Tom,
Re: Digital Cameras - Digital Photofinishing - Indigo (INDG) - HP
<< Nonetheless, it will be a year or two before good alternatives to standard film developing are widely available for the purpose of making hard copies. >>
I would like to call your attention to one alternative to standard film developing, that looks pretty exciting to me, although I don't know a lot about the industry.
Last week I attended GRAPH EXPO at McCormick Place in Chicago. The Expo is billed as the "largest, most comprehensive printing, prepress, and converting trade show and conference in the Americas".
While there I viewed demonstrations of digital offset printing on a variety of products, by one of the largest exhibitors in the show, Indigo (NAZ: INDG) headquartered in the Netherlands, with R&D and manufacturing in Israel.
In one small portion of Indigo's booth, I had my photo taken by a professional photographer using a very high end professional portrait camera with a digital back and controlling software. The photo was instantly output to a PC viewing station and from there to an Indigo "TurboStream" 6 color digital offset press that uses proprietary liquid inks on a variety of substrates, that give brilliant glossy offset quality, with no dot gain. I walked away one minute later with an 11" x 17" portrait of myself printed superbly on high quality glossy photo stock.
About 25% of Indigo's booth was made up of a stage with seating for 200, and featuring 6 different Indigo presses (sheet fed or roll fed and printing on a variety of substrates) networked on an ethernet LAN. Indigo ran 5 animated "shows" a day of about 40 minutes duration. "Show" attendees preregistered in the front of the booth at one of a dozen image capture stations where their photo was taken on low end HP digital cameras interfaced to networked notebooks.
During the "show" photo images and attendees names were transmitted to the 6 presses which ran various jobs on various substrates in various formats using the photographic elements and other registration data for personalization of the jobs. The press output was collected by Indigo personnel while the show was in progress and when the show was concluded each attendee received a portfolio containing the press output specifically personalized for him/her (with their own name and photo applied to a variety of material).
It was an impressive show featuring impressive technology.
Indigo appears to be a "Chasm" company (Revenue $128 Mil and Market Cap. of $518 Mil) just entering the "Bowling Alley" and digital photofinishing could be a bowling alley pin.
Single engine Indigo digital presses sell for $125,000 to $500,000, and the proprietary inks are a potentially large revenue stream.
HP has a strategic alliance with Indigo, is an OEM distributor for them, and recently made a $100 Mil. equity investment in them. Word is that HP plans to co-develop Indigo digital offset presses selling for under $100,000 to supplement their relatively low end ink jet and laser printing products.
Indigo web sit here:
212.143.159.243
Two recent press releases dealing with Indigo digital photofinishing products are below:
>> Indigo Unveils Photo Industry's Most Powerful Digital Photofinishing Products
Photokina Debut For Indigo And Photo-E-Print
September 20, 2000
Cologne, Germany
BUSINESS WIRE
moneycentral.msn.com
Indigo N.V (INDG), the leader in digital color printing systems, is launching the photo industry's broadest and most powerful range of digital photofinishing products at the international Photokina exhibition in Germany. The Photo-e-Print family of photographic quality digital printers use Indigo's proprietary ElectroInk process, offering extremely high speed and low cost per print to the photofinishing market. The Photo-e-Print range includes products for retail and professional photographic labs as well as centralised wholesale photofinishing operations.
Indigo Chairman and CEO, Benny Landa, states, "The photographic industry is in the midst of a rapid transition - to digital technology - driven by the widespread use of digital photography and the Internet. The market now needs a high performance cost effective digital photofinishing alternative to existing conventional technology. That's where Photo-e-Print come in. It combines high margin, high value digital printing with the quality and speed requirements of today's photofinishing industry. The color prints are brilliant, sharp, glossy and vibrant, and can be uniquely personalized and printed in real time. That also makes the Photo-e-Print ideally suited for Internet-based photofinishing applications."
On exhibit at Photokina will be the sheet-fed Photo-e-Print Pro and roll-fed Photo-e-Print 5K digital photo printers.Visitors to the Indigo digital photo studio at the booth will be able to walk away with glossy professional-looking portraits - taking just moments from flash to print. In addition, the Indigo TurboStream, which prints on both sides of the paper, will be demonstrating the live production of digital photo albums - a particularly hot Internet application.
Mr. Landa added: "Everything that can become digital will become digital. As certainly as digital cameras will replace film cameras, digital photo printing will replace conventional photo printing. Today Indigo is the leader in digital color printing for the commercial printing market. Now, with the introduction of this incredibly powerful line of Photo-e-Print products, we hope to make an important contribution to the photofinishing industry as well, as it races into the digital era."
The sheet-fed Photo-e-Print Pro delivers 680 28x43cm (11"x17") portraits per hour, while the roll-fed Photo-e-Print 5K can produce 5000 10x15cm (4"x6") digital prints per hour.. Since Indigo's ElectroInk is pigment-based, prints produced on the Photo-e-Print models have outstanding archival properties and better lightfastness (fade resistance) than dye-based photographic prints. The glossy images are water-insensitive, so they can be handled without leaving permanent fingerprints. The Photo-e-Print also uses a silver-free process that requires no chemical disposal.
In addition to the two Photo-e-Print models being debuted at Photokina, the full compliment of Photo-e-Print digital printing products includes: the Photo-e-Print ProLab, a roll-fed model able to produce 680 28x43cm (11"x17") portraits per hour; the Photo-e-Print Minilab, which delivers 5000 cut-and-ready 10x15cm (4"x6") digital prints per hour; the Photo-e-Print 10K, which produces rolls of 10x15cm (4"x6") digital prints at a rate of 10,000 per hour; and the Photo-e-Print 20K, which, at over 20,000 10x15cm (4"x6") digital prints per hour, is by far the industry's highest speed digital photo printer.
Photokina (20-25 September) - The World's Fair for Imaging, shows the latest developments in video and digital imaging, conventional photography and professional solutions for taking, making and presenting pictures. Also showcased are the newest trends in professional audio visual communication and production techniques of film, video and TV. Visitors span a wide audience that includes studios, agencies and laboratories to specialist trade and photo and video enthusiasts.
About Indigo
Indigo N.V. (www.indigonet.com), is the leader in digital color printing systems. Indigo's Digital Offset Color technology combines the quality of ink-based offset printing with the performance advantages of electronic imaging. Its products, including its proprietary ElectroInk, provide solutions for the commercial, industrial and photographic printing markets. Indigo is headquartered in The Netherlands, with R&D and manufacturing operations in Israel. Indigo and Hewlett-Packard HWP are in a Strategic Alliance.
Indigo, ElectroInk, Digital Offset Color, TurboStream and Photo-e-Print are trademarks or registered trademarks of Indigo N.V.
Certain of the statements contained herein, including statements relating to Indigo's expected future performance, are forward-looking. Actual results could differ materially as a result of various factors set forth in the Company's reports and forms filed with the SEC. <<
This is about the high end 4 engine web press:
>> Lifetouch to Beta Test Indigo's Publisher 8000
Indigo Customer Since `97 Selected as North American Beta Site for Ultra High-Speed Digital Web Press
September 25, 2000
CHICAGO
Business Wire
moneycentral.msn.com
Indigo N.V (NASDAQ INDG), the leader in digital color printing, announced at Graph Expo yesterday that Lifetouch, Inc., of Eden Prairie, Minnesota, will be the North American beta test site for the recently launched Indigo Publisher 8000 - one of the Company's new generation of ultra high-speed Series 2 presses currently featured at Indigo's Booth 2106.
A 100% employee-owned (ESOP) company with annual sales in excess of $700 million, Lifetouch is home to four other Indigo digital presses and has been an Indigo customer since 1997. Its core business is school photography, with additional ventures in yearbook publishing, video production, church directories and retail portrait studios. Lifetouch, Inc. operates throughout the United States and Canada.
Indigo's Publisher 8000
The world's highest performance digital color printing press, the four-engine web-fed Publisher 8000 is capable of producing 8,000 A3 full-color pages per hour (272 letter-size pages per minute). It can print on even the lightest-weight paper stocks - and represents the state-of-the-art in digital printing. <<
- Eric - |
