Type 'C' (photo lab) Print Test

Earlier this year, my local Ritz Camera started a new add campaign with the slogan "It's all film to us." Turn's out they had acquired a Fuji Frontier printing system. This is an interesting product that accepts 35mm film, CF and Smartmedia cards, zip discs and CD-ROMs. (It includes a CCD scanner to digitize 35mm film). What's most interesting is that it uses red, green and blue lasers to expose regular color print photographic paper, which is then chemically processed like any other photo lab print. So now you can output your digitized images to regular color print paper. These prints should be much longer lasting that regular dye based inkjet prints.

I've been thinking for a while that I should add a regular photo lab print to my tests as a point of comparison. With this printer, I can now use my standard test image, which makes doing a cmparison much easier. So, onto CD-R went my image, off to Ritz camera went I, and a few hours later I had my test print.

Scroll down to see orange shift results, so far. But even before that, I've learned something interesting. An obvious question, it seems to me, is how does the output of this true photo process compare to my inkjets? Lets compare it to a number of my control samples.

Color Comparison

So what did I find? A few surprises, that's what! The first comparison was to a print from a 1270 on Epson PGPP. Take a look at the 1270 output by itself.

Here's a comparison of this output with two other papers and 1270 inks. While there are differences, they all look pretty similar.

But how does this output look compared to the photo print on Fuji Crystal Archive? Take a look?

But now for the real surprise!. I did find a pair of ink and paper combinations that come very, very close to matching the Fuji Crystal Archive print. Check it out here. And here's a different comparison.

(What, you want me to tell you the secret right here? Sorry, I'm not going to ruin the surprise. Click on the links above for your answer.)

Orange Shift Tests

So far, what I expected. After two weeks of exposure in the ozone chamber, absolutley no detectable orange (or any other color) shift.

Please read my test methodologies and see my disclaimer page.

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