P-440 Photo Printer

The Olympus P-440 Digital Photo Printer is ideal for today's professional studio or event photographers. It produces five different print sizes up to true 8" x 10" in only 75 seconds with either glossy or matte finish. Other print sizes include Postcard, Photo- Album, Passport, Index and A5 Wide. The P-440 can also automatically print up to 50 copies of the same image. It can be connected to PCs via USB or operated in standalone mode.

Prints from the P-440 emerge in archival condition - dry, durable and ready to share. A protective laminate overcoat resists water, scratching, moisture, fading and fingerprints. The P-440 employs a dye-sublimation print engine that uses heat to vaporize color dyes that saturate the photo paper and create smooth, realistic, continuous-tone images. The vaporized colors permeate the surface of the paper, creating a gentle gradation at the edges of each pixel. Because the color infuses the paper, it is also less vulnerable to fading and distortion over time. The 24-bit color gradations produce a palette of approximately 16.7 million colors for outstanding photo-realistic prints.

The P-440 can print directly from removable xD-Picture Card or PCMCIA card adapters for SmartMedia, Memory Stick, Secure Digital and CompactFlash cards, just insert the card into a slot on the front of the printer. This enables users to circumvent their computers for on-scene printing of images. The builtin 1.8-inch color LCD display and the easy-to-navigate menu makes it simple to preview and select the images for printing. The menus provide many creative options and image-editing tools to adjust layout, sharpness and brightness, as well as correct color. In addition, the printer includes a variety of filters, stamps, backgrounds and decorative mattings to frame prints. The P-440 can also be connected to a television to provide a larger display for previewing and selecting images.

Olympus P-440 Features:

• Dye-sublimation print process produces smooth, realistic, continuous-tone images that are coated to resist fading, water and fingerprints.
• Fast 75-second print time (full-size A4 print after image processing)
• Can automatically print up to 50 copies of the same image
• Print true 8"x10" pictures or Postcard, Photo-Album, Index or Passport size
• Creative options: filters, stamps, backgrounds, decorative mattings and frames
• Image-editing tools to adjust layout, sharpness, and brightness
• Print directly from xD-Picture Card or other media…without using a computer
• Connect the P-440 to PC or Mac computers via USB
• 1.8" color LCD to review images, navigate menus and select your preferences
• Glossy or matte finish
• Video out to connect the P-440 to a television to preview and select images to print

Setup and maintenance is a snap. Just open the front and install or replace the printing ribbon and fill the cassette with paper, that's it. Unlike inkjet printers there's no messy ink cartridges to deal with, only a dry roll of ribbon.

Olympus supplies the ribbon in either glossy or matte finish, it's good for 50 prints. The paper is sold separately in 25 sheet packs of A4 size Normal, Snapshot, Postcard and Album types. B&H Photo in N.Y. lists the matte ribbon for $40, $45 for glossy and $24 for 25 sheets of normal photo paper. Minus the shipping charges that gives us a $1.86 per print cost for 8x10" glossy prints.

Compatible with both Windows and Macintosh platforms, the P-440 has a USB 1.1 port for connection to the host computer. The connector above it allows the printer to be connected to a television or video monitor.

The P-440 has two built-in card slots that let you print directly from xD-Picture Card media used in Olympus and Fuji cameras

or with the appropriate (and optional) PCMCIA adapter you can read CompactFlash Type I and II, Microdrives, SmartMedia, Memory Stick, Memory Stick Pro, Secure Digital or MultiMedia Cards.

The P-440's front control panel is easy to operate when using the printer in standalone mode without a computer. The 1.8-inch color LCD is a major upgrade from the previous P-400's monochrome display. We'll go into more detail on the menus and print options on the next page.