[The Record, Hackensack, N.J. Distributed by Knight Ridder/Tribune Business News.]
The Record via NewsEdge Corporation : Jan. 14—Professor Frank Viggiano thinks the early years of the digital camera revolution could become known as the “lost years”—the years of the lost first birthday pictures, the lost Christmas pictures, and the lost vacation pictures.

Americans took those pictures, lots of them, on their brand new digital cameras in 2001, 2002, and 2003, but never printed them. And, says Viggiano, professor of consumer products at Indiana University of Pennsylvania, until retailers and photo processing labs do a better job of persuading consumers to make those prints, there are going to be a lot of gaps in America’s photo albums.

“What we are learning is that people are taking a whole bunch of digital pictures and not printing them,” he said. “Look at the number of digital cameras sold, and the prints made, and it’s pretty easy to figure out that people are not printing as much as they should.”

Those “lost” photographs also represent losses for traditional film processing labs.

The Photo Marketing Association International (PMAI) reported last month that consumer film processing dropped by nearly 10 percent from October 2002 to October 2003. The association blamed the decline largely on the fact that “more members of the most active consumer photographic segment—young parents—use digital cameras.”

Pessimists in the photo processing industry predict the growing use of digital cameras will deal a fatal blow to most small film processing labs and one-hour photo shops, and leave only a handful of specialty printing shops. Optimists say photo labs have already weathered the worst drop in demand, and that customers are now returning to labs to print and also edit their digital photos and to make calendars and posters with their favorite images.

Dan Silna, president of Alaten, a Carlstadt-based firm that owns 10 One Hour Fromex photo labs in Manhattan and at Nanuet Mall and Rockaway Townsquare mall, wavers between optimism and pessimism. He said his photo processing volume dropped by about 20 percent in 2003. Labs in Manhattan, which used to support a photo printing shop on seemingly every block, have been hit particularly hard, he said.

Alaten has already closed several locations in recent years, including a lab at Garden State Plaza in Paramus.

However, Silna said, “While digital’s part of the problem, it could also be part of the cure.” His labs offer digital processing, and he foresees a future where consumers drop off their memory cards for one-hour processing, the way they used to drop off rolls of film.

“The world is going through a learning curve,” said Don Franz, group publisher of Photofinishing News trade publications. “The consumer is realizing that taking the picture is not the ultimate solution. It’s a step along the process.”

National chains such as Wal-Mart and Walgreen’s are taking the lead in encouraging consumers to let the lab do it, rather than print at home. Walgreen’s ads proved so successful that last week it credited digital photo printing revenues with boosting its profit margins. Walgreen’s offers digital printing at 4,300 of its drugstores, and charges 29 cents for each 4-by-6 print.

Also, for a similar price, some merchants mail prints to consumers who transmit their photos electronically.

Mike Barta, CEO of Callisto Corp., which makes photo printing software used in retail chains such as Wal-Mart and Safeway, and sold to consumers for use on their home computers, said big retailers such as Wal-Mart were quick to retool for the digital age when they first saw demand for film processing plummet.

“They all see that they can’t just stick with what they traditionally did,” he said.

Digital cameras are here to stay. Last year, for the first time, Americans bought more digital cameras than 35mm film cameras, according to the PMAI.

But trend watchers who predicted the demise of photo-printing labs were missing one key detail. Many of the owners of the new cameras either don’t know how to, or don’t want to, print the photos from their home computers.

Some, like the Pascack Valley grandmother who walked into the Bergen County Camera store in Westwood recently, digital camera in hand, don’t even own a computer. “Can you help me get my pictures out of this?” she asked owner Tom Gramegna, holding out a small, silver digital camera containing images of a new grandchild. Why does she have a digital camera when she doesn’t have a computer? “My son gave it to me,” she said.

Gramegna loves customers like that. Their digital confusion is good for business. He pointed her toward a digital imaging machine and showed her how she can select the prints she wants and make copies.

He urges those customers to let his store do the printing for them. “It’s generally less expensive, and we can give you better prints than what you can do yourself,” he said. His best digital customer is “the overburdened Bergen County mom, with two or three kids, who is frazzled and doesn’t have a lot of time to sit at the computer making prints.”

Judith M. Chigi, president of the Gene Hacker camera and video store in Hackensack, said that while traditional film processing at her store is down, new services have more than made up for lost film revenues. The store offers digital printing and has found many customers also come in to make digital scans of traditional film prints in order to remove the “red eye” effect or to recrop a picture.

Digital technician Bruce Cohen has built a growing specialty as the man who can fix old, damaged, or torn-in-pieces prints through digital technology. “I can erase the lines on people’s faces. I can take the braces off of their teeth,” Cohen said. Customers have paid as much as $150 for restored copies of torn family photographs. One woman asked for her ex-husband to be digitally removed from a batch of pictures. “She said, ‘It cost me a fortune to get this man out of my life. Now I want you to take him out of my pictures,’” Chigi said.

For Jeanette Barhydt, owner of the One Hour Film Lab in Teaneck, diversifying has been her defense in the digital revolution. She still has plenty of film processing work—as many as 100 rolls on busy days—but the lab also does digital printing, takes passport and car insurance photos, offers custom framing, and can print a picture poster-sized, turn it into a puzzle, or put it on a postcard or a pack of playing cards. That strategy has kept her sales volume steady, she said. “We’re even from last year,” she said.

Barhydt and camera store owners Gramegna and Chigi believe the smart business move is to embrace digital and film equally. “We’re not about film vs. digital,” Gramegna said. We’re about film and digital.”

He believes film photography and processing will never fade completely away. “If you believe the media, you would think film is totally passe, but that’s not the case,” Gramegna said. “Film’s had a 170-year career. It’s not going to disappear.”

Don Franz of Photofinishing News has even spotted a bit of a backlash against digital and back to film. “We’re seeing that some of the soccer moms that bought digital cameras early on have actually gone back to film,” he said. “It’s much easier as a routine to drop off a roll of film and pick up the prints.”

To see more of The Record, or to subscribe to the newspaper, go to http://www.NorthJersey.com.