Art Lenses and the Photographic Print – are you wasting money?

Lightjet versus Lambda – are you wasting the money you spent on expensive art lenses?

Large format printing and why the LightJet is superior: It’s in the details – literally, The construction of the Lightjet is superior to the Lambda due to the ways that each device projects it’s laser light onto the photographic paper.

The LightJet loads it’s chromogenic print paper into a perfectly round, precision engineered drum with the laser beam that travels dead center along the axis of the drum’s circle.  This means the laser always strikes perfectly LightJetLamdaLaserCompareperpendicular to the paper, a perfectly round laser dot across the entire image area. The result is maximum sharpness and detail across the entire print – corner to corner, edge to edge.

Unfortunately the Lamda uses a stationary laser that swings in an arc as the paper moves along a track. This causes the laser to be “bologna cut” as it moves away from the center of the print towards the edges – creating longer and longer oval pattern. So the only perfectly sharp area of this print is precisely down the middle. As the laser moves towards the edges, the print increasingly suffers detail and sharpness loss. While this design allows for extremely long prints over ten feet, the loss of quality is substantial and noticeable.  Such print lengths provide productivity benefits to the company making the print, but not to the fine artist customer looking for the finest print available.

“For photographers who have invested in expensive art lenses to get edge to edge sharpness and enhanced IQ, it’s clear that the flat-transport technology is taking away the benefits you paid a bundle to get.” ~ John Harris: 30 year industry veteran.

We are a nationally recognized leader in fine-art grade large format archival printing for the professional Creative. We price competitively whether you need one print or a full edition, and our TrueArt™ Process guarantees your satisfaction.

Learn more about our chromogenic print options. 

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