In today's Wall St Journal
Shutterbugs Ditch 35mm Gear for Digital Cameras, Computer Printers
----
By Alec Klein
Staff Reporter of The Wall Street Journal
Tom Keane is an avid photographer, but he doesn't buy film anymore. Instead
he produces pictures with the Kodak DC260 Zoom digital
camera he gave his wife for Christmas, a Hewlett-Packard ink-jet printer and
Epson photo paper.
What's become of his old 35mm cameras? "They're paperweights," says the 44-
year-old former Boston city councilor.
Mr. Keane may be riding the wave of the future, thanks in large part to a
new
crop of inexpensive printers with dazzling advances in quality.
Some home printers these days produce images of such clarity that they look
like the real thing. "It's hard to tell the difference," says Chuck
Davenport, a senior analyst at Lyra Research Inc., an imaging
market-research
firm in Newton, Mass.
At the same time, an increasing number of online services are offering
development of digital prints. Mr. Davenport goes so far as to predict
that as prices for digital cameras and printers drop, and quality improves,
camera film will become a thing of the past. "You'll have to go to the
art-supply store to buy film in about 10 years," he speculates.
Not surprisingly, that notion is anathema in the Rochester, N.Y., precincts
of Eastman Kodak Co. Film "will be around for a long time," says
Phil Gerskovich, chief operating officer of Kodak's digital and applied
imaging unit.
Kodak points out that traditional color pictures last up to 120 years, while
prints made with home printers can start to fade in a matter of
months. The photography giant also notes that traditional cameras are easier
to use than digital gear, which often requires complicated cable
hookups, memory cards and software; and, at least for the time being,
regular
snapshots cost about half as much as digital printouts using
premium photo paper.
Sales of conventional, nondisposable cameras were up 12% last year to 18
million units, and U.S. film sales also rose about 7% to 1.04
billion rolls in mass channels.
But digital printouts are growing much faster. People in North America are
expected to print out 5.4 billion photographic pictures this year,
mostly from their home ink-jet printers, according to InfoTrends Research
Group Inc. in Boston. That number is expected to almost quadruple
to 26 billion by 2005. Meanwhile, prints from U.S. photofinishers are
expected to grow only about 200ver the next five years to 41.2 billion
prints, from 34.4 billion this year, according to Kodak.
The digital fires are being fanned by digital-camera sales, which rose 91%,
to 2.1 million units, in the U.S. last year, according to the Photo
Marketing Association, Jackson, Mich. Sales of ink-jet printers and
cartridges were both up about 30% last year, according to
market-research firm International Data Corp. Many of these printers cost
under $400.
Albert Higgott's printer cost less than $60 at Wal-Mart Stores. With that,
and a $110 digital camera, he creates the pictures of his
nine-month-old granddaughter, Destiny Rose, and his tabby cat, Teiwaz, that
are good enough to display in his living room. Mr. Higgott, who
is 68, retired and lives in Portsmouth, N.H., still owns 35mm cameras but
has
hardly touched them since going digital in August. He is a
particularly vivid example of changing times: He used to work in a
photography store.
With tales like this, small wonder that Kodak is hedging its bets in the
digital world. It makes its own line of digital cameras and says it's the
No. 1 maker of photo-quality paper for ink-jet printers, with about a 40%
U.S. market share, measured in units sold. High-quality photo paper
for computer printers is favored by digital shutterbugs, producing much
better looking prints than plain old printer paper.
Last year, Kodak also introduced its first ink-jet printer, the Personal
Picture Maker PM100, a $149 product, after a $50 mail-in rebate.
Lexmark International Group Inc. of Lexington, Ky., makes the machine. Kodak
officials say their engineers have joined forces with Lexmark
to design additional photo- quality ink-jet printers, which are expected to
come on the market later this year.
Still, many analysts say Kodak is lagging behind its rivals in the printer
race. Hewlett-Packard Co. recently unveiled its lowest-cost
photo-quality printer, the DeskJet 932C, with a price tag of about $199. It
produces the highest number of dots per printed inch on the mass
ink-jet market: 2,400 by 1, 200, compared with the benchmark 1,200 by 1,200
dpi of competing machines.
Vyomesh Joshi, H-P's vice president of ink-jet systems, says designers
refined the processing of moving a sheet of paper through the printer
as well as the movement of the carriage, which holds the ink-jet cartridge
that slides across the page.
Older H-P printers vibrated as they printed, the result of the rotation of
2-
millimeter-wide rubber teeth on the belt connecting the carriage to
the printer motor. The vibration caused the dots to land without precision
on
the page. The new printer comes with 1-millimeter-wide teeth,
which creates about a fourth as much vibration.
By improving the printer mechanics, the machine can place more dots on the
page with more accuracy. Mr. Joshi said. H-P also improved the
algorithms in its printer software that direct which color dots -- yellow,
black, magenta or cyan blue -- go where on the page. As a result, the
colors are much brighter, flesh tones truer and the image sharper in the
932C
compared with its predecessors.
H-P has driven down prices partly by ramping up production, which lowers
per-
unit costs. Since the fall of 1997, it has been using common
parts, such as print engines, across its different printer platforms. H-P is
the No. 1 player in ink-jet printers with 59.30f U.S. sales dollars.
Seiko Epson Corp.'s cheapest photo-quality printer, the Stylus Photo 870,
hit
the market in March, for $299. Its image resolution is among the
highest in the industry: The printer produces a dot of ink 4 picoliters in
size -- a third smaller than in the model it replaced, the Stylus Photo
750, and barely visible to the human eye. H-P's 932C comes with five
picoliters per dot, also virtually invisible.
The Photo 870 can print a 4-inch by 6-inch photo in 48 seconds, 10 seconds
quicker than the older model. It comes with new fade-resistant
ink -- preserving an image exposed to natural light for at least 10 years,
Epson says. H-P says its 932C prints images that last about 2u
years before starting to fade. Like H- P, Epson has cut manufacturing costs
by using common parts across different printer models. Epson is
No. 2 in U.S. ink-jet printer market share with 15.9%.
The advances and the cost factor have made a digital convert out of Boston
attorney Larry Oliverio, 47, whose snapshots are now made with a
Sony digital camera and an H-P printer. He hasn't taken a roll of film to a
photofinisher in three years. He still has his 35mm camera, but that
isn't much consolation for the likes of Kodak. He says, "It's sitting in my
closet collecting dust."
________________________________________________________________________
Get Your Private, Free E-mail from MSN Hotmail at http://www.hotmail.com
< This message was delivered via the Olympus Mailing List >
< For questions, mailto:owner-olympus@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxx >
< Web Page: http://Zuiko.sls.bc.ca/swright/olympuslist.html >
|