by Simon Towler

The first decade of this century saw an extraordinary boom in on-site printing in UK event photography; so much so that the two activities became, for a few years, synonymous. The on-site printing boom may have been enabled by the new technology of digital photography and portable instant photo printers; but it was fuelled by the credit boom. Britain was going out, and Britain was spending money. And one breed of photographer was going to have some of that.

“The gold rush is over, the dust has settled, the present market isn’t difficult to research. On-site printing hasn’t died. It’s just returned, more or less, to its pre-boom state.”

Revellers got used to the idea of stepping onto a photographer’s seamless on a night out, and buying a print. The numbers of these photographers kept growing, and they were raking in cash.

Then came the crunch, and recession. And many of them disappeared.

Or did they? During the boom, no one was able to estimate how many had got into this new kind of event photography, or how big the booming market was. But now the gold rush is over, the dust has settled, the present market isn’t difficult to research.

On-site printing hasn’t died. It’s just returned, more or less, to its pre-boom state. Before the boom, the on-site printers were the equestrian photographers, travelling to horse shows, and the dog agility people. Those people are still doing on-site printing today (and with much better printers). But for others, much has changed.

The Entrepreneurs

During the boom, there were entrepreneurial individuals who established on-site printing companies that grew a lot bigger than others. They either had lucrative ongoing contracts with big nationwide events, or they had more complex business models like franchising, or ‘events-as-corporate-marketing’; or they had superior sales and marketing, that could keep several crews supplied with work.

The photographers who owned those businesses earned individual annual incomes ranging from about £40-60k, right up to six figure sums, on turnovers that in some cases were in the millions. And they’re still around. Most of those people are still in event photography today — though some have survived business failures and, with the exception of a few really very big players, most now trade from home.

The Jobbers

Those entrepreneurs still provide — mostly casual — work, to what we now think of as an events-only photographer: one of the 200 or so jobbing individuals equipped to do on-site printing. They plug into networks for buying subbed jobs, or take second-shooter assignments. They don’t earn a lot of money — it’s not unusual for them to be offered as little as £50 a day, just a top-up on top of a day-job — and they keep a low profile. (The day-job and the need for a low profile may be two of the things that prevent them from trading in their own right.) They’re pretty anonymous, often known only by a trading-name and mobile phone number listed on some basic website.

Today’s Event Photographer

But those guys make up less than a fifth of the photographers who do events. Although the wholly independent, events-only, on-site printers — who earned comfortable livings trading as eventers in the past — mostly withdrew from the market, their place was taken by other social photographers — mostly wedding photographers — who could get event work, but didn’t depend exclusively on it, nor on the on-site printing model.

“Today, most referrals for on-site printing actually come from other photographers.”

Today, most referrals for on-site printing actually come from these other photographers, many of whom choose to hire an on-site printing crew for events that require it, rather than provide the service themselves.

There are about 700 of these businesses active in event photography today. Events are a significant portion of their income, but they typically have at least two other primary revenue streams: wedding and portrait work, and schools and prom photography. They get their own jobs in their own right, and represent roughly three quarters of the market. For all intents and purposes, they ARE the event photography market today.

The Revenue Model

On-site printing was the supreme revenue model in event photography during the boom years: the idea was to sell prints like hotcakes, there and then for cash. Many event photographers even paid for the privilege of attending an event, just to have the opportunity to sell prints on-site.

Hopefully, no one pays for it today. On the contrary, charging to attend has become an important part of the mix. On many jobs, an attendence fee is the main revenue. On-site printing is not regarded as an automatic necessity either. Unless an eventer knows a particular job of old, it can be hard to predict whether most of the per-photo revenue will come from prints on-site, or from web sales afterwards — or indeed if prints will be any substantial component of the revenue at all. The days of the event photographer obsessed with the performance minutiae of their dye sub printers are numbered, if not over. More than one major manufacturer has had to withdraw from the market for these printing machines completely.

The Digital Challenge

It would be untrue to say that event photography has struggled with the digital-sales challenge. The truth is, it has largely failed to struggle with, or even address, that challenge. For customers at an event, an image that can be instantly shared over the mobile phone network onto Facebook and Twitter often has more value than a print — no matter how professionally taken, against whatever novelty background. Event photography lacks technological solutions and revenue models for mobile phone and social network sales. It’s still wrestling with web sales, and experimenting with the blind alley of selling images on disc and USB stick.

Moving Into Proms

One of the most positive and progressive developments in event photography has been the general move into school prom work that has accompanied the growth in the UK of the whole school prom phenomenon. This dove-tails very well with the skill set of today’s event photographer, who frequently does schools work, as well as events, weddings and portraits. They’re the kind of schools photographer who operates locally on a small scale, often doing their own schools printing on — you guessed it — dye-sub printers; and it isn’t difficult for them to add prom photography to this mix. In fact, it’s a natural progression. Local wedding and portrait photographers have the trade qualifications and respectability necessary for schools work, something the more anonymous events-only photographers lack.

Conclusion

So, on-site printing hasn’t died. It has only reverted to it’s pre-boom state. It’s still practiced, as before, by the equestrian and dog agility photographers. And the most successful exponents in other markets haven’t experienced much decline in their business either. Top event photographers will still tell you honestly that, for them, on-site printing is still quite healthy. They’re largely unaware of the difficulties lesser mortals are experiencing. But the supremacy of on-site printing as a revenue model has waned, and event photography has reverted to a more traditional mix of ways of making money. All but the most successful events-only photographers have largely disappeared, their places taken by the wedding and portrait photographers who also do schools and events. For photographers, school proms have become one of the most important categories of event.

They think it’s all over? Well it isn’t quite, yet.

Schools photographer Jenny Barnard of South Cheshire Studios has applied Fujifilm ASK thermal photo printers to nursery printing, to help them produce affordable packages at good margin

South Cheshire Studios prints schools work on Fujifilm ASK printers
written by Simon Towler

Schools photographers South Cheshire Studios have applied Fujifilm ASK thermal photo printers to nursery printing, to help them produce affordable packages at good margin

South Cheshire Studios is a small schools photography business owned and managed by Jenny Barnard. When faced with the challenge of pricing nursery packages affordably for lower-income parents, while at the same time still making a profit on them, Jenny decided to bring printing in-house. She cooked up an innovative solution based on affordable Fujifilm ASK professional thermal photo printers.

Evolving a requirement

South Cheshire Studios is a relatively young schools photography business. It started its first season in September 2008. Owner Jenny Barnard LBIPP specialised in nursery and primary school photography. She wanted to extend her service into some of the less-advantaged communities within South Cheshire’s catchment area, but couldn’t see how she could price her packages affordably for those parents and still make money from them, given the out-lab costs charged by her schools printers.

“We use a proof-card system to get orders from our clients. The thing that enabled us to apply the Fujifilm ASK printers to our work was the availability of workflow software that links very well to the Fujifilm printers and allows us to make proof-cards for every single child at the touch of a button.”

Jenny said: “We worked in some areas that didn’t have as much money, and we wanted to provide a service to them that they could afford so they could have photographs of their children. But the prices that we were being quoted from our schools labs meant there would have been no profit margin in that for us. So we needed to have a look around to see if we could find a way to make prints ourselves, to cut our costs in order to pass the benefit on to our clients.”

South Cheshire Studios did consider buying its own minilab. But Jenny did the math and realised that, as a small business serving fewer than fifty schools, South Cheshire wasn’t going to have enough volume for a minilab to be economical.

She said: “Because we’re a small company – we deal with about forty to fifty primary schools and nurseries – we didn’t have the through-put to make a minilab cost effective. Our nurseries only have about 30 to 100 children each, and our primary schools don’t have more than 300.”

Luckily, a chance remark from one of South Cheshire Studio’s suppliers, mentioning a family of printers from Fujifilm called the ASKs, led Jenny to the Focus on Imaging show in 2009 to seek them out as a possible alternative.

Finding a solution

Jenny and a colleague saw the Fujifilm ASK 2000 and ASK 4000 printers on the Fujifilm stand at Focus on Imaging 2009.

She said: “We were really impressed with them. We wanted to go with the Fujifilm brand rather than any other, and we thought that what they offered was just as good if not better than their competitors. We were very pleased with them. For nursery school photography, where today’s parents are buying a pack of pictures for just £10 and might only keep them for six months, the Fujifilm ASKs were perfect.”

The Fujifilm ASK 2000 is a professional photo printer that uses a dry thermal dye sublimation process to produce 300 x 600 dpi continuous tone images on rolls of water-proof, tear-resistant Fujifilm photo media up to 6 inches wide, at speeds of just 8 seconds per 6 x 4 inch print or less than 20 seconds per 6 x 8 inch print.

Its bigger brother, the Fujifilm ASK 4000, uses the same proven technology in a larger format, producing 8 x 10 inch or 8 x12 inch photos at a speed of up to 40 seconds (per 8 x 10 inch print).

Both printers cut their output into individual prints automatically.

These machines would require a far lower capital investment than a minilab, making it easier to recover the investment over a smaller volume of prints.

Refining the solution: workflow

By themselves though, the ASK printers did not represent a schools printing solution. Jenny needed to find software that would enable her to print her proof cards, a crucial task in schools workflow, on the Fujifilm machines.

She didn’t have any problem finding workflow software compatible with the Fujifilm ASKs. She stumbled across some straight away at the same Focus on Imaging show. The Fujifilm brand tends to be widely supported by software developers creating programs for professional photo applications.

Jenny said: “We use a proof-card system to get orders from our clients. The thing that enabled us to apply the Fujifilm ASK printers to our work was the availability of workflow software that links very well to the Fujifilm printers and allows us to make proof-cards for every single child at the touch of a button.”

South Cheshire Studios’ workflow now includes using this software to automatically generate proof-cards with the children’s images on them, printing them on a Fujifilm ASK 2000. Parents choose the images they want and mark their orders on the cards. South Cheshire then prints the orders.

The Studios bought two of the 6 inch Fujifilm ASK 2000s, and one 8 inch ASK 4000. It configured the three printers so that one of the ASK 2000s prints 6 x 4 inch photos on 4R roll media, the other does 6 x 8 inch prints on 6R rolls, and the ASK 4000 is used for 10 x 8 inch prints. The 6 x 4 inch printer also outputs 2 x 3 inch and 2 x 1.5 inch prints for South Cheshire’s standard packs.

This configuration allows South Cheshire Studios to print its proof cards and all its packs entirely in-house on the Fujifilm ASKs. Packs are generated and printed automatically by the workflow software, according to what’s ordered. For instance, the Studio’s pack “A” consists of two 10 x 8 inch prints, two 8 x 6 inch prints, two 6 x 4 inch prints and some little prints.

Perfecting the solution: colour management

But a configuration of printers and workflow software by itself was still not a complete solution. If South Cheshire Studios were to produce all the different size prints in its packs from three different printers, the printers would need to be colour-calibrated to produce identical output. Out of the box, no printer produces output identical to another, not even another one of the same model printing on the same media.

Luckily, Fujifilm has a headquarters in the UK, in Bedford, with all the technical expertise to assemble and integrate functioning solutions built on Fujifilm products. Fujifilm’s technical support manager, Leyton Prosser, understood straight away that South Cheshire Studios needed special software colour profiles for their ASKs to make the printers produce perfectly colour-matched output. Within a week he had created and installed these profiles, and even posted them on the Fujifilm website for other ASK users to take advantage of.

Benefits and trade-offs

In-house printing has allowed South Cheshire Studios to be more flexible in its workflow. When the business was doing all its schools printing with out-labs it was imperative for it to shoot in the morning and do post-production the same afternoon, so it could order its proof cards from the lab straight away. This was because it could take a week to get the cards back. Now it can just put everything into the workflow software, and have proof cards coming out of the Fujifilm ASKs ten minutes later.

One of the trade-offs a business makes when it chooses a lower capital investment printer like a thermal dye-sub, rather than a traditional wet lab, is that it’s marginal cost-per-print is typically higher. But this is less of an issue for a schools photography business than it might be for a photo lab, because the schools photographer sells packs, not individual prints.

Jenny says: “The cost-per-print of Fujifilm media for their ASK printers is very good, they’re very cost effective. For example, a 6 x 4 inch print costs us about 7p. We don’t sell individual prints, we sell them as part of packs, so our mark-up is quite satisfactory.”

Bringing so much of its schools printing in-house has also slashed South Cheshire Studio’s out-lab costs.

Keeping it Fujifilm

South Cheshire Studios also does enlargements up to A2 size on an Epson inkjet printer with Fujifilm Professional inkjet media. Jenny says: “I’ve always found Fujifilm inkjet media to be very high quality and cost-effective. I have a fine-art background, I’m quite a tactile person, and I like the feel of the prints.”

She continues: “I have a number of contacts at Fujifilm and I know them quite well. We’ve had an awful lot of advice and support and encouragement from them. At the Focus show they’re always really helpful, brilliant. They’re always available on the end of the phone. I don’t see any reason to go to anyone else.”

Fujifilm solutions

As a case-study, South Cheshire Studios illustrates how Fujifilm UK has the expertise and resources, and the willingness, to design and implement bespoke professional imaging solutions based on Fujifilm products and services, and to integrate them with products from other sources, to the requirements of its customers, no matter what their business size or how individual their requirement. For the imaging professional, Fujifilm is the natural partner.

To ask about Fujifilm professional photo imaging solutions in the UK, including Fujifilm ASK professional thermal photo printers, e-mail minilabs@fuji.co.uk or call Paul Austin, marketing executive, on +44 (0)1234 217 724 today.

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.

Artur Krzykowiak at Double Take Studios

DoubleTake Studios, the portrait, make-over and boudoir photography chain with branches in London, Manchester, Southampton (and soon Birmingham), installed their first Fujifilm Frontier DL410 Dry Minilab in March 2009, and by June had installed two more.

They use the DL410 dry minilabs to print 8 x 12 inch contact sheets for clients. This work was formerly printed on desktop inkjet printers. But the cost-per-print, wear-and-tear, breakdowns, and the need for frequent manual intervention, were all too high on these machines. What DoubleTake needed was an industrial strength solution.

Artur Krzykowiak, production and retouching manager for DoubleTake, says: “Producing the contact sheets on the desktop inkjets was very expensive if you compare the price per page. I think it’s almost ten times more to do it on an inkjet than on a dry lab. Although the inkjet printer only costs you maybe one hundred pounds to buy, and the dry lab is obviously far more, over the years it’s a massive saving. I think the price per print for an A4 page on the dry lab is about seventeen pence, and it replaces inkjets that were costing us up to one pound fifty, so it’s a massive difference.”

Each of DoubleTake’s four studios produce between 140 and 250 contact sheets a day. The studios were already a Fujifilm house, doing their production printing on Fujicolor Crystal Archive paper, on Frontier 330 and 770 minilabs. After evaluating the alternatives, DoubleTake chose to buy their new solution from Fujifilm too.

Krzykowiak tells us: “We’d been using the Frontier 330 for about six years, and it was one of the most reliable pieces of equipment ever. We had really good experience of Fujifilm and Fujifilm support. We knew their after-care was great. Because we knew their service, and we knew what we can expect from Fujifilm, we decided to go with them, even though the price might have been slightly higher than some others.”

And DoubleTake discovered another benefit of installing Frontier DL410 dry minilabs. Because its prints are production quality, on an occasion when their main Frontier 330 went down, one of the studios was able to fail-over onto the Frontier DL410 dry minilab and print portraits on that.

Krzykowiak concludes: “Dry minilabs from Fujifilm are a great alternative.”

A dry lab is a minilab-class inkjet or dye sub photo printer. Minilab-class machines have an essential role as the main print engine at the heart of most retail photo centres. They used to use exclusively liquid chemical processes, with the advantage of a very low cost-per-print. But changes in costs, and in the environment for business, mean that dry processes will be more economical for many sites now.

“The economics of retail photo printing have moved around. Print volumes have declined, costs have gone up. New minilabs are needed that are economical at lower volumes.”

The economics of retail photo printing have moved around. Print volumes have declined, while the costs of consumables, energy, floor space and environmental and health and safety regulations have all gone up. New minilabs are needed that are economical at lower volumes. They need to be virtually zero-consumption while idle. They need to take up less space, and they mustn’t require plumbing or special power supplies. They need to be dry.

Dry labs are being sold to new sites. Photo-Me, for one, are targeting them.

“With our DKS 910 and 920 systems we’re interested in expanding the market to sites that wouldn’t have enough volume to justify a wet process photo lab,” Photo-Me marketing manager, Francois Alves De Freitas, said. “This includes community pharmacies, independent retailers and photographers’ studios. We want to give them a chance to have a slice of the photo gift pie.”

But many dry labs are sold to existing photo centres, through the natural cycle of replacing old equipment. Despite the recession, this cycle may have accelerated a little. Here’s why:

The problem with the old chemical labs at many lower-volume sites is that they aren’t paying their way any more. They can’t. They’re making fewer prints on dearer paper, and wasting power keeping their chemistry warm, while it goes off as they idle. They can’t cover their increased fixed costs, and are no longer earning their floor space. Replacing them with machines that have a higher marginal cost-per-print actually makes more sense, as long as the replacements are smaller, less wasteful, save labour, and slash fixed costs.

“We’ve saved a lot of money by going APEX,” Keith Hall of Dartmoor Photographic says, referring to his move to dry lab. “We’ve lowered our electricity bill by quite an amount, and saved about forty hours labour a week. Our shop used to have to open an hour early in the mornings, just to set the old R1 up for the day!”

CHOOSING A SOLUTION

The requirements of each photo centre are unique. They are uniquely understood only by its owner/manager. There isn’t a one-size-fits-all dry lab solution that can be applied to every site. The individual retailer will chose their ideal solution from the wide ranges offered by manufacturers.

“Unless the customer’s volume dictates just one choice, it’s the people that are buying who need to make the decision,” Paul Austin, marketing executive at Fujifilm says. “If their requirement is to do 12 x 24 inch prints for the wedding album market, or 2000 prints an hour, our only answer is the Frontier 770 wet lab. But if they only do 1000 prints a day, and it’s fairly steady, 100 to 200 prints most hours, and they don’t need many 12 inch prints, then we show them the wet lab and the Frontier DL410 dry minilab together. They make the choice.“

Buyers won’t make that choice based solely on which model of dry lab though. They’ll assess the overall retail photo system it’s part of, the manufacturer’s whole proposition. Some selling points of the solution as a whole will be critical to the retailer’s choice of lab.

“The key thing with the Kodak APEX dry lab,” Chris Castle, hardware sales manager at Tetenal, says, “is its versatility in combination with the Kodak G4 kiosks. You can produce a multitude of products from it: photobooks, greetings cards, invitation cards, calendars, etc.”

And Rohit de Souza, HP’s vice president of retail publishing, says that what their dry lab based solution offered to Tesco Extra’s customers was an unparalleled choice of printable assets. “Customers could quickly and easily create customized photo projects,” he said.

Ultimately, though, given certain other factors, purchase decisions will tend to resolve to issues of cost effectiveness. That is, cost effectiveness, given print quality, productivity, reliability, ease of operation, and versatility.

Tesco’s commercial hard-lines director, Graham Harris, said they chose HP (and the Photosmart ML1000 inkjet dry minilab) “for the reliability of its photo centre and its quality of output, which match the high levels of service we guarantee to our customers.”

INKJET OR DYE SUB?

One of the choices buyers will make will be between print technologies. There are visible differences between the image characteristics of dye sub and inkjet dry lab photographs, but both types have equal consumer acceptance.

“Our quality dry photo paper isn’t just like a traditional photograph,” Fujifilm’s Paul Austin says, “it is a photograph. People that put them next to traditional C-type prints can’t tell the difference.”

Noritsu’s marketing executive, Alison Hughes, agrees. “The kind of pictures you’re going to get produced in our shops are going to be far higher quality than those you can get at home,” she says. Her organization’s own D700 series printers are also used for the Fujifilm dry minilabs. “But Noritsu and Fujifilm are two independent companies,” she explains, “We compete against each other for business, as many customers can testify.”

Kodak can claim proven consumer acceptance of the dye sub media they use in their APEX system. “Kodak chose thermal because it’s a proven, stable technology,” Chris Castle from Tetenal says. “It’s used in the 90,000 Kodak instant print kiosks producing photographs all around the world. And it gives a cost-per-print on 4 x 6 inch photos of just six pence each.”

The market for dye sub media is mature, and the costs are known. Photo-Me say it costs four to five times more than traditional photo paper. The market for inkjet dry lab media, on the other hand, is relatively young. It’s arguable prices have yet to find their level. “Many people expect dry prices to fall,” Photo-Me say, “but production and distribution costs are always likely to give real photo paper the cost advantage.”

Keith Hall, lab owner at Dartmoor Photographic, points out a unique advantage of dye sub dry labs: a typical configuration includes a pair of redundant six inch printers. “When one of the printers in my APEX goes down,” he says, “I just keep on going on the other one, till Kodak send me a replacement. I’m never down.“

ARE DRY LABS GOOD MINILABS?

Hardware prices and feature sets for dry labs may not be mature. Manufacturers like DNP, Fujifilm, Kodak, Noritsu, Photo-Me, San Marco and even Mitsubishi all have stakes in RA4 wet chemistry printing. Those with really big stakes might be slightly inhibited about driving dry technology forward too quickly — especially traditional lab builders.

But all the inkjet dry labs do have an industrial design that could be read as suggesting a lineage from traditional minilabs. (They look like minilabs.) They typically have backprinting and job-sorter options too, suiting them to one-hour-photo workflow.

Kodak’s dye sub APEX system competes directly against the inkjets. It’s also clearly capable as a wet lab substitute.

APEX and the inkjet dry labs are the machines that encroach the furthest on wet lab territory. The latest software for APEX has focussed on increasing its functionality, adding more minilab-like features. Back-printing (or clear front-printing) is on its roadmap, due later this year.

APEX is based primarily on the Kodak 7000 series printers. This hardware is exclusive to Kodak. They’re not the most compact units, but they do produce all the commonest retail sizes from a single standard Kodak media kit.

Fujifilm and Noritsu dry minilabs are also becoming increasingly capable. The new Frontier DL430 and Noritsu D703 models offer dual-roll capability, allowing different media widths or surfaces to be loaded simultaneously, and introduce cassette loading.

THE OUTLOOK

What does the future hold?

An 1100 prints per hour Frontier dry minilab is on the roadmap for next year, and no one doubts that a twelve inch unit must start to loom on the horizon eventually.

And Mitsubishi Electric will join the fray within months. The corporation’s highly regarded dye sub printers will be housed in pairs in a new MPU mass production unit. They’re calling it The Tower. It will have a belt sorter transporting orders vertically to an output location on top, and standard two-line forty-character back-printing. Coupled with a Mitsubishi Click touch-screen, it should become yet another capable dry lab.

As someone has said, the outlook is dry.

Fujifilm Epson 11880 GreenBox large format printer at Farnells Photographic

David Farnell has chosen the FUJIFILM Epson Stylus Pro 11880 GreenBox system for Farnell Photographic Laboratory’s new digital print service. Farnell, who has been printing since 1978, chose the 64″ FUJIFILM solution for his Lake District pro lab based on the quality of its prints on FUJIFILM papers.

“It was the quality of work on the new papers that finally convinced me,” Farnell said. He had evaluated 11880 prints on FUJIFILM Fine Art Fibre Baryte paper. “Prior to that I’d been reluctant to offer digital prints because I had concerns about black and white quality, skin tones, and longevity. These are not a problem now.”

The installation of the 64″ FUJIFILM Epson Stylus Pro 11880 GreenBox printer was done by specialists from FUJIFILM Photofinishing UK, who also provided the training and a follow-up post-installation visit, just to make-good. Farnell was reassured to be working with a corporation with a heritage in professional laboratories and fine art photo printing.

Farnell has also been gratified to find the new prints have gone down well with established clients, even traditionalists who are quite conservative. “It gives them something new to offer their customers,” he said, “and they want that.”

“We used to do Lambda prints up to 60″x30 but now we can do much bigger, in-house, with confidence” Farnell said.

His new 64″ FUJIFILM Epson Stylus Pro 11880 GreenBox has enabled him not only to offer digital prints, but also to follow the trend for larger print sizes. “We used to do Lambda prints up to 60″x30″,”Farnell said, “but now we can do much bigger, in-house, with confidence.”

The FUJIFILM Epson Stylus Pro 11880 GreenBox also wins out against traditional kit on costs. “The service contracts on some of our legacy kit had meant we couldn’t justify extra machines to provide redundancy and backup,” Farnell said. “But the cost in down-time and call-out charges would have been unaffordable if something went wrong. The FUJIFILM system doesn’t have those costs, and it means we have another digital unit we can move jobs onto when something else fails.”

For more information on FUJIFILM’s GreenBox large format photo printing solutions, email greenbox@fuji.co.uk or call Peter Hayward, Commercial Manager of FUJIFILM UK Photofinishing, on +44 (0)1234 572 135.

Fujifilm UK have expanded their range of professional inkjet media, with additions that include a popular new satin finish canvas type, and an outstanding genuine fibre base gloss baryte. The new papers are available now from all main Fujifilm stockists.

The Satin Canvas 350gsm is one of two new canvases introduced by Fujifilm UK. Satin has become the canvas finish most favoured by US consumers, a trend the UK is expected to follow.

The other new Fujifilm canvas is Fine Art Natural Canvas 290gsm, a single-weave natural matt.

But the big news in Fine Art must be that two completely new baryte type papers have joined the Fujifilm range of large format print media. The extensively tested new papers are available in gloss and matt, the base paper is genuine fibre based baryte media.

Artist Nic Gaunt used the new Fujifilm Fine Art Fibre Baryte Gloss 310gsm for each of the 42 large format prints in his “The Rotunda Project – 21 Stories” international touring exhibition.

“My printers and gallery both said this new paper’s fantastic,” Nic said, “It’s so good it seems a shame to put it behind glass. The framers had so much respect for it, they took extra care in the dry mounting, to make sure they didn’t spoil it. I don’t think it’s that good, I think it’s better than that! I’ve waited so long for a paper of traditional quality to come along, and now I’ve got something that beats it!”

“My printers and gallery both said this new paper’s fantastic,” Nic Gaunt said, “It’s so good it seems a shame to put it behind glass. The framers had so much respect for it, they took extra care in the dry mounting, to make sure they didn’t spoil it. I don’t think it’s that good, I think it’s better than that! I’ve waited so long for a paper of traditional quality to come along, and now I’ve got something that beats it!”

The new Fujifilm baryte papers have a premium look and feel, wide dynamic range, luminous neutral whites, and hold deep, rich blacks. They even have the scent of traditional baryte papers! And they give exceptional, museum standard, archival life.

Graham Diprose, Lead Tutor in Photography in Graphic Design, LCC, and colleague Jeff Robins, researched with Mike Seaborne, Senior Curator of Photographs at the Museum of London, before choosing Fujifilm Fine Art Fibre Baryte as the archival medium for both new and digitally restored Victorian images in their ambitious “…in the footsteps of Henry Taunt” project, when they knew it was to be placed in English Heritage’s National Monuments Record archive.

“We carefully researched a number of alternatives,” Graham said, “but we chose Fujifilm Fine Art Fibre Baryte over digital storage, and any other paper, for its exceptional archival life. Wilhelm Imaging Research data indicated that only with Fujifilm Fine Art Fibre Baryte could we be confident of being able to send digital photographic images 300 years or more into the future.”

Fujifilm Fine Art Fibre Baryte Gloss 310gsm and Fujifilm Fine Art Fibre Baryte Matt BW 310gsm are available now, in cut sheets and rolls, from dealers of Fujifilm professional large format inkjet media.

For more information, email greenbox@fuji.co.uk or call Peter Hayward, Commercial Manager of Fujifilm UK Photofinishing, on +44 (0)1234 572 135.

Photographers Graham Diprose and Jeff Robins from London College of Communication, have worked for the past ten years to revisit and recreate images from Victorian Henry Taunt’s ‘New Map of the River Thames’ (1885). When it was agreed that their digital photographs would be taken into English Heritage’s National Monument Record archive, they became concerned that Taunt’s silver based prints from 130 years ago might have a longer life than their new digital images. With the help of Fujifilm and HP, they have now been successful in re-printing over 60 pairs of ‘then and now’ ink-jet images of the Thames, which, thanks to advances in digital technology, and should last for at least another 300 years. 30 of these pairs of stunning new shots and restored images of some of Taunt’s finest photographs were launched at the River and Rowing Museum in Henley in October 2007 and are presently on a national tour. They can be presently be seen at Abingdon Museum until the end of February 2009.

Graham, lead tutor in photography in the School of Graphic Design at LCC, and professional photographer Jeff embarked on their ambitious project to recreate Taunt’s series of images taken alongside the River Thames in 1999. Graham says: “Henry Taunt’s early use of ‘wet collodion’ on location made him a cutting edge landscape photographer for his time and we have always admired his work. When we began this project we were using the highest resolution Phase One digital camera backs available in the UK, so we have much in common with his pioneering spirit”.

“Having visited over 100 of Taunt’s ‘tripod spots’ between Thames Head Spring and Westminster, we then searched the archives of English Heritage’s NMR, Oxfordshire Studies and River and Rowing Museum. While these organisiations are responsible for protecting Taunt’s original prints, Jeff and I decided to use digital technology to retouch and restore his images, so that the remarkable detail could be seen and distractions of any damage could be removed. Taunt shot over 50,000 images in his lifetime and 13,000 can still be seen on English Heritage’s Viewfinder website. We felt that he had been grossly under-rated or neglected by comparison with other photographers of the era, such as Frances Frith and hope this project will rectify that.”

Graham and Jeff were helped in their extensive research into the best way to preserve Taunt’s restored photographs and their new images by Mike Seaborne, Senior Curator of photographs at the Museum of London. “One of our biggest concerns was considerable risk of loss when images are only stored as data, however good the archive. Thankfully, Mike knew of some research by the Wilhelm Institute which suggested that Fujifilm’s Baryte 300gsm media in conjunction with an HP Designjet Z3100 large format printer would produce superior quality images that could last for more than 300 years. Once again, Jeff and Graham were keen to use the most advanced technology available for this project and so approached the two companies to see if they could help.”

They were in luck. HP provided them with a loan of the Designjet Z3100 printer and Fujifilm provided them with a supply of 300gsm Baryte paper to help with their exhibition output and prints for archive. Offering a spectrum of unique features, the HP Designjet Z3100, which is being marketed by Fujifilm, delivers extreme high-end colour and superb quality results, all beautifully rendered with accurate detail and efficient processing print after print after print. Available in 24” and 44” models, it boasts a host of unique benefits, including a built-in Eye-One spectrophotometer from X-Rite for automatic colour adjustment and easy ICC profiling – a world first for this class of printer.

Fujifilm’s 300gsm Baryte paper offers a digital alternative for fibre based silver hailde prints and offers stunning results for black and white or sepia toned images thanks to its high density rating (d-max). When used in conjunction with the HP Designjet Z3100 printer and vivera pigment inks it produces results with a permanence that, according to tests carried out by the Wilhelm Institute, will outlast traditional film prints. Three years ago, digital photographs were only expected to last for around 30 years, with the lifespan of traditional images estimated to be 90 years, so the findings are expected to mark a significant turning point for those still using conventional photography methods.

Graham continues: “Both the printer and the paper have been pivotal to our project. While the process was long, the results that we have been able to achieve with the Designjet and the Baryte paper have been amazing and have the ‘look and feel’ of traditionally made C-type colour prints but with a much longer life.
We were also able to use the system to print our captions and 8ft x 2ft banners for the exhibition, using ‘In Design’, again with perfectly controlled colour management”.

“Large enough to accommodate the 24” paper that we were using, with the added benefits of efficient processing, amazing colour depth and detail, the HP Designjet printer has helped us to create some truly impressive images. One of its key advantages is that it can switch quickly between black and white and colour with no need to change the inks. It also produces a continuous tone that stays true when using black and white inks, which achieved perfect results when trying to achieve maximum depth and detail, particularly in the shadows. Combined with the quality of the Fujifilm Baryte paper, which offered a superb level of reproduction and sharpness, we were able to produce a collection of beautiful prints that will help Taunt’s work, and our project, live on for a very long time.”

“The workflow also gave us complete confidence in our colour management for proofing and checking the book of the project ‘River Thames Revisited …in the footsteps of Henry Taunt’. This was published by Frances Lincoln in October 2007 and is one of their very first ‘digital photography only’ books that was to be printed in China. Jeff and I are delighted that the photographs in the book and exhibition both match exactly and are precisely how we intended them to be reproduced”. The project has appeared on ITV Meridian and in January 2007 was a topic discussed with John McCarthy in BBC Radio 4’s Excess Baggage programme.

“We understand that this project is a ’first’ in terms of living photographers having their digital images and prints taken into archive by English Heritage National Monuments Record, and are confident that our collaboration with Fuji and HP has given the project images the very best possible chance of being enjoyed by scholars of photography, Victoriana or the River Thames in 250 years from now”. Peter Hayward at Fujifilm said: “We are delighted to have been able to assist Graham and Jeff with this groundbreaking project. Their work clearly demonstrates the merits and capabilities of the HPZ300 when used with this type of paper and proves just how far technology has come in recent years.”

For more information on the HP Designjet Z3100 large format inkjet printer or Fujifilm’s extensive range of media please contact the Photofinishing team on 01234 572 057.

Notes:

• Henry W Taunt was a Victorian photographer who worked out of premises in Oxford between 1860-1922. His main interests were Oxfordshire and surrounding counties, the River Thames, customs and local history. He produced the first guide book to the Thames in 1872 using photographs and maps and had a huge influence on the Victorians, sparking their interest in the Thames and leisure activity. As well as being a landscape and architectural photographer, Taunt was a keen observer of human nature, recording the activities of ordinary people at work and play. Books such as “Three Men in a Boat” or “The Wind in the Willows” might never have been written or have been as successful, were it not for Henry Taunt.

• Graham and Jeff’s images are published alongside those of Henry Taunt in a new book entitled ‘The River Thames Revisited: In the Footsteps of Henry Taunt’, (Frances Lincoln Limited). An exhibition of their work, in association with English Heritage, launched at the River and Rowing Museum in Henley in October and is at Abingdon Museum Museum until 28th February 2009. Their prints have been be presented to English Heritage NMR, Oxfordshire Studies and River & Rowing Museum, Henley to be added to their permanent collection and archived in perpetuity.

• For further information on the Wilhelm Institute please visit www.wilhelm-research.com

• Further details of the project and touring exhibition can be found on the project website
www.henrytaunt-footsteps.co.uk

Fujifilm UK today unveiled a pre-production demonstration unit of their eagerly awaited GreenBox 7900 wide format printing solution. The Fujifilm GreenBox 7900 is a unique bundle of EPSON’s forthcoming Stylus Pro 7900 24″ inkjet printer and Fujifilm’s ESP Easy Studio Print software. It’s a complete solution for anyone ready to move up to the latest standard in image quality and productivity, and comes with full support direct from Fujifilm Photofinishing in the UK.

“Fujifilm GreenBox 7900 is the obvious choice for businesses ready to replace their EPSON 7880 or older large format inkjet printers,” said Peter Hayward B.Sc., Commercial Manager, Fujifilm Photofinishing. “It’s at least 1.8 times faster than its immediate predecessors, and nearly four times faster than some older units. It takes much higher capacity ink cartridges, up to 700ml, and the inkset has been increased to include green and orange inks. The new Ultrachrome HDR high dynamic range inks greatly enhance gradation, particularly in skin tones. And they give a much wider gamut that can match more colours, particularly spot colours. Fujfilm’s solution for the EPSON 7900 allows stunning images to be easily and swiftly produced.”

In keeping with the corporation’s commitment to lead innovation in digital imaging, Fujifilm are welcoming visitors to preview GreenBox 7900 at the Fujifilm demonstration suite in Bedford. A pre-production demo unit will be available from today, right up to the end of November, when GreenBox 7900 will start to ship to customers. Fuifilm are accepting customer pre-orders now so to book your demonstration, or for more information, email minilabs@fuji.co.uk or call Peter Hayward now on 01234 572 135.

Fujifilm ASK2000 - a fast event printer

Which Printer for Event Photography?
by Simon Towler

Event photography has evolved from being just another way to earn some money, into a whole contemporary subculture. Instant photo printing is the technology that has enabled modern event photography. The printers used in eventing today are a class of machine known as “Fast Event Printers”. A fast event printer is a dye-sub unit that takes a roll of media 6″ inches wide and produces its maximum-size print in less than 20 seconds. These machines are about as closely related to the small dye-sub photo printers used at home as main battle tanks are to the mini metro. This month I tested seven of them for NewPhotoDigest, giving some thought to how you might choose between them. This is what I found.

Current models of fast event printer include the Copal DPB6000, Fujifilm ASK2000, ICI ImageData OP1000, Kodak 6850, Mitsubishi CP9800DW, and Sony UP-DR200.

PRINT QUALITY

I’m going to stick my neck out in this review, and suggest that print quality is not an important factor. All of the photo printers on test here are capable of producing photo quality your customers at any event will be perfectly satisfied with. There’s not much to choose between them, and the choices would be personal and highly subjective. A photographer’s eye will clearly see differences, but their customer’s won’t. The Sony UP-DR200 though, does deserve a special mention for its paper-based media and its ability to produce matte prints from the same roll as gloss.

PRINT SPEED

Event photographers are obsessed with speed. They need to make every sale they can in as little time as possible. If you’ve got, for example, 700 people at an event, and just a 90 minute window to offer them prints, then your maximum revenue possibility is to make and sell 700 prints in 90 minutes. Every second counts. The speed of your printers is not the only factor here. Arguably it’s not even the most important factor. But it is something eventers focus on.

All the printers on review here are fast. That’s the class they’re in. It proved very difficult to make speed comparisons between them. However, I did find that the manufacturer rated speeds were reliable, at least as a comparitive measure. In the real world, average times per print are very different when producing multiple different images, and it’s problematic to isolate all the factors in this.

The Sony UP-DR200, though, does take the laurels as the fastest event printer on test, although the ICI Olmec OP1000 and Kodak 6850 weren’t too far behind. If there’s one printer that could be faster, it’s the Mitsubishi CP-9800DW, but it partly makes up for that with its ability to maintain average print speeds over long runs.

MAXIMUM PRINT SIZE

These machines divide into two categories of maximum print size: 6″x8″ inches or 6″x9″ inches. All event photographers in the UK can agree that one of these sizes is the optimum for eventing – but not which one! The Sony and the Kodak are 6″x8″ machines, producing standard 6R photo sizes. These, their users say, are easy to find mounts and frames for. The other printers go up to 6″x9″, which matches the aspect ratio of digital camera images. Event photographers that use these say they can print 6″x9″ images straight away, without having to waste extra seconds editing the crop.

The debate as to which is the better size for events is an irreconcilable schism. Choose your preferred print size before you choose your printer! (6″x9″ users will tell you their printers can do 6″x8″ too. But the 6″x8″ folk say this is a cheat, and uses 9″ inches of ribbon anyway!)

OTHER PRINT SIZES

UK photographers claim they can charge more for 6″ inch prints.

Interestingly, in the States 5″x7″ is a common size for event photos – photographers there offer 6″ inch prints as an up-sell. If you want to sell 5″x7″ in the UK, all these machines will do it (although they may need spacers), except the Kodak 6850, which requires a special irreversible conversion to 5″x7″, and then can’t do 6″x8″ prints.

DRIVER COMPATIBILITY

None of these printers can print by themselves, you need to attach a computer for that. Compatibility needs to be checked. They all ship with drivers for Windows XP, but how about support for Vista and the Apple Mac? (A lot of event photographers use MacBooks, or laptops with Vista.)

All the manufacturers featured here now have their own Vista drivers available for these printers. If they’re not in the box with the printer, your dealer may write them to CD for you, or you can download them from the Web. Mac drivers are also available for all of them, except for the Kodak 6850 and the ICI ImageData Olmec OP1000. (However, the OP1000 is the only one of this current crop to already have a fast direct driver in ExpressDigital Darkroom, the workflow software used by many eventers.)

In summary, if you absolutely have to print from a Mac, avoid the ICI and Kodak machines. If you’re an ExpressDigital user and need to pare every precious second off your print times, consider the ICI Olmec OP1000.

PHYSICAL SPECIFICATIONS

Having dealt with print size and compatibility, we now examined our test machines for another important set of properties: weight, dimensions and ergonomics.

It’s in the nature of event photography that you will have to manhandle your printers around – into the gig and back again. That’s one of the reasons why eventers use as few printers as they can get away with (just one, if possible). It’s also the reason most of them avoid excessively heavy units.

When it comes to weight, fast event printers fall into two broad categories – heavy weights and lighter machines. Heavy weights weigh 25Kg+ unloaded, while the lighter machines weigh significantly less – around 20Kg at most. The market for event printers favours the lighter machines.

Three machines here are heavy-weights: the Copal DPB6000, the physically identical Fujifilm ASK2000, and the Kodak 6850. They all weigh 25Kg. (Kodak do have a lighter machine, the 605, but not in this class.)

Of the lighter machines, the Sony UP-DR200 wins the laurels for lightest of the bunch at 17Kg, while the Mitsubishi CP9800DW is not far behind at 21Kg. The ICI Olmec OP1000 is a 44-pounder, a perfectly manageable 20Kg. If weight is a crucial factor for you, choose one of these three lighter machines. They’re built just as well as their heavier brethren.

If weight is important because you’re going to lift the machine, then ergonomics come into play here too. The dimensions need to be grabbable, and there need to be plenty of grab points built into the housing of the printer. Any assessment of this must be a bit subjective, but having handled them all my personal opinion is that they rank in ergonomics exactly as they do in weight, with the Mitsubishi and Sony being the most carry-friendly, the ICI machine holding the middle ground, and the heavy-weights coming in later.

PRICE, WARRANTY AND SUPPORT

The prices of these machines, the amount of media included with them, and the warranty periods offered for them, vary so much over time as to make comparisons difficult. It’s a constantly moving target. So instead of looking at what you get for your money, let’s consider what backs it up.

Fast event printers are mission-critical equipment – when they’re down, the eventer’s business is interupted, and he’s losing money. So what’s support like in the UK for these machines, if you need a warranty repair, out-of-warranty repair, or just help, assessment and advice?

It’s difficult to assess objectively. In my experience, though, Fujifilm have shown an edge in the levels of backup they provide for their machines. Help is provided by their Photofinishing Help Desk in Bedford, where their own engineers are also based. Bedford has been known to be quite proactive in resolving customer issues with individual ASK 2000s. And this is one of the main things that distinguishes the ASK2000 from the hardware-identical Copal DPB6000. First-line support in the UK for the DPB6000 is provided by the dealer who imports it.

ICI Olmec are also UK based, and have always had the confidence to offer a standard two-year warranty with their OP1000 PrintBox, which is anyway a legendarily reliable machine.

The Kodak support process always moves inexorably toward resolution of any issues with individual printers, but the price of their spare parts can be eye-wateringly prohibitive.

Sony offer a well-thought-out PrimeSupport package, mediated in the UK through dealers and third-party engineers.

Mitsubishi also offer a professional-level warranty with good backup, ultimately from their own engineers(if necessary).

CONCLUSION

The seven printers on test here represent a fair selection of the fast event printers currently available in the UK. They are all excellent machines, well designed, well built, high performance, high quality and great value for money. Each of them has some unique selling point that will make you as an individual choose it rather than any other. Whichever one you choose, you won’t regret it. Happy eventing!

Video clip from Christian Frei’s documentary on American conflict photographer James Nachtwey.

A half-hour TV interview profiling fine-art photographer and printer, Ansel Adams. YouTube video in four parts.

“The thing that excites me is that in not too many years we’re going to have an entirely new medium of expression: the electonic image. I’ve seen what can happen to a print reproduced by the laser scanner and how that is enhanced, and that’s just the beginning. I’ve also seen some magnificent electonic images direct – direct electrical images, not pictures of pictures – and I know the potentials are there, I know it’s going to be wonderful.” – Ansel Adams

Part 1

Part 2

Part 3

Part 4