John Fitzgerald in his modern pro lab on Guernsey

John Fitzgerald of Fitzgerald’s Photographic Services, a medium-sized custom photo laboratory in Guernsey on the Channel Islands, is a progressive member of the photo finishing community. He keeps his lab up-to-date with the latest equipment and software, and follows trends in services. He tells us: “We’re of the mind that, especially with the way the market moves so fast, if you don’t keep up with it you’ll fall behind very rapidly, and eventually drop out, as a lot of labs have done.”

Fujifilm is John Fitzgerald’s preferred solutions provider. John explains: “I favour Fujifilm because they have that personal contact with me. I know various people there, I know what their areas of expertise are, they’re happy for me to phone them up and just chat to them every now and again, about my thoughts and problems, about what I’d like to see, and they see if there are ways they can accommodate me.”

Fujifilm has supplied a number of solutions to Fitzgerald’s recently, to help it develop and innovate in its business. The Guernsey lab is evolving from a traditional photo printer into the modern model, a digital imaging centre. Its new solutions include a Fujifilm Xerox 700 Digital Colour Press for high-end photo book production, a Fujifilm Frontier 770 minilab for high-speed productivity, Fujifilm SmartPix in-store and on-line photo kiosks, Fujifilm Epson large format printers, and a range of new inkjet papers.

Fujifilm Xerox 700 Digital Colour Press
John Fitzgerald first saw the Fujifilm Xerox 700 Digital Colour Press exhibited at PMA 2009 in Las Vegas, and had a hands-on interactive demonstration. The Digital Colour Press uses toner to print at 2400dpi resolution on papers up to 300gsm in weight and up to SRA3 in size, at a rate of 70 pages per minute. It does automatic duplex printing on papers up to 220gsm.

John told us: “I was interested in the machine before the show, but I hadn’t had the opportunity to see one. Because I knew it was going to be there, I made sure I had a good chat with the Fujifilm people, and have a look at it, along with the competing devices that were around, and see what the quality was like. I knew the Fujifilm Xerox 700 was going to be available through Fujifilm UK from chatting with David Hartwell, my Fujifilm rep. I usually bend his ear about what’s happening and what latest products they are producing. So he knew of my interest in this type of printing technology.“

David Hartwell, sales executive for Fujifilm business imaging, recalls: “Because Fitzgerald’s and Fujifilm have such a good working relationship, when John got back from Las Vegas he just rang me up and asked if he could come over from Guernsey to see the our new Digital Colour Press. So he came over to see us, we looked after him, and took him to see the printer at the Xerox offices. John was suitably impressed with the results it could produce. Then it was simply a case of how quickly he could get one installed.”

John Fitzgerald now uses the Fujifilm Xerox 700, in combination with its Light Production Finisher option, to produce high quality photo books, as well as short-run items, such as greeting cards, for the bespoke gift market. The Light Production Finisher is a stacker, stapler and hole-punch that can also collate and fold.

Fitzgerald’s custom laboratory is primarily for professional photographers and trade. John Fitzgerald tells us: “We weren’t doing photo books of this quality on this scale before. We have a small Xerox, the 7760, which came as part of another Fujifilm photo book solution. That’s still doing the work that comes through the SmartPix kiosks. But the Fujifilm Xerox 700 puts us in a completely different league. It enables us to do the higher quality photo books, the ones generated by the professionals’ own software.”

Fitzgerald’s is also a wholesale lab, doing photo sales fulfilment for many UK national newspapers. He prints copies of their published pictures to order for their readers. John is trialling different paper stocks on his Fujifilm Xerox 700 with a view to applying it to this work too. He expects to be offering custom greeting cards and calendars for the newspaper market from the autumn of 2009.

Fujifilm Frontier 770 Digital Minilab
It was because of its work fulfilling photo print orders on behalf of national newspapers that Fitzgerald’s developed a need, in 2008, for the fast Fujifilm Frontier 770 Digital Minilab. The firm needed to complement its existing Fujifilm Frontier 355, to run glossy and lustre paper at the same time, to have a degree of redundancy, and to achieve the throughput rates needed for its newspaper work.

John Fitzgerald told us: “The newspaper work is very fast. We download it each morning and we have to have it all printed and packed by eleven o’clock, to go out in the post that day. So we’re only looking at a three hour turn-around. At our busiest time of year we need to print and pack maybe 1,500 prints in less than two hours. So we needed the Frontier 770.”

Crystal Archive Professional Paper Type DP-II
Fitzgerald’s uses Fujicolor Crystal Archive Professional Paper Type DP-II for all its RA4 process. The paper is optimised for digital exposure. It has the substantial base support that professional’s expect, giving a long-lasting product. And its whiter base colour and deeper shadows yield increased dynamic range.

John Fitzgerald says: “I like the quality and the handling. It doesn’t damage easily. And I like the look of it, not over-saturated or too contrasty. It has a professional look and feel. It’s a very nice paper.”

He also uses the Fujicolor Crystal Archive Professional Paper Type DP-II for prints up to thirty inches wide produced on his Durst Theta system.

Fujifilm Epson Stylus Pro printers and Fujifilm Professional Inkjet Paper
Fitzgerald’s also make large format inkjet prints, including fine art reproductions. These are output on the Fujifilm Epson Stylus Pro 9900 and 7800 printers, on a range of Fujifilm papers. John tells us: “We use the Museum Rough, the Fine Art Rag, the Canvas papers, and of course the Baryte, as well as normal Silk. The most popular is the Museum Rough.”

He continues: “One of our customers is the museum here on Guernsey. They’re starting to introduce all their artwork online for people to buy copies of, and Museum Rough is their favoured paper. We printed various styles of their art, whether photographic or watercolour or whatever medium, on various papers, and let them decide which one they preferred.”

Fitzgerald’s use a Fujifilm Colour Hunter RIP to print this colour-critical fine art work on Fujifilm Epson large format printers. John says: “Using the Fujifilm Colour Hunter RIP is the only way I trust to run inkjets. I’ve tried running them directly from a computer and hated it. With the Colour Hunter you can just pop images straight in and rely on the Fujifilm profiles.”

Fujifilm SmartPix photo kiosks
Another area in which Fitzgerald’s is driving forward is kiosks. The lab has added two new Fujifilm SmartPix kiosks, and the Fujifilm online kiosk, in addition to a Fujifilm unit they already had.

Fujifilm SmartPix photo kiosks enable an outlet to sell much more than just standard 6x4in prints. They present compelling options to the self-service customer to easily choose up-sells to higher margin products, including photo books, posters, calendars, canvases and a wide range of gifts. Online, the virtual SmartPix kiosk lets the lab’s customers make these choices from home.

John Fitzgerald told us about price movements on kiosk products: “We did go through a phase of dropping our kiosk prices right down to try and compete with the PhotoBoxes and SnapFishes of this world. But since then we’ve put them up, and not seen any difference in numbers of prints coming through. That shows the public don’t choose cheap price over quality.”

Fujifilm solutions
John Fitzgerald’s own analysis of how Fujifilm solutions have enabled him to preserve margin while photo finishing has undergone rapid and exciting change is this: the corporation’s products provided the automation, productivity, first-time hit rate and added value that he needs. He says: “Our gross margin is probably lower than it used to be. But our production is much higher to compensate. In the old days of film we could often test everything twice then reprint it all. These days it’s all very high first time results. And a lot less time spent on the orders. The bulk orders basically fly through, and that’s it. We don’t even get to see the photographs, apart from when we take them out and pack them up. And we’re moving toward more value added and higher margin products, produced, for instance, on the Fujifilm Xerox 700 system.”

Fujifilm enabling the modern digital imaging centre
Fitzgerald’s Photographic Services is an example of how Fujifilm solutions can enable medium-size pro labs to cost-effectively provide many of the facilities offered by larger ones, and also stay ahead of the innovation curve. Fitzgerald’s is a modern lab for modern times, a comprehensive digital imaging centre, embracing the convergence of photo finishing and press printing, and the digital and online revolutions.

For more information on Fujifilm’s solutions, email minilabs@fuji.co.uk or call +44 (0)1234 572 144 today.