An optical printer with two projector heads, used in producing movie special effects. Starting from the left, you can see light shining from the lamp house, then at A is the first projector's film gate, at B a lens that projects the film in A onto the second projector's gate C. At D is the lens of the camera, the camera's finder is at E and the adjustable shutter control at F. In the heavy base G all the electronics needed for controlling the printer are located.

An optical printer is a device consisting of one or more film projectors mechanically linked to a movie camera. It allows filmmakers to re-photograph one or more strips of film. The optical printer is used for making special effects for motion pictures, or for copying and restoring old film material. Image File history File links Opticalprinter. ... Image File history File links Opticalprinter. ... A Device can be taken to mean: an electrical device designed to carry power, but not use it. ... Projectors are used for displaying an image on a projection screen or similar surface for the view of an audience. ... The word mechanical can mean one of several things: A device or principle described as mechanical relates to a mechanism or machine, or the realm of Newtonian mechanics. ... The Arricam ST, a popular 35 mm film camera currently used on major productions. ... The film director, on the right, gives last minute direction to the cast and crew, whilst filming a costume drama on location in London. ... A sepia-tinted photograph of an English couple, taken in 1895. ... Special effects (abbreviated SPFX or SFX) are used in the film, television, and entertainment industry to create effects that cannot be achieved by normal means, such as depicting travel to other star systems. ...

Common optical effects include fade outs and fade ins, dissolves, slow motion, fast motion, and matte work. More complicated work can involve dozens of elements, all combined into a single scene. Ideally, the audience in a theater should not be able to notice any optical printers work, but this is not always the case. For economical reasons, especially in the 1950s, and later in TV series produced on film, printer work was limited to only the actual parts of a scene needing the effect, so there is a clear change in the image quality when the transition occurs. Optical effects is a sub-category of special effects for film in which film images are manipulated through optical processes using film, light, shadow, lenses and/or chemical processes. ... Mattes are used in photography and filmmaking to insert part of a foreground image onto a background image, which is often a matte painting, a background filmed by the second unit, or computer generated imagery. ...

The first, simple optical printers were constructed early in the 1920s. Linwood Dunn expanded the concept in the 1930s, and the development continued well into the 1980s, when the printers were controlled with minicomputers. Minicomputer (colloquially, mini) is a largely obsolete term for a class of multi-user computers which make up the middle range of the computing spectrum, in between the largest multi-user systems (traditionally, mainframe computers) and the smallest single-user systems (microcomputers or personal computers). ...

In the late 1980s, digital special effects began to supplant optical effects. Since the mid nineties the conversion to digital effects has been virtually total. Consequently, optical printing today is used most widely by individual artists working exclusively with film. As a technique, it proves particularly useful for making copies of hand painted or physically manipulated film.