10th HP LAB University 2007

This article was first published in The British Journal of Photography on 15th August 2007. This publication is an edited version of the original.

The 10th Anniversary HP Lab University was held this year in sunny Portugal. A record 460 journalists from the techie media world crammed the conference rooms of the Corinthia Lisboa Hotel to hear HP engineers, scientists and consultant experts give the low-down on Hewlett-Packard's latest line-up of goodies and where they think the future of digital imaging is headed.

Printing, printers and printing paper are what HP are best known for in Europe, but the company is involved in the production and development of several other facets of digital imaging, from cameras to scanners aimed at large and small businesses, the photo finishing trades and consumers. According to HP senior vice president and general manager Bill DeLacy, “HP has led the imaging and printing market for many years, and this event is a celebration of that leadership,” Throughout , there was a lot of corporate emphasis on the current product line-up and previewing 'future innovations likely to take the market by storm'.

The forum formula is simple; round up as many guests as you can persuade to attend, put them under one roof and keep them occupied with short and punchy IT power point lectures and mix with plenty of opportunity for hands-on product testing and one-to-one interaction with hosts. The process begins at hotel registration where journalists are handed a goody bag and offered a review sample of a brand new HP compact camera featuring the largest touch-screen monitor yet seen on any digital capture device. Aimed squarely at the more expensive end of the enthusiast consumer market, the camera's innovative shape and all metal, black anodised body is certain to be a head turner.

For two days, guests were encouraged to attend at least five of the diverse ten lecture sessions on offer, having first been entertained to a colourful auditorium overview of HP's forward thinking. A clue was volunteered by printing guru Ross Allen who suggested print quality was now as good as it needs to be. Lecture subjects ranged from Advancements in Ink, Analogue to Digital Photography, HP Edgeline Innovation, Inks and Toners to Inside the Camera and The Future, relaxed affairs encouraging questions from the floor, followed by on-the-spot or out and about hands on reviewing. It is the kind of well organised (lots of young clip-board toting helpers attired in bright red HP Lab golf shirts.) event designed to fuel a feel-good factor toward the host and its products.

FINE ART QUALITY

In the world of ink-jet and laser printing, competition for the largest market share is fierce, with manufacturers continuously claiming one or more feature advantage over the other. Ink-jet printing, probably the area of most interest to photographers enaged in the production of large scale fine-art prints has seen a steady improvement in technical quality in recent years with the introduction of multiple hue pigment inks, printer head development, improved software and media substrate offerings. To this end, HP launched its Photo Influences program in 2006 in association with photo agencies such as Magnum and headlining photographers whose works are much in demand through internet portals and city based galleries.

One such is the celebrity photographer Douglas Kirkland whose 72 year old enthusiasm for photography knew no bounds during his colourful presentation in a session on Analogue and digital.

In between what was clearly a hectic schedule of appearances cajolingly but purposefully and deftly managed by his wife Francoise.

Born in Canada in 1935, he moved from New York where he was assistant to Irving Penn, to become a staff photographer for Look magazine based in Holywood from the early 1960s. By the mid-seventies he was freelancing for the best known magazines of the era, LIFE, Paris Match and Stern. Many of the top performing screen actors and actresses, Audrey Hepburn, Marilyn Monroe, Elizabeth Taylor and others were captured by the discerning Kirkland eye. Today, his work is much in demand, made possible, he says, by the advent of the digital world.

"The best possible prints used to be made using the dye transfer process. It's expensive. In fact, without a sponsor, it would not be possible to show or realise my work."

Francoise reminds me of the many exhibitions Douglas has been asked to stage and of books in prepration. "The production logistics for several large scale projects simply could not have been handled the old way. In late 2006 a publisher wanted 500 images to edit for a book coming later this year. We had a month to select and scan originals and make the presentation. Now, 2-3 large print exhibitions are in preparation in New York and at the Academy of Motion Pictures in Los Angeles. The prints are over four feet wide and there are a 100 of them!"

Says Douglas, "And there was Cinema Moments in Rome last year; the same huge problem." Several prints from this exhibition decorated the corridors and conference rooms of the Corinthia, and they were first class. Now he is working toward another monumental tome of his life's work which will feature over 450 images. In between all this activity and an upcoming month's assignment in Australia, the Kirkland enterprise is also busy filling individual orders for prints of the stars he has photographed over the years.

"The ink-jet medium was a great discovery for me, especially for b+w.", he enthuses. " We decided to avoid making special editions of 16 X 20 inch prints. I would rather concentrate on top quality for every print. I'm involved most days in the production and print process. We have an Imacon Flextight scanner which is really quick and a delight to use; I love the materials we use on the big HP printer.

"Digital compels me to organise books and exhibitions; the exploitation of existing material which would otherwise never have seen the light of day.", he muses, before being gently reminded by Francoise he is late again for another stand-up forum performance.

The big printer to which douglas refers is an HP Designjet Z2100 using 8 HP Vivera pigment single ink technology with new built-in colour management technologies and an intelligent ink delivery system. It can print on substrate weights up to 500gsm at 2400X1200 dpi from an ink palette which adds light versions to the main four colour CMYK system. This 24 inch printer is also one of the industry's first with an embedded spectrophotometer, greatly simplifying accurate colour-matching. The 12-ink HP Designjet Z3100 adds yellow, red, green and blue to the other eight inks of the 2100, has the same media specifications, enabling professionals to save time and effort as they easily and consistently produce the colours they have envisioned, and, say HP technicians, exquisite, museum-quality photographs with archival fade resistance of more than 200 years when printed on a range of HP photo and digital fine art media. They cost £1991.63 and £3052.08 including VAT from mainline suppliers like Jigsaw (0870 730 6868).

Of course, it was impossible to test the last claim but my hastily produced test prints (accidentally torn up by Francoise!) of one famous Kirkland image on the Z2100 still lacked the smooth mid-tone transitional quality ever present in a conventional bromide print. Host technicians were at pains to explain that perhaps the paper quality selected (by them) lacked the capacity to produce what I was looking for or even that someone unknown to them had fiddled with the image files on the connected Mac - what me, Fiddle? Later, Douglas volunteered to send me a freshly made print from LA; when it arrived, I was impressed. Printed on a smooth fine art matt paper, it looked for all the world like a beautiful gravure print. Perhaps, after all, there was some substance in Ross Allen's comments.

NEW DIRECTIONS

And if there is, then it comes as no suprise to learn that HP's future developments lie in endeavours to speed the process of consumer and professional graphics digital image delivery, while tweaking software and in-camera firmware. It showed several all-in-one scanners and printers, with on board CD/DVD read-write and universal card slot facilities with rapid output times as well as a range of new flatbed reflective and film scanners incorporating HP versions of digital ICE.

A new range of HP Photosmart Express stand-alone kiosk ink-jet based mini touch screen printers to rival dye-sub and thermal imaging customer operated machines turned out my handful of prints and a back-up CD in a few minutes. Once the ink had dried, the aesthetic quality on a high gloss paper comes another step closer to that of conventional silver based machine prints, though there is still some way to go with the ink bronzing problem. The HP Photosmart Studio is a total in-store photography experience for customers, providing the ability to design and produce photo albums, calendars and other photo products; an HP Photosmart Microlab Printer plugs straight into a retailer’s existing lab infrastructure to produce more than 700 prints per hour.

The 10th Anniversary Lab didn't end here. There was much corridor talk of software and about how this will enable manufacturers like HP to bring to market high performance point and shoot cameras with polymer lenses, their aberrations fixed in the signal processing. For now however, it's not only red-eye reduction that features on the menu of the new HP R937 8mp camera with its huge 3.6 inch touch screen. Pet-eye fix (what a target!), slimming and HP touch-up offer users an electronic make-up box of tricks for subject enhancement before tagging images for e-mail on the display, using HP Photosmart Share. A host of other features are offered on the menu of this interesting camera with its Fujinon 3X optical zoom; it's just a pity HP designers put so much emphasis on style at the expense of ergonomics.

ends.

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