Shutterbugs Are Ditching 35mm Gear
For Digital Cameras, Computer Printers
By ALEC KLEIN
Staff Reporter of THE WALL STREET JOURNAL
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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 20% over 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 59.3% of 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 2 1/2 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." |
