[photo-3d] Fuji Frontier Printer

[Dave Williams <davidrw@xxxxxxxxxxxx>]

Hello, Everyone!

In view of some recent discussion about making prints from slides and
from realist negs, I wanted to pass on some thoughts about some new
technology I played with last week.  I'll be taking over the photo lab
in a new store in March, and I'll have the Fuji Frontier 370 digital
printer.  In preparation for this I spent two days working with one last
week at one of our national meetings.  This is sort of a review/heads up
for anyone wanting to make prints from slides.

This thing is wonderful.  It scans your negatives and slides and prints
them in another unit with a digital laser on Fuji Crystal Archive
paper.  The same paper we now use in our mini-labs.  I took a dozen or
so 2x2 "flat" slides with me to play with.  Making straight prints from
slides was simple, quick and made the best prints from slides of any
current technology I've seen.  There was no contrast build up, no loss
of definition that I could see, and the colors were as true as any print
I've seen on all but one slide.  That one was a particularly contrasty
Velvia slide of some fall foilage on water.  Another attempt with one
additional density point made a perfect print.

For slides, just as with negatives, the printer offers full color
correction, density correction, center and free cropping, and a new
feature, tone control, which seems to be simply a contrast control.
This is new for mini-lab equipment.  There are several tone ranges,
emphasising shadow detail, highlight detail, and various in between
settings.

The printer will print anything from wallet size to 10x13 with the click
of a mouse.  Or, it can make a black and white or sepia print from your
slide, with another click of a mouse.  The black and white has a
decidedly warm tone to it, and after several attempts to "cool" it down,
I couldn't change it.  Further investigation on that point will come
when I get my own!

The slides I printed ranged from older Kodachromes, to Velvia and
E100S.  Excellent prints all around.  I had an 8x10 made some time ago
from a Kodachrome 25 slide and a 4x5 internegative from a custom lab.
The 8x10 from the Frontier looked every bit as good.  I'd be hard
pressed to tell the difference.

The price at a Wal-Mart near you, will be ridiculously low.  Here, a 4x6
is $.29, a 5x7 is $1.47, etc.  Volume orders are less.  I understand
that most new Wal-Mart labs going in from now on will have this printer
system.  Upgrading older labs will take much longer.

So what about Realist slides?   I didn't take any to play with, but the
problem would be the carrier.  It is designed for uncut roll film or
mounted 2x2 slides.  If you printed from your uncut roll, the situation
would be similar to realist negs, i.e. an image with partial images of
adjacent frames on the sides.  From a mounted realist pair, the mount
would not fit into the carrier.  Since it goes only horizontal, it
couldn't be turned.

The carrier looks as though it could be modified easily enough, but I
can't even think about that until I get my own machine.  Probably the
best bet would be rather to fix up a modified 2x2 mount that would hold
a cut realist format chip.  One could unmount the chips, make the
prints, and remount.  A pain, I know, but I may try that.

So, in conlusion, the Frontier makes great prints from slides ( and negs
too, by the way).  If you shoot separately mounted 2x2 pairs, prints are
only a mouse click away for you.  Realist shooters, still have a
problem.  But I promise to try to find a reasonable way to do it when I
get my machine, and let you know.

But - there's also the digital side of this thing.  It has a full CD and
disk capability as well.  We didn't have that up and running at our test
site, so I can't report on it.  But the Fuji guy said that if we can
scan it and create it on our computer, we can print it out.

Hope this helps.  Check around your labs in your area and find someone
using the Fuji Frontier system.  Give it a try and let me know your
thoughts.   Let me know if I can help.

Searching for a better way....

Dave Williams
 Kansas City