Similar kiosks can already make prints from digital cameras, but this is the first one to work for both digital images and film. Created by Applied Science Fiction, a private company based in Austin, Texas, the kiosk lets shutterbugs use simple touch-screen commands to rotate, zoom, crop, adjust brightness or contrast and remove red eye. It can also produce enlargements on the spot.
For all that speed and convenience, there are trade-offs: the print quality isn't quite so good as at most professional photo labs, and your negatives are destroyed in the process. But you get a CD that contains digital images of your photos. If all you want is to develop the film and take the CD, the cost is about $5.95. Each 4-by-6 print costs about 39. So 24 prints and the CD will run about $15--pretty much what you would pay for digital or traditional developing.
What makes 10-minute photos possible is a new technology called dry film processing, for which Applied Science Fiction holds 28 patents. It uses nontoxic chemicals — unlike the traditional wet method, which requires plumbing and ventilation. "Most people who know about chemistry and film told us it was impossible," says ceo Dan Sullivan.
His company has raised some $100 million from investors, among them Rho Ventures, based in New York City, and IBM. The idea is to sell the kiosk for about $60,000 to retailers, resorts and cruise ships and then supply the machine's magic film-development dust as a consumable (on the model of companies that sell razors cheap and profit on the blades). All revenue from photo development goes into the retailer's pocket. Joel Paymer, co-owner of Camera Land, where a kiosk is being tested in New York City, gushes that "it's going to change the way consumers develop film forever." He says he's averaging about one 8 by 10 enlargement per roll of film developed in the machine, vs. a typical ratio of 1 out of every 150.
Other kiosks are being tested at seven CVS drugstores in Boston. In September a kiosk was shown at the Photokina trade fair in Cologne, Germany, and a test model is being rolled out this month at the department store Karstadt-Oberpollinger in Munich. Applied Science Fiction plans to begin mass production next year and hopes to turn a profit by mid-2004. Though some 23 million digital cameras will be sold this year — nearly double the amount in 2000--the company is confident that film won't expire anytime soon. By year-end, there will be more than a billion film cameras in use worldwide, whose owners will develop some 80 billion images. And when those consumers are ready for digital cameras, Sullivan adds, the kiosk will still work for them.