by David Boles
November 15, 1997
The Casio DP-8000 color dye-sublimation digital printer is really simple and fun to use. Printing "photographs" from my Casio QV-700 is fast and simple... instant gratification in a world where speed and beauty are celebrated above all. Dye-sublimation is a thermal transfer method of printing that graphics professionals use to get killer color realistic photo printouts.
Monumental Ease-of-Use
The
menu-driven DP-8000 is extremely easy to use. Instead of punching buttons on your
Casio camera, you simply touch the larger, identical buttons on the printer. The
camera's view screen serves as the visual menu guide for interacting with the printer and
this is a little tricky to get used to because you use the printer's buttons to activate
the process of printing and formatting while viewing what you're doing on the QV
screen. I prefer using the printer's buttons, because they're bigger and easier to
hit without overlapping onto another button (that happens often to me with my QV-700's
buttons).
You don't even have to open up the DP-8000's thin instruction booklet to use this baby. Just turn it on, connect your camera, turn on the camera and then the printer, hit the Menu key and whammo! You're set to print 4" x 6" color photographs! If that's too complicated, just touch the EASY button on the printer and you don't have to worry about navigating any internal print Menus.
When you're printing from your PC, you get print resolutions of 297 x 446 dpi and a print resolution of 149 x 149 dpi when connected to any Casio QV camera. Color gradation is 256 and the number of total colors is 1,677 million with 416 built-in printing patterns.
Casio QV-700 Digital Camera
While you can print images directly from your computer to the DP-8000, the
really keen way to get neat images on paper is to print them directly from a digital
camera like the QV-700. You can read my Go Inside review of that top-notch
digital camera here.
Create Personal Postcards
Making your own greeting cards is a lovely way to spread holiday cheer and bring
a smile to those you love or loathe. Below you can see a Happy Holiday postcard I
created. The photograph was taken on my Casio QV-700 and the wreath and text and
other colors and formatting were added by the DP-8000.
Getting this all to work was as simple as picking POSTCARD and then the CARD STYLE from the QV-700's view screen Menu and touching the DP-8000's SET button to print. Inserting the paper is simple. When the printer asks for the paper, insert it and the printer grabs it and prints. During the printing stage, a dot progression thermometer is visible in your camera's LCD view screen so you can see where the printer is in the printing process. Slick, say I!
(Note: After printing, I put the postcard in my HP-4C color scanner so I could get it into a digital form once again in order to display it for you here -- that's kind of reverse digital osmosis!)
Create a Calendar!
You can make contact sheets, image collages, adhesive stickers and... calendars
with the DP-8000! Here's a cool calendar I created for the month of December.
I shot the Indian image on my QV-700 and the calendar numbers and brush effect were all
formatted and made perfect by the DP-8000 during the printing process.
(Note: I also scanned this calendar with my HP-4C as well.)
Replacement Printer Packs
The key to the delightful and deep color saturation of the Casio DP-8000's
dye-sublimation digital printing process are the refill packs. These packages
contain new print cartridges as well as special paper. Once the 25 sheets have been
printed in my QS-100 paper set, I toss the thermal color print cartridge, buy a new paper
set and install a whole new print cartridge.
Conclusion
The Casio DP-8000 dye-sublimation thermal transfer color printer is really quite wonderful
and it will cost you around $299.00 on the street. That's a great price for a lovely
value that pays off in forever rich memories preserved in living color. You can
visit Casio and their other printers online here.
Copyright © 1997 by David Boles
"Go Inside" is a David Boles Trademark