Re: Epson Roll Paper Holder

[zxiong@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx]

>The eternal quest for "cheaper" and "archival" will end up with diminishing
>returns. If you want "archival", do dye transfers of something akin to the
>Evercolor method or traditional B&W or alt processes such as platinum, etc.
>
>If you want 'cheap', forget digital printing completely, especially anything
>with any kind of quality, and go with grocery store 35mm film & one hour
>processing.
>
>dan smith

Dan,

I had the same attitude toward digital stuff less than a year ago,  but now
I only wonder how long traditional photo finishing is going to hang on.

Think about Lightjet and Fuji Pictrography.  Both use laser exposures to make
prints.  Lightjet does DIGITAL prints on conventional photo paper, say Fuji
Christal Archive (or variant).  And Pictrography exposes a donor paper and 
produces the final print via a thermal process, thus completely getting rid of
the photo chemistry as we know of.  Now Fuji is offering Pictrostat for one
hour digital service.  I wonder for how long those one hour photo shops would
be in business before they would be replace by everything digital.

Both Lightjet and Pictrography do same or better quality prints as perfect 
Ilfochrome with comparable achival life.  I mean perfect Ilfochrome, which
is very hard to get compared with digital manipulations.  Inkjet printers may
not be as good as Lightjet or Pictrography,  but they are very affordable.
The archive quality of the new Epson 1270 is known to be comparable to normal
color photo prints. My Espon 1200 prints look nearly as good as my Ilfochrome
prints. I've had this printer only for a couple of months before Epson started
selling the new archival quality printer. Things happen quicker in digital than
you might think of.

Zonghou Xiong