Digital Shutterbugs Focus on Retail Prints

[Suhit Gupta]

<div class='os_post_top_link'><a href='http://news.designtechnica.com/article8182.html' target='_blank'>http://news.designtechnica.com/article8182.html</a><br /><br /></div><i>"A new study of digital camera owners' photography habits from IDC has found that the average number of images taken by digital photographers has continued to increase: users are expected to take an additional 18 images a month in 2005, while the average number of monthly prints is expected to increase 29 percent during the year. However, the study also found that users' printing behavior is changing with the increased volume of prints, with home printing declining in favor of having photos printed by retail and commercial services... also found a great deal of variability in digital photographer's printing habits with one-third of respondents reporting they never print images and over 10 percent saying they print every image that they decide to keep. That could be a lot of printing: 15 percent of respondents claim they never delete any images!"</i><br /><br />Very interesting. I clearly fall into the category of people that never print any images. I also like to keep all my images, though I will obviously delete most of the bad shots that I end up taking, i.e. things with high motion blur and the like. Anyways, this study surprises me because I was wrong on two counts - I thought that the amount of printing of photographs was reducing and secondly I was under the impression that there was a growing number of people that were printing photos at home. I wonder what printer manufacturers can do to try and reverse the trend.

[Vincent Ferrari]

What they can do is so simple it's no wonder they haven't figured it out.

The last time I went to get ink, I spent $80+ on three cartridges (color, photo, black). My printer, brand ripping new the day it came out was $189 and I've replaced the cartridges three times.

It's the Gillette syndrome. They give away the handle and charge you out the wazoo for the blades. If you want people to start printing at home, a good way to start is to either:

1. Charge significantly less for cartridges.
2. Make them last significantly smaller and stop shrinking them.

My printer easily does 4x6 prints that are comparable to what I get from Snapfish, but I'll be damned if I'm gonna print 40 prints out of my printer knowing how much the ink will cost me in the end.

Pure economics.

[msprague]

I used to do more printing (commercial service) before I started using flickr.com for photo sharing. Once flickr rolls out online printing I will probably so that more regularly. At home I just have a cheapy (non-color) laser printer, so I never print photos at home.