Discussion

By Chris Lynn on Jun 17, 2016

Yes Frank, but what did you think of the prints?

By Frank Romano on Jun 18, 2016

I'll go with the printers worldwide who bought $450 million of Landa presses based on what they saw in terms of quality.

By Chris Lynn on Jun 18, 2016

I am saddened to see this response. In a period of disruptive technological change, the industry needs cogent and critical analysis from its most experienced commentators, not merely the repetition of vendors' marketing output.

By Patrick Henry on Jun 20, 2016

I saw the prints a few months ago at a pre-drupa media event hosted by Landa in Israel. I don't have the trained eye of a printer or a print buyer, but as a journalist, I have looked at a lot of printed samples over the years. The press sheets I inspected had rich color and sharp detail. I wouldn't have hesitated to call them some of the best specimens of digital printing I've seen. Some of my fellow journalists/analysts may have spotted what they took to be flaws. These, in my opinion and mine only, seemed minor. But, as Frank says, the ultimate judgment call belongs to the printers making the capital investments. I trust them to know what is and what isn't quality printing from any vendor's devices.

By Joe Webb on Jun 20, 2016

No one's really bought anything yet... but what really matters is what happens with customers and THEIR audiences. If we're old enough :) we "know" that camera separations are much much better than scanner separations, computer typesetting can't match the quality of hot lead, and lithography is too unstable and has too many variables to knock letterpress and gravure out of the market. These presses won't be used for art prints -- yet -- but we know art prints on slow ink jet wide format are doing incredibly well -- we have some in our home! This is the first stride in the Landa marathon. Can enough presses be installed soon enough to thwart another wave of digital media disruption?

By Eric Vessels on Jun 21, 2016

I also don't have the trained eye of a printer or print-buyer, but like Patrick did see Landa both before and during drupa. Before at their pre-drupa event in Israel I did notice some flaws related to inkjet streaking. They were (admittedly) having problems with the speeds and correcting inkjet nozzle issues in real-time. I know they've been working hard with AVT to help correct these issues. The samples at drupa looked far better than what we saw in Israel just a couple months before drupa. It's hard to know if these were run at slower speeds or full speed, but there does seem to be a market for this new technology and like any new technology there will be bugs that need to be worked out.

Pat and I were both able to get an up close and personal view of the underlying technology and it looked pretty solid to me. The limiting factor has seemed to be speed and nozzle corrections. If they get this figured out, I think they'll really have something here. I do see some major potential.

How much of the drupa buy PR was hype and marketing placement (for both vendor and printer)? Hard to say. I'm sure some of that is going on. However, it's hard to argue with the buzz and excitement that we witnessed at the booth. Many want to see this new technology work and open up new possibilities for our industry. I think I'm with them.

By Gordon Pritchard on Jun 23, 2016

I'm with Chris Lynn on this one. It's fine to hear subjective opinions on the Landa presses - however - they represent a printing technology which can be evaluated objectively. For example:
An ICC profile would show how its gamut compares with that of GRACoL. The profile could easily be compared with Pantones spot color library to see the volume of colors in, or out of gamut.
What was the registration like across the sheet and sheet to sheet.
What halftone screening type and frequency used? Were there samples of Claimed FM capability?
Were artifacts/issues consistent sheet to sheet or did they appear randomly.
How was grey balance? Did it remain cinsistent through the run? Was color affected by inline ink usage?
Was the same image content printed on different substrates? How did they compare? Were direct comparisons made between the same images printed offset vs Landa? Were any sheets rubbed to get a sense of rub resistance?
Etc., etc,...

By Adam Dewitz on Jun 23, 2016

David Zwang dug into the technical details of the Landa press system in an article published on March 29th: http://whattheythink.com/articles/79607-inkjet-drupa-2016-continuing-story-landa/

By Frank Romano on Jun 23, 2016

I appreciate all the comments made about quality. Landa’s quality, and the quality of the many new printers/presses introduced at Drupa, will be judged by the printers who buy the equipment and the print buyers who pay for the output. The rest of us may not matter.

By Gordon Pritchard on Jun 24, 2016

RE: Frank Romano wrote: "the quality of the many new printers/presses introduced at Drupa, will be judged by the printers who buy the equipment and the print buyers who pay for the output. The rest of us may not matter."

I think that sidesteps the point. Buyers of technology still read the many magazines, books, and public forums that tset, review, and rate products (like Consumer's Report) even though at the end of the day the purchaser make the final judgement and purchase irrespective of the rest of the public.

RE: By Adam Dewitz's article reference. David Zwang's article was very descriptive of the technical aspect of Landa's process. However, I would hardly use it as a technical evaluation of press performance regarding the very basic print quality evaluation criteria I listed. Much of the article quotes Landa for performance. The closest David gets to a technical performance statement is when he wrote: "there is a distinct sharpness to the nanographic dots that should translate into finer lines, sharper images with more visible detail, and perhaps even higher print contrast." But he qualified that by using a marketing "weasel" word - "should" rather that the affirmative "that translates".

I don't expect reporters to conduct a full blown lab dissection of a given technology during a trade show, however, in this case, I think that the basic print quality criteria that I listed would have been quite easy to observe in that setting.