Samsung SPP-2040 Digital Photo Printer Review

Samsung SPP-2040 Digital Photo Printer Review


By M. David Stone

The Samsung SPP-2040 Digital Photo Printer ($150 street) is the third dedicated photo printer we've seen recently for essentially the same price (the other two are the Canon Selphy DS810 and CP710 Compact Photo Printer). As with its direct competitors, the SPP-2040 offers features that are quickly becoming standard for the price: a 2-inch previewing LCD, and the ability to output from computers, PictBridge cameras, and memory cards. You'll get excellent speed and high-quality photos, but cost per print is higher than we'd like and you're limited to 4- by 6-inch paper.

Setup is standard: Slide in the dye ribbon, push in the loaded paper tray, and you're ready for direct printing from a camera or card. To print from a computer, run the automated setup and connect by USB cable.

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At just 2.4 by 7.1 by 5.4 inches (HWD) and 2.4 pounds, the SPP-2040 is typical for this class. It takes up relatively little space and is highly portable. There's no battery option, though, so it has to be within reach of a power outlet.

We rated the quality of output as very good, which means that most prints are true photo quality with a few minor flaws. When we tested the SPP-2040 in Normal mode (the default), the color in some photos was oversaturated, and images tended to lose a bit of detail in light areas (clouds in a light-blue sky, for example). Best mode actually exaggerated those problems, so ironically, Normal is the best mode—it's easily good enough for snapshots, photo albums, and even framing, for most photos. With the previously mentioned competitors, the thermal dye Canon Selphy CP710 Compact Photo Printer also earned a very good quality rating—but intriguingly, the ink jet Canon Selphy DS810 did a little better.

The SPP-2040 is one of the faster thermal-dye photo printers today. Printing from a computer, it turned in times of just 1 minute 3 seconds to 1:04 on our standard test suite for dedicated photo printers. Unlike most printers, it didn't slow significantly when the image source was CompactFlash, taking 1:03 to 1:07. Even when the source was a camera (a Canon PowerShot S60), speeds were just a little slower, with a range of 1:13 to 1:16. The only overall faster thermal-dye printer we've seen is the pricier Sony DPP-FP50, which, printing directly from a camera, is up to 10 seconds faster depending on the photo.

Printing cost is the SPP-2040's Achilles' heel. Depending on which paper and ink-roll pack you choose, you'll pay 42 to 62 cents per photo. That's not unusual for thermal-dye printers, but the Canon CP710 manages to keep costs as low as 28 cents per photo—a difference of 14 cents at the low end. In a year, that adds up to $60.48 if you print the equivalent of one roll of film per month (36 images).

The cost per print makes the Samsung SPP-2040 hard to recommend over other printers, such as the Canon CP710, that have the same purchase price, similar features, and lower running costs. But if you use it little enough that you don't mind spending a few cents extra per image, or you're willing to pay extra for the speed, the SPP-2040 is attractive in every other way.
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$29.95 one-time-use video cameras ready

$29.95 one-time-use video cameras ready
By Jefferson Graham, USA TODAY
The first one-time-use video camera goes on sale this week at CVS drugstores in the Northeast.

The makers of the $29.95 camera and CVS hope the device will do for video what one-time-use cameras did for film sales: dramatically increase the market. "The one-time-use camera revolutionized the film market," says Grant Pill, director of photography for CVS, the nation's No. 1 drugstore chain. "We see the same thing happening with video." Sales of one-time-use cameras — a favorite cheap accessory for vacations, events and school trips reached 218
million units last year, from 43 million in 1994, even as film sales tumbled in the digital era. (Related: Digital hybrids do double duty) The new camera, from San Francisco-based start-up Pure Digital Technologies, doesn't use videotape. It saves images to internal memory — like the video mode of a digital camera. It goes chainwide at CVS stores at the end of the month and will expand to other retailers in midsummer. "If a picture is worth a thousand words, video
should be worth a million," says Pure Digital CEO Jonathan Kaplan. His company has marketed a digital one-time-use still camera since 2003. In video, Pure Digital "could have a real good opportunity," NPD analyst Ross Rubin says. "Twenty minutes of footage isn't a lot, but it's enough to capture a kid blowing out a birthday candle, or highlights from
a graduation." Consumers will have to pay an additional $12.95 for processing the 20 minutes of footage onto DVDs. There's no other way to watch — the camera can't be plugged into a TV.
Viewing functions are also limited: Only the last clip recorded can be seen on the back of the camera. Chris Chute, an analyst with market research firm IDC, says the camcorder is a device that gets used "a lot less" than others, usually just on special occasions. And many people never bother to show off footage they've shot with family and friends, because editing or transferring to DVDs is too time consuming. By comparison, plopping a finished DVD from CVS into a TV or PC for viewing is easy, Kaplan says. Customers can also transfer the DVD video clips to the Internet, for free. Very few online photo-sharing sites now accept video sharing, and the ones that do charge annual fees of $30 to $60. Kaplan wouldn't say how much it costs Pure Digital to make the camera. Chute estimates production costs at about $35. "They lose money on the initial sale, and make it on the second turn," Chute says. Pure Digital's still cameras get recycled about five times on average.

10 Mega Pixel Output Digital Cameras Under $200

The Mega Pixel War Is Over...At Least For Now. 10 Mega Pixel output Digital Cameras, are finally here.
(PRWEB) April 11, 2005 --

Ten Mega Pixels under $200 wasn’t even in the cards a year ago but now it’s a reality. The DigiShot9.9S demonstrates the fine art of packing more mega pixel power into a wafer-thin digital camera that weights only 72 grams.
The Mega pixel war has reached a new benchmark with Mini Gadgets Inc. new DigiShot9.9S. Chief among the many features and conveniences is it’s ten -mega- pixel output. Aiming to capitalize on the growing appetite of consumers for more and more mega pixels and less and less megabucks, DigiShot9.9S is extremely price friendly for armature photographers and at less than $200 MSRP it lures professionals just as enthusiastically.
According to Jeff Bushlack, Director of Marketing of www.crazyape.com “People are getting tired of paying upwards of $800 for a big name inferior digital cameras, that is why we priced the DigiShot9.9S under $200 with about $100 of free extras and our crazy monkey as a gift”
John Dufresne, V.P of M.G.I, the manufacturer of the DigiShot had a different take: “ The trend for a higher mega pixel digital camera demonstrates the digital convergence technology as a paradigm-shift for and to the end-user. Consumers have got smarter, they want more for less.”
With an extensive selection of full automatic, preset and manual setting modes, aluminum shock proof housing, improved power consumption and SD, MMC slot, the DigiShot9.9S is the one to take with you on this summer’s vacation. The 4x digital zoom and automatic white balance makes easier to snap these hard-to-get shots.
The pictures are stored on an SD or MMC card. Newer PC’s incorporate a card reader slot. The end-user can just plug in the SD/MMC card and the pictures automatically appear on the screen. No messy downloading, no wires to connect. Pictures can also be viewed on a TV set with the provided RCA cables.
About M.G.I Inc. (www.nadea.com) is in the business of designing, importing and wholesaling digital cameras from low-end web cams at 1.3mp to the all- new 10mp digishot line that includes 6.6mp and 10mp camcorders. Other amazing products include wireless MP3 players, camera binoculars, noise canceling headsets and other leading edge gadgets. Operating out of Atlanta GA. M.G.I Inc. ships by DHL for free. All M.G.I products come with a one year manufacturers guarantee.

Fading Photos

As digital photography grows, so does clash over fading photos
By WILLIAM M. BULKELEY
The Wall Street Journal

The boom in digital photography has sparked a backbiting squabble over the longevity of pictures made on home printers.

The clash pits printer makers eager to market their own lines of expensive specialty photo paper against big paper purveyors like retailer Staples and photo giant Eastman Kodak, neither of which makes inkjet printers of their own.

As more people use digital cameras, many are making homemade prints. Yet many shutterbugs could end up disappointed by the shelf life of photos.

Wilhelm Imaging Research, a lab in Grinnell, Iowa, that was hired by Hewlett-Packard, Seiko Epson and other printer makers, recently publicly criticized Staples’ top-of-the-line photo paper as a “disaster,” saying photos printed on it fade rapidly from exposure to ozone pollution.

Meanwhile, Kodak last year claimed prints made on its special paper with printers manufactured by H-P and Epson would last more than 100 years. Scientists from H-P and Epson — which market their own photo paper — disputed Kodak’s claim. “Eastman Kodak uses significantly lower test criteria than industry-accepted practices to achieve this rating,” Epson scientists wrote.

The hostilities underscore how important paper remains in the age of digital photography. The market for inkjet photo paper will grow 23 percent to $1.2 billion this year, up from $972 million in 2004, estimates Cathy Martin, an analyst for Infotrends, a market-research concern.

From a consumer’s point of view, digital photo fading shouldn’t be a big problem — provided the consumer kept a digital copy of the picture on a CD or online photo-storage site. But with software standards, Web sites and storage devices constantly changing, a print on paper might be the best way to assure that your great-grandchildren see what their ancestors looked like.

For ultimate longevity, archivists recommend subzero refrigeration of prints. Prints last much longer when stored in photo albums or even shoe boxes than those displayed on walls, where they are affected by light, pollution, smoke and moisture.

Rebecca Ludens, a Kalamazoo, Mich., homemaker who writes about photo scrapbooks for About.com, an online information service, says that photo longevity is a big concern for the nation’s 31 million scrapbook-keepers.“They’re hoping the pictures will last more than decades.

Digital-Photo Era Changes Industry

By BEN DOBBIN
(AP) Jesse Eisenberg, of New York City, uses a Fuji Film digital photo kiosk at B&H Photo to print a...Full Image

ROCHESTER, N.Y. (AP) - Jesse Eisenberg came within a technological whisker of losing all her honeymoon snapshots. The 31-year-old lawyer's digital images, stored on an online photography site, vanished while she was in the hospital this winter having her first child. She had given up all hope of retrieving them when they suddenly reappeared on her computer more than a month later.

"I can't believe we got them back!" she exclaimed. "Oh my God, I'm going to be printing all day today." It's a refrain that sets the photo industry's heart racing.
As the digital revolution sidelines film, the photo industry is having to rely more heavily on high-margin services and supplies - inks, chemicals, paper - that go into making prints.
Yet the picture is not quite as it seems. While there's no hint of a falloff in the desire of Americans to freeze-frame the world around them, the overall number of images converted into prints has been slipping since the dawn of the 21st century.

The drop-off coincided with the lightning transition to a world without film. A few years ago, there wasn't a framework in place to help digital shutterbugs print easily or cheaply.
Digital cameras are now in about 43 million homes in America, and that 40 percent penetration could reach 70 percent by 2007. The more mainstream they become, some analysts argue, the more likely that old printing habits will re-establish themselves.
"Everybody treasures memories, and what makes memories more vivid than a photograph, a print?" said Ulysses Yannas of Buckman, Buckman & Reid in New York. That impulse, he thinks, "will not fade, it's human nature."

Bolstering Yannas' belief is a recent frenzy of acquisitions of online photo startups, which are projected to churn out 700 million prints this year, up from 400 million in 2004.
Others dismiss the notion of shoe boxes filling up to the brim again as wishful thinking. "The pie isn't necessarily going to get any bigger," said Frank Baillargeon, an industry consultant in Eagle, Idaho. "But the pie is going to be sliced up in many, many different ways.
"In the digital era, you can see your pictures immediately, share them instantaneously, store them in a variety of arguably safe ways and print them selectively. My children's generation is so comfortable with technology that the need to just have a print in your hand or in a shoe box doesn't sound like a very compelling proposition."

Manufacturers like Eastman Kodak Co. (EK), however, think the meteoric rise of camera phones could turn the lucrative print business into a growth market again, possibly within two years.
Aside from rushing higher-resolution cameras, speedier printers, fancier software and all-purpose kiosks into the marketplace, they're employing all their marketing tricks to mold consumer habits and transform electronically stored images into prints of all varieties.
Their campaigns run from scaremongering about the perils of letting pictures languish on computers that might crash to behavior-reinforcing TV ads by Rochester-based Kodak in which new digital patrons shout out "Where are my pictures?"

In the United States, prints ordered from retailers and Web sites or made at home fell from a peak of 30.3 billion in 2000 to 27.4 billion in 2004 and could dip to 25.9 billion this year, according to Photo Marketing Association International, a trade group in Jackson, Mich.
Propelled by price wars among retailers led by Wal-Mart Stores Inc. (WMT) and Costco Inc. and online upstarts like Snapfish and Shutterfly.com, prints from digital cameras could hit 7.7 billion this year, up from 400 million in 2000, and outnumber prints from film cameras by 2007.
And while an estimated 100 billion images are snapped in America each year - of which about a quarter are turned into prints - that could skyrocket above 1 trillion as camera phones not only proliferate but rapidly improve in quality.

"You've got the mass market going digital now and they care about prints more than ever before," said Raj Kapoor, co-founder of Snapfish, a 13-million-member online pioneer just snapped up by Hewlett-Packard Co., which dominates the ink jet photo-printer market.
Most digital prints are still made at home - 61 percent last year compared with 90 percent in 2000. But online photo services have been whittled down of late to a handful of big players (in the past week, UOL bought PhotoSite for $10 million and Ofoto was renamed Kodak EasyShare Gallery) and retailers look likely to re-emerge soon as the kings of printing - their digital orders tripled to 1.6 billion last year.

While electronic storage "is a great way" to share and save images, consumers need to be aware of the potential pitfalls, cautioned Walter Haug, a marketing manager at Fuji Photo Film Co.
Hard drives can crash, people sometimes misplace their CDs, media cards can become vulnerable," Haug said. "If you're relying strictly on digital methods, you may end up with a problem."

In 2003, a computer virus wiped out all 350 photos of Eisenberg's three-week honeymoon in Africa and the Maldives. Luckily, the New York City woman had uploaded them onto Snapfish.
But misfortune struck again in January. Snapfish issued dire warnings that Eisenberg's pictures would be deleted if she didn't fulfill her minimum obligation - order one 19-cent print a year. Instead of taking quick action, she spent weeks creating a honeymoon album. She was just about to order one when she went into labor. By the time Eisenberg returned home, the photos were gone - she thought for good. But a call to Snapfish in February turned up her treasured collection. Snapfish, it turns out, keeps deleted files for an extra month or so.
A grateful Eisenberg's advice to all: "Print early and often."

Nikon to release new range of digital SLR cameras

By Paul Kallender, IDG News Service

Nikon Corp. is planning to release a new range of digital SLR (single lens reflex) cameras, including a model called the D50, the company said Thursday.

Word of the D50's impending launch first emerged when it was discovered that a copy of the user's manual for the camera had recently been uploaded in error onto one of the company's Web sites. The manual was soon taken down.

"The user manual was uploaded in error and we can't tell you when the official announcement about the D50 will be made," said Susumu Enomoto, a spokesman for Nikon. However, he noted that the existence of a user manual for the D50 suggests the camera will go on sale in the not-too-distant future.

Nikon would not reveal any of the D50's specifications and features. But the D50 is one of several new digital SLR models that the company is planning to release following the success of the popular D70 model that went on sale in March 2004, Enomoto said.

"We are now developing a full range of new models from the top-end to popularly-priced models, but we can't say anything more now," he said.

Aimed at hobbyists and amateur photographers, digital SLRs are digital versions of 35-millimeter SLR film cameras and come with interchangeable lenses and camera bodies. They have advanced features found on professional-level film cameras and usually sell at a premium to point-and-click digital still cameras, although price differentials are narrowing, according to market research company IDC.

Nikon claims to have sold about 1 million D70s globally between March 2003 and this February, and this figure accounts for about 40 percent of the worldwide digital SLR market during that period, the company said.

Last year, global shipments of digital SLRs surpassed 2 million units, according to IDC. Global unit shipments of digital SLRs will grow to about 3.6 million units in 2005 and shipment numbers will double to about 6.6 million units in 2008, according to IDC predictions.

Disposable digital cameras new wave in photo industry

Disposable digital cameras new wave in photo industry

By ERIN EDGEMON
edgemon@dnj.com

---

An award-winning photographer and MTSU professor says the next big revolution in the camera industry will be in the form of disposable digital cameras.

By this Christmas, Chris Harris, professor of electronic media communications at MTSU, expects companies like Kodak to be offering customers high-quality, disposable digital cameras that cost between $10 and $20.

"We are right on the cusp of everything moving forward by quantum leaps," he said. "What we have is a huge increase in technology."

Harris said it's the next logical step for the camera industry.

"New non-silicon-based chips are now being produced that will allow production costs to drop far below the expensive chip costs at the present time," he said.

Production costs of the new chips or memory cards may be as low as 50 cents, which would drastically reduce the price of even the most expensive digital cameras.

Currently, silicon-based chips used in digital cameras can cost as much as a third of the value of the digital camera, Harris said.

He said he expects an announcement of a new disposable digital camera hitting the market from industry giant Kodak will make news across the world.

"When Kodak speaks, they speak with a huge loudspeaker," he said.

Kodak made big news last year when the company announced it was going all digital and dropping its traditional film business. The company earns the majority of its money off making photo prints at photo-developing centers.

According to one report, 52 percent of households are expected to own a digital camera by the end of 2005. Harris said the introduction of cheap, high-quality disposable and non-disposable digital cameras could increase that percentage.

"At first consumers were scared of (digital cameras)," he said, but thanks to the digital music many people, especially the younger generation, enjoy, they are realizing "digital is just digital."

CVS Pharmacies is one of the first suppliers of the Pure Digital disposable camera, produced by Pure Digital Technologies, that entered the market last year. The camera, selling for $19.99, is being called the world's first truly digital one-time-use camera.

Local CVS stores received their first shipment of the cameras this week.

Rich Wallace, store manager of the CVS on Broad Street, said the Pure Digital camera allows the user to take 25 indoor or outdoor exposures. Users can view their pictures on a color preview screen located on the back of the camera, and users can delete the pictures they do not like before processing.

"At least this way you are guaranteed to get 25 good shots," Wallace said, adding that consumers receive a free photo CD with paid processing of their camera. The camera takes 4-by-6 inch photos at a resolution of 2-megapixels.

"It has taken the 35-millimeter disposable camera and made it a digital disposable camera," he said of Pure Digital.

Wallace said customers have yet to catch on to the new cameras since they just began carrying them this week, but he expects them to be really popular in the future.

Harris said if companies are already able to sell disposable digital cameras at around $20 that can produce pictures at a resolution of between 2-megapixels and 3.5-megapixels, then companies will be able to produce high-quality cameras at extremely low prices with the new non-silicon-based memory card.