By Patrick Avenell
The DreamLabo 5000 takes up a lot of space in Canon Australia’s head office in northern Sydney. It’s an impressive piece of machinery — one that Canon has been developing for the last three years — and it is now the physical embodiment of the Japanese company’s launch into the mass market commercial inkjet printing business.
Measuring around 4 x 3 x 1 metres, the DreamLabo 5000 in Canon’s office has the serial number 00002. Australia is the first country to receive the printer, which Canon is targeting at the bulk and book photo printing markets.
Currently dominated by brands such as Fujifilm and HP, the bespoke photo printing market has been steered towards the high volume, low margin commodity market, according to Canon Australia director of consumer imaging Jason McLean. Canon’s strategy is to reinvigorate value in the industry by producing high quality images at a premium.
“If you look at the photo book and photo printing market as it stands today, you can see that the majority of the market is in the 4×6 photo, [which is worth] $200 million,” McLean said. “The profitability in that market has been dramatically eroded by the race to the bottom.”
McLean estimates that consumer photo printing labs are now charging as little as 9 cents for 4 x 6 print, which necessitates the retention of legacy printers and the use of he describes as inferior techniques, such as silver halide.
Using the inkjet technology Canon has developed for its Pixma printing range, but on a much a grander scale, the DreamLabo 5000 produces what Canon believes is a higher quality result worthy of a more expensive price tag.
The three key features of the DreamLabo 5000 are resolution, colour and paper. Dubbed HD photo printing, the DreamLabo can produce images at 2,400 dots per inch (dpi). Although one expert told Current.com.au that the human eye can’t distinguish differences above 600dpi, this is still an important factor in the production of text prints, such as Canon’s 1 point print of the Complete Works of William Shakespeare.
Colour is a particularly important feature of the DreamLabo. Rather than merging ink from four wells (CMYK), Canon has introduced photo cyan, photo magenta and grey to create 7-colour dye-based ink system. Furthermore, there is a two-stage ink deployment system, so the main cartridges can be replaced without interrupting a print run.
For paper deployment, Canon claims the DreamLabo 5000 can produce a 20-page A4 size photo album in 80 (not including post printing processes) and 40 photo prints in 60 seconds. Paper rolls can also be exchanged without interrupting print flow.
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In his introduction to the DreamLabo 5000, Canon Australia managing director Taz Nakamasu said this product was the result of Canon’s commitment to research and development, which has been retained despite parlour economic conditions.
“During the last three years, Canon has been hit with a number of external events,” Nakamasu said. “The Global Financial Crisis in 2008 and 2009 hit Canon very hard, and just as we started to see a steady recovery, natural disasters in both Japan and Thailand further hampering our recovery.”
Nakamasu said Canon’s global revenue, in Australian dollars, for the last financial year was approximately $42 billion, with $3 billion in profit.
“We are also very proud of the fact that Canon continues to invest strongly in research and development, which is the backbone of our company’s success and the key to its future.”
Nakamasu stressed that with the DreamLabo 5000, Canon now has a full suite of products, ranging from the moment an image is captured on a camera to when it is professionally printed for display.
“Canon has already established significant market presence at every stage of the input to output process. The DreamLabo 5000 will be the key product which will develop a new photo domain, namely production photo printing. This is built on three pillars of excellence: genuine photo quality, high quality text and high productivity.”
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Canon's DreamLabo 5000 is being launched in Australia ahead of a wider global release.
Nakamasu could only showcase the number two DreamLabo 5000 because the 00001 model has already been delivered to PictureWorks Group managing director Andrew Smith.
PictureWorks specialises in online photo book production, in which consumers upload images for printing and binding. Smith said he decided to offer a premium product at a premium price after observing how little his teenage children were cherishing the images they were capturing.
“Our view is that there has been a rise in digital photo noise — that we’ve moved from a position where a moment in life is treasured, where a photo is carefully composed and that moment seized, moved to a point that almost every moment is now catalogued,” Smith said.
“I watched my teenage children come home from a party and an upload the debris of the night before. The Sunday after the party, the Facebook walls of all of their friends are visited, and they revisit all of those quick one-second moments that occurred the night before.
“Each of those photos is not cherished: they are flicked between and I observed that in many ways the narrative of life is being lost, because our lives are full of important moments.”
To rectify this growing ‘digital photo noise’ phenomenon, Smith has installed the first DreamLabo 5000 model – which is estimated to cost around $750,000 – and he will be promoting its ability to produce what he believes are the highest quality replicas of these important moments.