Issue #0509/1 - The arrival of Canon’s new dye-sublimation SELPHY CP600 heralds the arrival of a new price point for home photo printing—undercutting all the other printer manufacturers and approaching the cost of individual prints from some of the high street outlets.
Together with the introduction of its newest dye-sublimation photo printer, SELPHY CP600, Canon has reduced the cost of home 10×15 photo printing to 22.2 pence per print. Lexmark’s new P315 portable photo printer is also accompanied by a photo pack with reduced pricing.
Canon SELPHY CP600At a cost of 22 pence per print, the new paper pack, KP-1081P, contains ink ribbon and photo media for 108 prints. This represents a cost saving of at least 3½ pence per print (14%) on the closest competing inkjet pack prices (Epson), and a 44% saving on previous pricing of photo packs from Canon, while others competitors’ packs are as much as double (Kodak) the new Canon cost.
More typical than these high-differential comparisons though, Hewlett-Packard, Lexmark and Dell are now undercut by between 22% and 30% per print – even Dell with its aggressive approach to market cannot compete on this printer – probably because it is Kodak-based and Kodak is the most costly solution in this category.
Even Canon though, is priced at more than double the cost of buying prints from one of the lower cost retail outlets such as Boots or Costco. However, as stated on a number of previous occasions, the value of the dedicated 10×15 photo printer is its portability for travel purposes and for rapid convenience prints rather than for bulk home printing.
What is quite clear from these figures is that the cost of 10×15 photo printing is gradually being driven downwards. Not only is the new cost from Canon 44% lower than it was in May 2004 (TCPglobal issue #0419 - "Kodak Printer Dock dye sublimation is sharper and smoother than inkjet") but Epson’s cost is down by 11%, Hewlett-Packard’s by 42% and retail prices in Boots have also fallen by 50%.
Lexmark P315By introducing these bundles at a more competitive cost, the OEMs have shaved up to 34% off the cost of buying cartridge and media separately without it looking like a price reduction – a useful saving for users and worth buying for A4 photo printers as well as the for 10×15 format dedicated photo printers!
You will also note from the accompanying table that both Boots and Costco in the UK both have now set their print from digital prices at around the 10 pence mark. Previously, the price in Boots was over 20 pence with the 10 pence per print available as a special offer for customers submitting 40 prints at one time. Although the current pricing of 10 pence is still dependent on printing a significant quantity (50 prints or more), it is no longer billed as a special offer.
| Technology |
Hardware Price (inc. tax) |
Quantity in photo pack |
Cost per photo (inc. tax) |
|
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Canon SELPHY CP600 | Dye-sublimation | £234 | 108 prints | 22.2 pence |
| Dell 540 Photo Printer | Dye-sublimation | £119 | 40 (x3) prints | 31.7 pence |
| Epson PictureMate | Ink jet | £149 | Up to 100 prints | 25.8 pence |
| Hewlett-Packard PhotoSmart 325 | Ink jet | £96 | Up to 130 prints | 28.5 pence |
| Kodak Printer Dock Plus | Dye-sublimation | £200 | 40 prints | 50.0 pence |
| Lexmark P315 | Ink jet | £100 | Up to 70 prints | 28.6 pence |
| Boots the Chemist | 50 prints | 10 pence | ||
| Costco wholesale photo printing | any number | 11 pence | ||
| Typical independent store | 40 prints | 10 pence | ||
| Kodak retail outlet | Outlet closed | |||
Also counterbalancing the closure of Kodak stores, and perhaps contributing towards it, is the growth of small independent photo stores and chains.
One such store visited has just had new digital equipment installed for photo printing, with the added capability of offering photo prints from memory card.
Based on a kiosk concept, the store is not only able to offer printing from memory card but also has a scanner attached to the kiosk to allow customers to print from print. The cost of this service is five times the cost of one normal print from memory card (99 pence against 20 pence) but is a valuable additional service.
Home photo printing is bound to put pressure on retail outlets and the only way in which these outlets will survive is if they perceive there to be greater value in offering the photo service than the value of the service itself – especially as prices fall.
Where customers are drawn into the store to have their photos developed/printed, there is potential to capture them and to hold them in the store for longer with additional products or services to buy – it is no accident that these stores always put the photo counter in the farthest corner of the store where the customer are required to walk past fashion or cosmetic products to reach it!
Options for printing home photos include printers designed primarily for office type functions and, reversing the scenario, photo-specific A4 printers like Hewlett-Packard’s A4 PhotoSmart range are perfectly capable of producing office type output. However, manufacturers are heavily promoting dedicated photo printers such as the new Canon SELPHY CP600 and Lexmark P315 in the expectation that users will be drawn to them partly because they are portable but also simply because they are dedicated to photo usage and users may be lured into thinking they will achieve better results.
Dell PhotoPrinter 540
dye-sublimation
In contrast to ink jet printers, dye-sublimation printing does not suffer from the problem of uncertainty over the number of prints achievable from a supplies cartridge.
Because the ink is applied from a very thin film backing by a thermal process that vaporises the ink onto the paper, the matching of paper to available ink is exact. Every colour for every print is on a unique piece of film so there is never any doubt about how many prints can be achieved with a print cartridge.
In point of pact, this perception is slightly wrong. There is ink wastage from dye-sublimation. Each piece of film is 100% coated with ink. So, when an image with a very low cyan (for instance) content is printed, most of the cyan ink is left on the film and wasted. The wasted ink cannot be recovered, the cartridge cannot be refilled and the there is the disposal implication on the used cartridge.
There is an upside though! It might be guaranteed that the user will waste ink with the dye-sublimation process, but it is also guaranteed that the amount of ink used is fixed, known and predictable. It doesn’t matter how much colour is in the image and it doesn’t matter how unbalanced the colour is. The amount of ink used is always the same. The pack always produces exactly the quoted number of prints and that number is the same for every pack purchased.
This means that the benefit of dye-sublimation is in its print quality and in the complete predictability of cost. In addition, a high-gloss protective coating is applied to the photo as a fourth pass of the media through the printer to ensure that the image cannot easily be damaged by moisture and to help prolong its life.
This seems just a little bizarre because this category of printers are capable of printing in 10×15 format only and are intended specifically for photo printing – they cannot be used for general printing tasks at A4 size. This means that in reality they are only suited to those who wish to travel with a small photo printer, whereas those who require general office printing as well or larger format photo printing would be better served by an A4 (or even A3) format printer with photo capability. The other benefit of taking this approach is that 6-ink or 8-ink printing can more easily be brought into the equation with an A4 printer.
There may also be an attraction to the dye-sublimation models of portable printer (e.g. SELPHY CP600) because of the technology used, in that it offers the highest quality home photo printing currently possible (see TCPglobal Issue #0419 - "Kodak Printer Dock dye sublimation is sharper and smoother than inkjet"), although comparison of photos could result in mild criticism of the colour saturation. In addition, media used in these printers tends to be relatively lightweight – photos tend to feel better to handle when printed on heavyweight paper, though this is obviously irrelevant when photos are in albums or behind glass.
Lexmark’s P315, like the PhotoSmart portable series from Hewlett-Packard, is a 3-ink inkjet system, whereas the PictureMate from Epson is a 6-ink system – with its own dedicated cartridge (extending the multiple monopoly situation!). Each of these systems, however, depends on a single multi-ink cartridge (there is no room in these compact printers for multiple ink tanks!), which means that users have to accept the fact that they are likely to lose one ink in the cartridge while wasting ink of the other colours.
As mentioned in TCPglobal Issue #0508 - "Hewlett-Packard tackles pricing stability and predictability of Cost of Printing", manufacturers have attempted to match the number of sheets of paper supplied in these inkjet photo packs to ensure that in at least 90% of instances, the user will obtain the full number of prints.
In terms of the specification of the new Canon SELPHY CP600 specifically, the main feature not provided on other models is the ability to print from mobile phones equipped with infra-red interface, together with the rechargeable battery that is provided as standard (capable of producing about 36 images from a full charge).
Like the other printers in the Canon Direct Print CP range, the CP600 is serviced by ink/media packs for production of a variety of sizes and formats of prints. These include: labels; stickers; wide format prints (to 10×20cm); movie thumbnail print; multiple images per sheet; credit card sized prints; and photo ID prints.
Lexmark’s P315 is the first printer from Lexmark to address this market category and is based on its No. 33 tricolour ink cartridge. It features a PictBridge interface and memory card slots for direct printing either from memory card or direct from a PictBridge digital camera, an LCD preview screen and a retractable carrying handle.
What it does not feature is a computer interface – it is not possible to use this machine for printing images from a PC. If users wish to print archive or photo-enhanced images from their computer, they will have to save the image from the PC to memory card first and then print from the memory card. The PC interface has effectively been swapped for the preview screen.
Despite all the factors affecting choice of hardware, between A4 and 10×15 and between inkjet and dye-sublimation, there is little doubt that the most significant aspect of these product introductions, and the best news, is the new price point!
~End~
