Some directors such as David Fincher have taken a shine to the latest digital cameras to come to market -- and Roach hopes they will see the DFR as the perfect companion.

The size of a guitar amplifier, the DFR is a portable computer that captures scenes shot on camera onto a hard disk rather than tape or 35mm film.

But the DFR's key feature is its ability to preserve the original quality of the image. Its wide bandwidth helps it avoid having to compress the image -- an inevitable process that happens with other filming equipment.

Roach said he was focusing his marketing efforts in Europe rather than the United States because its film industry was mostly populated by independent filmmakers working on tight budgets -- ideal customers for the DFR.

"The market potential is quite large but unquantifiable," said Roach. "You could be looking at a market ... one third (the size) of the 35mm movie film market."

Le Poulain, which stars France's Richard Bohringer in a story about a mare's search for her lost pony, is the second feature film to go digital for the entire production.

"We avoided the typical: 'Oops! There go a few thousand euros (in film stock) because the horse did not do what it was supposed to do'," he said.

Olivier Ringer said he chose the DFR rather than Sony's SRW-1 recorder and its HDCAM-SR tape because he found it did a better job at preserving the image quality.

Although it is just as cheap and practical as the DFR, Ringer said the HDCAM-SR tape was not as sensitive as the DFR in picking up the subtle variations in light and colour.

With a speed of 3,000 megabits per second, the DFR could even pick up different shades of white -- an important feature when it came to touching up images in the editing room, he said.

"Nobody has anything this fast," said Danys Bruyere, technical director of Groupe TSF, a film equipment rental agency in Paris, when asked about the DFR.

With a slower bandwidth of up to 880 megabits per second, the HDCAM-SR loses some of the image's quality because it has to compress it -- however slightly -- while recording, said Ringer.

Richard Lewis, chief engineer for Sony's business division in Europe, said the compression was so mild that it did not make any noticeable difference. "You'd never see it."

Despite the reluctance of some Hollywood directors to try new technology for fear of putting big-budget productions at risk, S.two managed to convince at least one to give the DFR a try: David Fincher, best known for "Seven" and "Panic Room".

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