EVENT PHOTOGRAPHY - PART 4

• Event Photography (Part 4) –

In Part 1 we looked at the origins of modern event photography, then in Part 2 we examined what it is about kiosk printers that makes them so suited for event photography. Last week in Part 3, PhotoWeek! continued by looking at what happened when some eventers realized they didn't have to chop the printer out of the kiosk.

Now read on, while we tell you about Portrait Printers, larger-format event printers on steroids! [expand story >>>]

So, what is a Portrait Printer?

Roll-fed Portrait Printers are the bigger cousins of the professional dye-sub photo printers used in Eventing. Typically they print 8×10" and 8×12" size prints on the same kind of media used by other dye-subs. Rollfeed enables them to produce borderless prints, which is a key requirement of the portrait market. Some of them can also simulate a matte finish.

The typical application of a portrait printer over the past couple of years has been to substitute for some of the lab printing that a portrait photographer customarily gets done. An in-house portrait printing solution enables the portrait photographer, shooting digitally, to contain their whole capture-to-print workflow in-house for some prints, giving them fine control over quality and colour adjustment, saving time, and giving them instant feedback as to whether they need to colour adjust or reshoot. It also saves them the relatively high cost of 8×10" and 8×12" prints charged by some labs.

And because they're based on the same design principles as 6×8"/6×9" event printers, they can also be pressed into service at events, producing a succession of high value, high quality portrait-size prints for quick sale.

Until recently, though, these larger, heavier machines were relatively expensive, and could only just about be described as portable. But they didn't drain too much power, and were very robust, so some folk went ahead and used them for on-location work too. However, it has to be said that, up to now, eventers wanting portrait sizes chose sheet printers instead, on account of their smaller size and weight, and lower price tag. (New generation roll-fed machines, with radically redesigned form-factors, are changing that.)

Print quality is more important in portrait printing than it is in eventing. Portrait printers produce superb quality prints on media with a look and feel approximating traditional photo paper. The specification of most portrait printers includes 600dpi resolution for sharper, more detailed images with higher definition. The ability to produce multiple detailed and compelling images quickly at short notice can also make them useful in Public Relations applications, and in Law Enforcement, where multiple copies of images are produced for use in court evidence. A significant portion of these big machines are sold into the public sector.

Next week, in Part 5, we talk about HiTi printers. – Love 'em or laugh at them, there's no denying they carved out a niche for themselves in event photography, and no survey of the subject would be complete without some treatment of them.

Related Stories:
photoweek/2008/05/event-photography-part-1
photoweek/2008/05/event-photography-part-2
photoweek/2008/05/event-photography-part-3
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