Disposable digital cameras new wave in photo industry

Disposable digital cameras new wave in photo industry

By ERIN EDGEMON
edgemon@dnj.com

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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.