On 2/09/03 6:22 PM, "Bruce Dayton" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote:
> The funny thing to me is, that we all seem to be forgetting the lab. Yes, that's true. In my case, if I took my digicam to a trip and took a bunch of shots, there is no way I print them myself. But in most cases, when I take out my digicam, I have some definite purpose or objects to take shots, choose the frame and print them on my printer. OTOH, in Japan for example, there are a number of street corner self-printing kiosks cropping up. You go there, stick your credit cards as well as CF card or memory stick etc, and you come out with the prints. This does not save you much money (I suppose) but gives you the convenience (although it won't probably give you much of control) and FUN. There is also another thing called "print club" frenzy going on in that country (I do not quite understand what it really is and why it is becoming so popular. I will find out) but it involves self printing for fun (but very serious thing). The home printing cost will no doubt significantly decrease in the coming years, but the labs will also adopt to the change and they should always be cheaper (and convenient) because of the volume they handle. But then, what will they (manufacturers) think of next? They benefit very much from this digital frenzy because it is no longer just the camera sales but involves the whole downstream such as printers and other gadgets. I have a C100 portable printer which I purchased strictly for the fun, but it works surprisingly well. I of course will never use this for any serious printing, but for the several quick printing of the post card size photos, I found it very satisfactory (but yes, costly for mass production). But I have no doubt that the direct printing will improve and become much cheaper in coming years as the use of digicam proliferate. If the mfrs are serious in making money, they will do everything to bring the digital printing to the consumer level at much cheaper cost. When will that time come? Perhaps sooner than we think, because they are working on it. Canon/Minolta would be so far ahead on this game. Pentax formed a consortium (a new entity) with Sanyo and another company for the direct printing. They of course wish to capture the camera side "as well as" the printing side of the consumer market down the road. Meantime, for serious qty production, yes, lab will be the choice but there would be a fun part where consumer should be able to enjoy. So, we'll see :-). Cheers, Ken
