Consumables, not cameras, driving digital imaging world

The advantages of printing digital photos at home, as well as the decreasing cost of printing such photos, are starting to drive the digital imaging world.

With the appearance of digital photography a couple of years ago, the printing, consumables and accessories market exploded, offering users the ability to increase their creativity while at the same time saving on developing and printing costs.

Janine de Wolf, retail manager at Advanced Consumables Technology (ACT), says: "Today, photo papers and inks are starting to lead the demand for digital photography and not cameras, as one would expect.

"The reason for this is simple. With the huge variety of photo papers and inks available on the market today, users are able to match consumables to their desired results and budget, while for the most part deriving similar results to those achieved at conventional photo developing and printing labs," De Wolf explains.

Consumers are in for further benefits in the coming months, De Wolf says, with the anticipated growth of digital photography bound to drive prices down even further.

"At the moment the costs are already very competitive. Today, users can print an A4 picture with awesome results at less than what a developing and printing lab will charge. Printing standard-sized 10x15 pictures is, however, a little more expensive and this is where the major cost reductions are aimed at in the coming year," she says. "In early January 2005 it is anticipated that the cost of printing digital photos at home on a photo printer will be brought in line with the prices offered by the traditional photo labs."

Despite the small cost premium of printing photographs of this size at home, users are, however, still using this functionality, since it allows them to forego a trip to the photo lab and the waiting period of a couple of hours for developing to take place. "Add to this the excellent variety of paper stocks, not to mention the ability to modify photographs and images to the user`s requirements and you have a winning feature of home printing. The range of papers available today can at one end meet the most cost-conscious of budgets and at the other, produce the same results achieved at a photo lab; however, it will be expensive and not as convenient."

Numbers recently released in Europe indicate that the number of digital photos printed in the home environment on either photo paper or plain paper in 2005 will reach close to 36 billion. This figure is expected to increase by over 100% to 79 billion by 2008.

De Wolf believes digital photography and printing will become the de-facto standard in the market in a couple of years, mainly because there are cost and quality benefits to going this route. "We can already see this trend manifesting itself in regions with high-computer literacy and a reasonable level of disposable income. In SA there`s still a lack of knowledge about which papers should be used in which circumstances and exactly what is possible with custom papers and printers.

"For this reason, ACT and its partners are embarking on numerous educational initiatives and promotions in stores around the country throughout 2005. With the right education and advice, there will undoubtedly be a bigger uptake of digital photography, digital printing and creativity in the market, not to mention happier customers that have saved a bundle," she concludes.