than laser-film recorders. www.aaton.com • www.filmlight.ltd.uk