Konica Minolta photographic print quality VERY impressive - 8.5x11's @ 49 cents!

[Chuck S.]

Met a young photographer with a new Nikon 7000 at my usual coffee house, and conversation turned to printing. I was telling him about my search for a new printer and some of the deals currently available. He interrupted me, saying he just takes his USB thumb drive two doors down to the UPS store, same one I've used for some of my equipment sales here. My first reaction (and probably yours): a color copier? Oh, come on!

But I loaded some files on my own USB stick and decided to try it. The machine in question was a Konica Minolta Biz Hub Pro C5501, which isn't even the latest model by a year or so. BIG machine though, definitely behind the counter, not self service. Looked them up online later. It would be more accurate to call this a digital volume printer or printing press than "color copier". They weigh 700-800 lbs., and cost around $42K new, and up.

My cost per print - even one off - was 39 cents, with my choice of Canon or HP photo paper for another 10 cents per print. He printed a few, and I was just floored by the quality. "Gobsmacked', as our British members might say. Didn't know electrostatic color printers had come this far. Up close - 6 to 8 inches from your nose - you can tell it's not a C print or good inkjet. At arm's length or across a table, you probably couldn't say.

Here's an example of my file exported from Lightroom (for file taken to UPS Store, actually used Print dialog, Print to jpeg file in order to specify wide margins), and then a reflective scan of the print. No ICC profiles; my operator didn't know what they were. My monitor is reasonably well calibrated - at least to the Fuji Frontier at my local Walgreens. First print was just slightly green in the white highlights; operator was able to correct on his PC's K-M driver program for the second (this) print.

OK, it's not what anyone here would call "fine print" quality. You're not going to double mat & frame one of these under museum rag board and hang it in a gallery. But for a large proof, or a giveaway, I don't see any downside. BTW, a black & white image came out very nice, too.


8305383052

They just look fantastic for the price, which may be different in your area. My UPS person said the big K-M's definitely are NOT standard equipment at all UPS Stores, so you may have to call around - or better yet, call your local K-M distributor - to find this or a later model. And Canon and other high end color printers might do as well; I have no way of knowing.

Anyone else with a similar experience?

[Drew Wiley]

So do you plan to sell prints for 99 cents apiece?

[Chuck S.]

Nah, I want a real American retail mark-up. Let's see. Cost is 49 cents. Sell should be around $18.99.

[BetterSense]

So can someone explain this printing technology to me? It's not inkjet...not offset printing...not a c-print...not thermal paper...?

[Ivan J. Eberle]

It's a color laser printer, i.e. CMYK toner electrostatically applied and fused with heat. Technology has been around nearly 25 years, since the early Canon/Kodak engined ones with a Fiery SCSI board that turned them into printers and not just color copiers. Output can look as good as a 4 color printing press (20+ years ago they were better, with 400 dpi color laser output versus typical 133 or 150 line screens (rarely 200 line screen halftones) used with printing presses.
Laser printer output won't have the gamut of a photographic print or an 8+ color inkjet. Better printing presses add spot color and varnish though, but for short run cheaply done stuff they were keen 20 years ago. Now most everybody doing restaurant menus does them in house on an office inkjet. Very inexpensive media cost for toner v. Epson cartridges on a per-page basis at sufficient volume. But the upfront costs were prohibitive versus buying a $500 Epson with expensive ink carts.

[retnull]

If the brand is Konica Minolta it must be more than a year or two old? I thought they were bought by another company (Sony?) some years ago...

[polyglot]

The consumer camera division (Alpha/Dynax/Maxxum) was bought by Sony but KM is still going in the printer/copier business, as well as medical optics I think.

[bigdog]

It's a color laser printer, i.e. CMYK toner electrostatically applied and fused with heat. Technology has been around nearly 25 years, ...

Exactly. My wife is an illustrator. Before we got a scanner and inkjets, she would often simply make a color copy (at Kinko's or the like) of a piece that was sold. I was always impressed at the relative quality of the copy.

(Of course, now all of her stuff is submitted in electronic form, so she gets to keep the "original".)

[Lenny Eiger]

Sorry to be harsh, but this is a repeated thread. No personal attack intended here. However, these prints are awful by photographic standards. Maybe you see your beloved dog and are happy. That's great. I see no reason not to have those kinds of places print one's family snapshots. However, as a photograph, they lack the richness of the color to convince anyone that it is anything special. The highlights are blown out. There is no detail in the darker areas either. No subtlety. I don't make a connection that dogs have anything to do with nationalism so the only thing I would say is that if you knew the dog one might like this.

We are on a forum with photographers, some serious photographers, some who shoot film, some who do all their own developing and printing, who try very hard to make it exquisite. They are going to judge things by a different standard. If you want to say, hey, these are great for snapshots, I'm with you. Beyond that, it's just offensive.

There are many different kinds of photography. Some photographs are journalistic, others social documentary, there is commercial work and different genres of art. For some the print is not that important, it is the image itself, or the "impact" or whatever. It's valid. Some (I happen to be in this category) view the print as an object that has its own significance. I try to create something of lasting value for the people that purchase my work. The print is the final expression of a process that began with me going somewhere to get out of my normal environment, getting free of the daily nonsense so I can see, being in a place that I find photogenic and actually taking the time and emotional work to fully be there, composing the image, processing it, scanning and yes, adding a little expressive quality to it in the printing process.

Not everyone is required to be a serious photographer, or to be interested in printing. However, this isn't a commodity for me. Maybe I'm just old and stuck in my ways. I don't care one way or the other about instagram. But I reject it outright when someone tries to suggest that something is quality when it isn't. We are constantly being bombarded with mediocrity. Whether it is the likes of Martha Stewart, any professional, including photographers, who won't bother to study at least some of the history of what went before them, every item in Walmart, the degradation of our culture by every type of media outlet out there, I can't live with myself unless I rail against it.

I see it this way: enjoy the low prices for your family snapshots. However, if you want to print a more serious photograph, either do it yourself, enough times to get it exactly right, or take it to someone who will do it for you, as in a professional printer.

Regards,

Lenny

[Chuck S.]

It is a just a bit harsh, Lenny. I'm holding the posted print and others I mentioned side-by-side with the same as C-prints from a Fuji Frontier. Right in my hands, less than a foot away. Not awful, not even mediocre. None worse than 'good', some even 'damn good'. And the quick scan of the KM print that I posted doesn't do it justice. (Not my dog, BTW. Just a found scene in Victor, CO.)

Maybe this particular KM machine or it's successors have unique capabilities. Maybe you haven't seen its output with your own eyes. Color inkjet printers have improved considerably since their beginnings; color lasers as much or more, at least at the top end. "Publishing on demand" wouldn't exist without them. They're replacing color offset - and not just the cheap nasty stuff - in many markets for volume printing. This ain't your office Okidata or HP Color LaserJet. Not just a whole different kettle of fish, it's a whole different fishing boat.

I might mention also that I have had a fair amount of traditional darkroom experience. Retired from an architectural/industrial photography business, did all my own B&W and color film & printing up to 20x24, 10x10 Durst enlarger, Gordon Morse contact printer, 12 feet of sinks, Jobo Autolab, mat cutter, 40x60 vacuum cold mount press, etc. Shot only a bit of MF, mostly 4x5 and 8x10. All modern stuff, no antiques. (A good bit of it sold here.) I did not produce crap. I'm a fair judge of quality.

There's a place for the merely good and the very good in most photographers lives, as well as the ne plus ultra. Not all of us always feel "I have to have the utmost quality the medium can deliver, every time, with every image, no matter the cost, no matter the circumstances....!" Sometimes a "commodity" is exactly what the situation warrants, and here's a very nice one at a very affordable price.

[Lenny Eiger]

It is a just a bit harsh, Lenny.

Sorry, Chuck. I'm having a rough week. And not because of you, of course. I may disagree with you, but I can disagree nicer, I know.

Here's to next week...


Lenny

[Ivan J. Eberle]

Kodak was once big into these laser printers, but didn't want to undercut their newest darling, early ribbon-based dye-sub printers that were real howlers, and which had very high recurring media costs. Kodak apparently didn't like it when I referred to their 400 dpi color laser output as being better than their 200 dpi dye-sublimation printer of the day, in an article on PhotoCD I wrote for Outdoor Photographer slightly more than 20 years ago. ("Now this is the future of printing!", I wrote. My sidebar got redacted before the feature went to press.)

Being CMYK, color laser can have very rich blacks, albeit rather matte. (Toner lays on top of the paper.) With some depth added via an overlay or lamination, they can look pretty good. To my eye at least as good as that giclee crap from 15 years ago that was being done on watercolor paper, laminated under plastic because it was so fragile, typically sold at art/street fairs--and all too often in fine-art galleries in Carmel! (Kind of like the argument against canvas today. Either laminated or canvas can make for a robust print that can weather a lot of handling, so there's a commercial pragmatism that takes hold.)