This is taken out of the Nikon PMA news discussion. Please read it to the end, I want to know your opinion about the new opportunities for prining photobooks instead of putting individual photo's in a book (most end up in shoebox because you don't have time)....
Originally posted by Morgan:
NIKON
- Finally, an interesting point was offered, Nikon felt that the role of the photo-finisher was still vital. They believe that most folks do not wish to print their own images. Yet, Nikon also said that the cost for a retailer to deal with a digital print job was significantly higher than with a film print job. So, the idea of a low cost print run was a real chellenge. The time sorting the print job out with the customer was much longer and eats up sales cycles. It was more in line with the effort to make reprints. Therefore, the cost will not be as low as when developing and printing a C-41 film. The web helps, but with large file sizes the average user is still restricted. It is not realistic to upload 20 to 40 images at 2 Mb to 3 Mb each. It would take hours or much smaller JPEGs are required, which lessons the end quality.
As well, they offered a real concern that family-type photography that is normally cherished and archieved for many years, will be lost or seriously reduced with the digital era. I must admit that I agree with these thoughts, what do you think? |
I see new opportunities for the photo-finishing industry. It won't be long before the amount of digital prints is going to take over film processing. I've seen the amount of digital files offered to the photofinisher I always go to, grow rapidly in the last year.
Kodak has seen its profits tumble because film sales are rapidly declining and Fuji seems to rule most of the commercial photofinishing industry and Fuji has already adapted to digital.
Economies of scale, advances in technology etc will push the prices of digital prints down very soon and the prices of film prints up (negative economies of scale).
The new opportunities I see are more in the digital press region. Anyone heard of the Nexpress 2100 by Heidelberg/Kodak? It is a digital offset press with analog press quality. You don't feed it print plates and stuff like that, no, you feed it PDF's. The costs to set the thing up for a few or a single print(s) are much lower and the costs of the print itself are reasonble. Now, what has this got to do with photography?
The possiblity to have your photobook printed on a press with high quality, just the way you want it, for a reasonable price. The only thing you have to do is create the PDF('s).
Example: You have been photographing your kid for a whole year since his/her birth. Now you want an easy way to remember that year with a selection out of the thousand photo's you took.
You select the 50/100/200/300 best photo's. Perhaps you give them a title, a caption, a little story and dates even. Create the PDF (yes it will be large, but there will be a solution, no doubt), bring it to the press and have your book printed while you wait. First some samples of a few pages to get the colors right. Lets print!
How many do you want? One for you, one for your kid, one for your ex-husband/wife, two for the grandparents? One is almost as expensive per item as five....
Now that would be cool I think.
Image a book for every year your kid grew older. And when he/she is ready to leave the house: surprise, your own 20 copies. :)
And the same could be done with holidays, just photo's you really like a lot, of the whole family, parties where the whole family was present. Collect everyone's photo's and make one book out of all of them for everyone who wants one.
That could be a great future and it could be a real boost for family photography as well.
Of course you can do the same with digital albums, but I like photobooks more than I like digital albums. That will never change.
What do you think about this people?
edit: The Nexpress 2100 is not a home printer by the way, it is a proffesional press that fills a whole room and weighs several tons and costs its weight in gold. :)
And I don't want to say that this thing is capable of making a whole book, I think it can, but am not sure anymore. The possibilities are there.
Message edited by author 2003-03-05 14:16:59.
|
