Hewlett-Packard unveils hot-shot digital photography package

Web posted June 2, 1997

 Photo Smart

By Mike Langberg
Knight-Ridder Newspapers

Hewlett-Packard Co. understands the big picture when it comes to the hot new field of digital photography.

With a trio of new products dubbed the ``PhotoSmart'' System - consisting of a digital camera, printer and film scanner - HP is moving amateur photographers a big step closer to the day when they can dispense with traditional film altogether.

But don't put your trusty 35-millimeter point-and-shoot camera on the table at a garage sale just yet.

The PhotoSmart system is expensive, totaling $1,400 for all three pieces, and requires a dedication to tweaking hardware and reading instruction manuals beyond the typical home user. What's more, it's only available for personal computers running Windows 95.

Here's my snapshot of the PhotoSmart lineup:

- Photo Printer. This $499 inkjet printer, despite several limitations, is a breakthrough product. HP has finally achieved one of the PC industry's Holy Grails: an affordable printer that produces output almost indistinguishable from a photograph.

The printer is big and heavy, weighing 20 pounds, but all this bulk allows the machine to print on special paper that has the same look and feel as a photographic print. Improvements in the inkjet head means the printer put the microscopic drops of ink so close together you can't really tell the results aren't a photograph - assuming, of course, that you're printing a photographic-quality image.

HP claims the prints will last seven years or more in a frame on the wall, almost as long as regular photographs and far longer than prints from conventional inkjets, which often began to fade within a few months.

But this new level of quality isn't cheap. Each 8 1/2-by-11-inch sheet of the special paper goes for about $1, and printing a full-page color image consumes about $1 in ink. Replacing the printer's two color inkjet cartridges costs about $39 for each.

You must also accept a narrow focus - this printer does only one thing well. It puts so much ink on the page that plain paper becomes wrinkled. And the printer is so slow that it's not practical for printing text. I'd only suggest it to someone who already owns a printer and is willing to purchase a second unit solely for producing photographs.

- Photo Scanner. This $499 film and photograph scanner is another breakthrough, once again with limitations. In the last two years, a proliferation of inexpensive scanners - some as low as $200 - made it easy for home PC owners to get photographic prints inside their computers. Getting the best possible image quality, however, requires scanning directly from a photographic negative or slide - because the best reproduction comes from the original image, just as a photocopy of an original book page looks better than a copy of the photocopy. Yet film scanners generally cost $750 or more and are too complicated for users without professional graphics experience.

The HP scanner accepts photographs up to 5 inches by 7 inches and converts them into digital images at a resolution of 300 dots per inch, or dpi - the same level of performance as most other consumer-oriented scanners. But the HP unit sets itself apart by accepting both 35mm negatives and slides, scanning them at an impressive 2,400 dpi.

When I tested the scanner with family snapshots, the scanned negatives produced much sharper images than scanned prints.

The biggest hurdle with the scanner is setting it up. The unit is built to the SCSI (pronounced ``scuzzy'') standard, and requires installation of a SCSI circuit board included in the box. Most home PC owners are wisely reluctant to open up their machine and stick in a board, limiting the scanner's market to PC hobbyists.

Also, the scanner has a significant learning curve. Expect to spend some time reading through the 46-page installation and maintenance manual, as well as the 106-page user's guide.

- Digital camera. This $399 point-and-shoot camera is the only member of the trio that doesn't deserve to be called ``smart.'' HP opted to keep the selling price down by omitting an LCD screen that would allow you to view the digital images you've just captured.

Because the electronic memory that holds digital pictures is relatively expensive, digital cameras can't hold very many images. The HP digital camera comes with a removable, two-megabyte memory card that stores 32 low-resolution shots, 16 medium-resolution shots or four high-resolution shots.

An LCD screen, now found on almost all other digital cameras on the market, would make it possible to review the pictures you've taken and only keep the good ones. Without this ability to delete on the spot, a digital camera quickly fills up.

The HP digital camera provides image quality comparable to other models in its price range, which is far short of what you'll get with the least expensive 35mm camera. That means the PhotoSmart printer's extraordinary abilities would be wasted if it were only asked to print pictures taken with the HP camera.

In short, I'd recommend the PhotoSmart printer and scanner to any well-heeled PC sophisticate with an interest in photography.

The rest of us probably won't have to wait much longer for the same features in lower-cost products that are easier to install and operate. For those who want to get started now, consider buying one of the $200 photo scanners. If you don't already own a color inkjet, any top-of-the-line model from HP, Canon, Epson or Lexmark - selling for about $299 - will deliver magazine-quality photographs if you buy special $1-a-sheet paper.