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Sony Picture Station DPP-FP70
August 17th 2008 17:01
Digital cameras have brought picture-taking into our daily lives. However, a vast majority of us do very little with the photos captured by our digital cameras – except downloading them to our desktop and leaving them to languish on our hard drives for ages. They have to be very special for us to go to the bother of creating a print from the photo lab.
Sony realised this aspect and launched its line of Picture Station photo printers, which are designed to complement (mostly its own) camera’s ability to capture and share memories in the ‘moment’. Capture, connect, view and print, with the Sony DPP-FP70 Digital Photo Printer, you can make lab-quality prints at home in about 45 seconds direct from your Sony Cyber-shot camera or most flash media.
There are four printers in this range which we saw in our markets. However, we found that the FP-35 and FP-60 both had longer time durations and the DPP-FP90 (which is supposedly better than the FP70) actually produced a pervasive softness in the printed images. Compared to the same images printed with other printers, the DPP-FP90's photos frequently flattened out facial detail. This left the FP-70 as the best of the lot.
The best feature about the FP-70 is that you can easily make borderless 4-inch x 6-inch prints of any moment of your life, quickly and easily. The printer utilises the Sony dye sublimation method which can print 256 shades for each of three dye colours — cyan, magenta and yellow. This adds up to 16.7 million distinct colours for each Pixel, creating spectacularly vivid prints with smooth colour gradations that look more natural and vivid, lifelike images. After the printing, the prints are sealed with SuperCoat 2 ™ laminate, a durable coating, which protects the surface from fingerprints, moisture and colour fading so that your colour photos can remain bright and beautiful for years, unlike pictures from regular ink-jet printers.
With a large built-in LCD screen to view images before you print and one-button Auto Touch-Up that helps to minimise red-eye, correct exposure and improve focus, printing pictures has never been easier or more fun. Also, just as professional photographs create contact sheets to determine which photos to print, your Picture Station printer lets you make an Index Print of Thumbnail images direct from your memory card, and then you can quickly review the images with family and friends before making the photo prints you want.
Sony has also included some creative feature in this printer which provides a number of special layouts, including a calendar month or possibility of super-imposing pre-set phrases, such as ‘happy birthday,’ ‘thank you’ or ‘congratulations.’ The filter feature, which is also built-in, offers six options for modifying digital photos before printing — the cross filter can make the lights in a photo more dramatic, while the partial colour filter lets you highlight the subject of a photo in full colour and remove colour in other areas of the print. The paint filter adjusts the image to appear as if it was printed on canvas and the monochrome and sepia filters let you create a more artistic black and white image of a colour photo.
While all the printers are compatible with most PictBridge-enabled cameras, they offer optimised performance with Sony’s Cyber-shot and Alpha DSLR cameras. Each printer can access the MakerNotes in the picture files created from Sony digital still cameras and use this data to create the best print based on the settings used when the photo was taken.
Conclusion:
Sony's compact DPP-F70 Picture Station photo printer produces lab-quality colour prints quickly and easily at home, office, and even while travelling. This lightweight photo printer with built-in carrying handles, and the ability to print pictures in less than a minute promises fantastic results. Sony’s printer brings the photo lab to you, whether you are out at a party or in the comfort of your home
Overall:
The DPP-FP70 is a good all-around snapshot printer, offering plenty of features, fast printing, and a decent design. But Sony products are rarely the least expensive available, and this device is no different. If you want to capture the ‘life’ of the party however, this is your best bet.
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