"John" wrote in message
news:1103778751.21a76ff06dd924f861a91fa012be5ac4@t eranews...
Please I ask only those who have a college degree in a field relevent to
this
question or professional photographers answer. Sorry I have to be so
strict,
but I need advice from people who know what they are talking about. But
if
you
know what your talking about and do not have a degree go ahead and answer,
but
cite your sources, thanks...

Question
Will a home photo printer produce the same long term results as the 1 hour
photo lab? When I mean long term, I mean a photo lasting a number of
years
without fade. My family purchased a cute little photo printer to go with
our
Sony digital camera that is 5-6MP MP I believe. The pictures look just as
good
as a 35mm, but I wonder if they will last 5-10 years. On the other hand I
can
go to a photo lab and insert a Memory Stick, pro, SD, mini SD, XD, San
Disk,
CD/DVD, CF, or a floppy disk into one of the machines an receive
goodprints
within the hour. Dont tell me that the little photo printing machine that
we
have is as quality as the 1 hour photo labs. Because they both look the
same,
there has to be a huge price difference between the home machine and the
professional machines.

I've attempted to persuade my family not to completely dump their 35mm
cameras
and the idea of biringing their camera into a photo lab to have the
pictures
printed, but they do not listen. I personally own a Vivitar camera that
uses
SD cards and the 1 hour lab produces good results. But their photo
machine
only takes memory stick, bummer!!

Well - I'm not "qualified" to answer your question, however my sources
include the management team of the world's third largest producer of digital
photo labs.....and several years experience in the print & imaging
marketplace.

Anyway. There is a huge price difference between pro labs and your
homeinkjet photo printer. Somewhere in the region of $50K vs $50 or so.
That plus the fact that the majority of lab printers use a totally different
process - basically your regular wet chemistry based photo process that you
have been used to for years.

In terms of stability of the output of the home photo printer, that will be
down to the quality of ink and paper you use. Google on "archival photo
printing" or similar.

The consumer inkjet printers available today do a good job of printing
photos. The main difference is price however. Both ink and paper are
expensive - and even more so if you buy archive quality. The lab photo
printers are designed to run 8-16 hours per day, 6 days per week and as such
the consumables (paper and chemistry) come in bulk and are far lower cost.
Your home printer on the other hand, is probably designed to make 20 photo
quality prints per day and last for maybe 18 months.

If I were you, I would try to convince my family to view the memory cards
purely as "digital film" and not to change their approach to having the
majority of photos printed at the lab. The only difference being that they
can delete the rubbish ones first. If they buy into this, then there is
little change in the way they have always taken photos. The main benefit is
that they can also print at home anything they don't want to take to the
lab, and manipulate images on the PC.

Personally, I get 90% of my prints done at the local lab and use my inkjet
for proofs and nirt work (need it right now). My wife was turned off by
digital photography due to her perception that she wouldn't get so many
physical prints to look at - however as soon as she started looking at the
memory cards as film, the whole thing just clicked.....