AgfaPhoto: Innovative solutions for classic and digital photography

Istanbul, April 2005 - A new independent company which is nevertheless an old acquaintance is presenting itself at this year´s Photo & Digital : AgfaPhoto, the company formed in November from the previous Consumer Imaging business group of Agfa. In Istanbul AgfaPhoto is showing a large number of innovative products and solutions for capturing, processing and editing analog and digital photographic images. In addition to lab equipment these include film, digital memory cards, photographic papers and processing chemicals, as well as further hardware and software solutions and a series of services going beyond the products themselves to help customers to operate their business successfully.

The product making its Turkey debut at Photo & Digital is "d lab.1s starter", the newest member of the d-lab minilab family. Among the other noteworthy innovations being shown at Photo & Digital for the first time are memory cards for digital cameras, new digital lab equipment with automatic red-eye correction and interfaces for prints from camera phones, new e-commerce solutions and finally the latest generation of Vista films.

Focus on systems for producing prints
AgfaPhoto's product strategy centres on the systems used to produce prints of analog and digital images on photo paper - because AgfaPhoto is convinced that consumers are unwilling to give up paper prints, even in our digital era. The market trend confirms AgfaPhoto's assessment: the number of digital images being printed on photo paper is increasing much faster than the sales figures of digital cameras themselves.

But AgfaPhoto is not only focussing on print processing. The company strategy also includes offering consumers a product range which goes beyond the classic film under a well-known and well-reputed brand name. AgfaPhoto has already taken a first step in this direction with the market launch of memory cards for digital cameras.

Products
Whether photos are taken on film, with a digital camera or a camera phone: genuine prints can be produced from all media. Either locally on a minilab, or centrally in a wholesale photofinishing lab.

AgfaPhoto's key product for on-site processing is the digital minilab d lab.1 allrounder, which took the leading place in AgfaPhoto's minilab range soon after its market launch in spring 2004. At photokina AgfaPhoto extended this range with d-lab.1 basic (without a film processor) and at PMA introduced the new d lab.1s starter rounding off the range at the lower end of performance class 1. This machine offers d-lab print quality and versatility at an entry level price. The minilabs in the middle and top performance classes, d-lab.2 and d-lab.2 plus, have also been improved and have been available since photokina in the "select" version. A new feature available for all d-labs, netlabs and image boxes is automatic red-eye correction a-REDC. AgfaPhoto's product assortment would be incomplete without a range of digital front-ends which enable operators of AgfaPhoto minilabs to tailor their business individually to the needs of their customers. The kiosk solution deserves special mention here: a system for printing digital images with a self-service option.

In wholesale finishing AgfaPhoto is the clear number one in the world market in terms of the installed population of high-performance printers. Automatic red-eye correction is also available for the wholesale lab system d-ws. With its capacity of 20,000 prints per hour, d-ws supplies exactly the output which matches the production process of wholesale labs. However, it has become apparent that the capacity of wholesale lab equipment is too high for the production volumes of a number of companies, while on the other hand the capacity of classic minilabs is too low. This gap has been closed by a system comprising d-print.10, d-gate.10 and VSP 25 with a capacity of 10,000 prints per hour.

Internet services, such as the Agfanet Print Service and the web album, are becoming increasingly important in the digital era. AgfaPhoto is catering to this trend and presented completely revised versions of its systems at photokina.

Last, but not least: film. It is the most familiar AgfaPhoto product in many countries. And although the market is declining, it is still a large and attractive market, because around 70 percent of all cameras in use today worldwide use film as the medium for image capture and storage. That is why AgfaPhoto has further enhanced its Vista films with Eye Vision Technology 3.0. Incidentally, these new films are also to be found in AgfaPhoto's new LeBox single-use cameras - a market segment that is still recording good growth rates in many regions.

Very good growth rates can also be observed for memory cards for digital cameras. Their function is very similar to that of film, which is why it was only logical for AgfaPhoto, one of the leading film vendors, to also enter this business - with a broad product range for the different user groups and camera systems. In this context, AgfaPhoto is deliberately basing its marketing strategy on the behaviour learned from classical photography: the digital storage media are marketed as "Digital Film".