UK Prolab Execs 'Go Dutch' For A Unique Fujifilm Snapshot Of The Future Of Silver Halide

Fujifilm technical executives led an extensive 'white coat' tour of the vast photographic paper production and coating process, ahead of an upbeat assessment of the future for silver halide by-product manager Judith van Linden.

She announced the launch of a new Fujifilm website for colour paper and told delegates to expect a raft of new products in coming months.

She said: “We are seeing an exponential increase in growth. The interest in photographic paper is increasing substantially - and today 95% of all professional albums within the EU are created with Fujifilm colour papers.

Our album papers are growing by 17% a year and we have new papers for wall décor in the pipeline. We currently have an inventory of twenty-seven different colour papers with varied surface types and sizes – and of course innovative new products such as Album XS paper.

She added: “More and more galleries and art museums too are becoming attracted to the advantages of our professional papers.

By 2020 75% of photo books will be of the lay-flat variety and we have ambitions to secure 50% of the album market in the not-too-distant future.”

The drive to print more images from files

In the wake of recent global ‘ransomware’ cyber hacks, Fujifilm and UK prolabs are proactively encouraging photographers to adopt a ‘print more to be sure’ strategy.

Peter Wigington, Fujifilm UK’s marketing manager Photo Imaging Group said: "We saw the recent ‘wannacry’ cyber-attack as a serious potential threat to everyone who perhaps doesn’t backup all their photo files to a completely safe place. We all have countless pictures on our phones or on our computers and this latest hack shows just how vulnerable we could be."

"We are urging all photographers, professional or novice amateurs, not to risk getting caught out. If your pictures are in the cloud somewhere you might lose them in such extreme situations as this recent attack. The answer is to print out more of your ‘keeper’ photos."

Evert Groen, Fujifilm Europe B.V. key account manager told prolab delegates: "It’s quite simple. Photographers need to know that if they want to be sure and preserve their work they should print. We have papers now that with normal domestic indoor light exposure will last fifty years or more, or even up to two hundred years, if they are kept in photobooks."

Calum Thomson, head of sales at Glasgow-based Loxley Colour added: "We are printing thousands of images for our professional photographer clients and their customers every week and we expect that cyber hacks like ‘wannacry’ will naturally lead to our customers wanting to print ever more images for their clients’ albums and wall art. We are all concerned about this challenge and we discussed this problem with Fujifilm. We all need to do all we can to make photographers more aware of the need to print their key photographs and demonstrate impressive longevity details of the latest state of the art photo paper products."

Jill Roe, owner at Newcastle upon Tyne-based Digitalab said: "Now more than ever with these ominous cyber threats, we are encouraging people to print their photos rather than store them digitally."

Mike Brydon, business development manager for Colorworld added: "Cybercrime makes the news headlines when large corporations are affected but the real news is that it affects ordinary people every day. While many viruses or attacks can be cleaned with anti-virus software updates some still do reach target computers with catastrophic results. Data protection is paramount."