FORENSIC IMAGING NEWSLETTER

ISSUE:No. 2-7-------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- DATE: JULY 1, 1994

PRINTERS-II

In June 1993, I outlined the "hardcopy devices" available for Forensic Imaging. I divided all hardcopy devices into two categories. Category I printers were those priced under $10000.00, most under $5000.00 with the media inexpensive as well. Category II were sophisticated units typically priced at over $10000.00 with the media costs between 40 cents to over a dollar per print. Now, I would like to recap that information and update the changes that have taken place over the past year.( In a future Newsletter I will compile and chart the features of all printers which I can identify.) Category I printers are "Laserjet-type" printers and video/thermal printers. The "Laserjet" printers such as the H-P Laserjet can print an image on plain paper via software dithering or through the use of an enhancement card/software combination. The software-only method is rather slow and the best dithering methods fail to produce an image that closely resembles a continuous tone photograph. The enhancement card method is considerably faster than software- only and with most types of images, especially fingerprints, it produces a hardcopy very similar to the original image. The other printers in Category I are the video/thermal printers such models from Sony, Seikosha, Hitachi, Panasonic, Seiko, NEC, Toshiba, Fargo and others. These printers, color or black & white, "attach" via coaxial cable directly to the video source which is normally RS-170A or NTSC. (low resolution). My experience with traditional thermal printers has at times been frustrating because of difficulties in calibrating the printer. The video signal by its very nature is dynamic, i.e., changing from image to image. One company (unnamed) has attempted to compensate for this problem by supplying their printer with multiple print settings for brightness and contrast. Regardless, it is often a matter of trial and error and making multiple prints until the "perfect" settings are found for a particular image. Seiko, Fargo, and Tektronix produce thermal wax printers with parallel printer port interfaces. Interestingly, the Fargo and Seiko can produce dye-sublimation as well as thermal-wax prints from the same device. The Fargo device is priced at $1250.00! A number of changes have also occurred in the past year in the area of Category II printer devices. As I discussed last year, these devices are true digital printers. Utilizing special media, dry-silver or dye-sublimation technology, these devices can produce HI-Resolution continuous tone imagery. The producers of these printers include Lasertechnics, Harris Corp., Kodak, Mitsubishi, and Codonics. Last year, Lasertechnics, probably the leader in printers sold, transferred (sold) their printer division to a small company in Dallas,TX., Sandia Imaging. In our experience, Sandia's interest in selling and supporting the continuous tone printer business has been minimal. On the other hand, Harris Corp. has been extremely active in pursuing the Forensic market and they have released a new version of their printer, the PHOTOPRO-2500, capable of producing over 500 dots per inch. This meets the Federal Bureau of Investigation's requirements for the ITN procurement. When HARRIS introduced their PHOTOPRO-2000 (256 dpi) in 1992 at a list price of $12,950.00 to compete with the LASERTECHNIC'S DIR-300, Lasertechnics was forced to drop their price for a paper only printer from over $18,500.00 to $14,500.00. (enclosed find a HARRIS brochure and sample print). KODAK, which had been producing the XL-7700 and XL-7720 printers (256 dpi) at a cost of roughly $20,000.00, has recently discontinued the XL-7700 and introduced the 8300 series printer (300 dpi) at a price of $9995.00. Kodak has also introduced a desktop printer which produces 4-by 5-inch color prints, the 450GL, priced at $1,599.00. Meanwhile, a "new" player, CODONICS developed their own version of the KODAK dye- sub printer utilizing the Kodak media. With a network interface, the CODONICS can shared by multiple users over a local area network, or for standalone workstations a SCSI interface is available (the ideal method in my opinion). A major difference between HARRIS/LASERTECHNICS and KODAK/CODONICS is the price of the media. Dry silver paper media costs approximately 40 cents a copy for paper media while the dye-sublimation paper media will cost over a dollar. The dye-sub printers also require a special "ribbon" cartridge at additional cost. As with personal computers , the trend with printers over the past several years has been for quality to go up and the prices to come down. This can be attributed to increased demand and thus the volume of "Image" printers being shipped.