APPLICATION: On-site photography and prints for youth baseball leagues

CHALLENGE: To provide parents, friends and relatives of little leaguers with high-quality photo prints, within minutes after the game

SOLUTION: Mitsubishi digital photo printers were used by Jeff Montgomery of Sportraits Photography, allowing him to create an mobile photo processing center to deliver prints almost immediately after they are captured

Underscoring the steadfast performance and market-proven reliability of Mitsubishi digital photo printers for high-volume onsite printing, Sportraits Photography relies on high-performance Mitsubishi digital photo printers to provide onsite digital photography services for youth baseball leagues.

Identifying the opportunity to converge his passions for baseball and photography, Jeff Montgomery founded Sportraits in 1995 in Fayetteville, Arkansas to provide quality photography services at youth baseball league tournaments.

In 2004, Sportraits purchased the high-performance, high-volume Mitsubishi CP-9000DW and CP-9500DW digital photo printers to offer onsite printing at tournaments, enabling them to provide parents, relatives and friends of youth baseball league players with hundreds of thousands of high-quality archival photo prints of their young baseball stars. Sportraits is now booked through summer 2008 for youth baseball league tournaments across the southern United States including the Cal Ripken League, Dixie Major and Babe Ruth Leagues.

“The key to making the sale at these events is to make the images available in the heat of the moment while the parents and kids are excited about the game,” said Montgomery. “When the game is over, proud parents visit our table to find four-by-sixes of little Johnny diving for the ball or hitting that priceless home run just minutes beforehand. There is a real ‘wow’ factor with the onsite prints - people are absolutely blown away by the image turnaround time, and are excited to go home with a personalized photo album in hand.”

Every summer, Sportraits goes on the road with its ‘Darkroom On Wheels’ – a large trailer set up with equipment that includes six Mitsubishi dye-sublimation printers: two CP-9000DW and three Mitsubishi CP-9500DW for the 4x6” prints and one CP-3020DU for 8x10” images. In just six to eight weeks of long days, Sportraits does a year’s worth of business. Montgomery and his team depend upon their equipment to ensure that the workflow is swift, efficient and trouble-free as possible.

The reliability and print quality of the Mitsubishi printers has enabled Sportraits to print all team photos in-house instead of outsourcing to a lab and offer team photo packages. Montgomery uses the 9000, 9500 for wallet-sized images, 3-1/2 x 5's 5 x 7's and the 3020 for 8 x 10's and magazine covers. According to Montgomery, the CP-3020DU easily prints over one thousand athletes’ team photos each month, lowering overhead costs and resulting in a very quick turnaround time.

Due to the cost-efficiency of the CP-9000DW and CP-9500DW, Sportraits does not display 4x6” images on monitors nor print proof sheets. Instead, Montgomery and his team print every photo, saving labor costs and eliminating the need for shipping photos after the tournament.

“Displaying photos on monitors is not worth the effort,” says Montgomery. “Customers don’t want to stand in line to search for their child’s photos on a monitor and then go through the process of ordering shots to be mailed to them or picked up at a later date. We print out all the images and put them into albums. Customers select their action photos from the albums and take them right home. Without a doubt, this is the most efficient way to make the sale.”

As a result, the high-capacity CP-9000DW and CP-9500DW print a nonstop 24 hours per day, producing a total of about 200,000 prints over the duration of the season.

“The Mitsubishi printers have exceeded our expectations in terms of longevity, reliability and consistency of prints,” continues Montgomery. “They’re real workhorse printers – fast, reliable and so cost-effective that it makes sense for us to print every image we shoot. The quality of prints is consistently outstanding.

Furthermore, Mitsubishi’s dye-sub technology ensures spill-resistant prints – at youth league tournaments, it’s inevitable that water and energy drinks are often spilled. The protective layer created by Mitsubishi’s dye-sub technology saves the photos.”

In the unlikely event that something were to happen to a Mitsubishi digital photo printer, Mitsubishi offers Express Replacement Assistance (ERA), a next business day replacement unit program. The ERA program provides customers with a team of knowledgeable technical support professionals who can resolve issues over the phone. Mitsubishi Digital Electronics America offers an industry-leading 24-hour replacement unit program so that customers such as Montgomery can receive a working replacement overnight with minimal interruption to business.

Mitsubishi digital photo printers provide high-tech, valuable solutions to digital photographers across the spectrum. From the economical CP-3020DU, a high-speed, high-resolution printer that provides full 8 x 10”and 8 x 12” color prints to the high-end CP-9550DW, an ultra-fast, high volume digital printer with superb image quality and reliability.

“Our business has benefited tremendously from Mitsubishi printers,” continues Montgomery. “Trading cards, magazine covers, bag tags, refrigerator magnets and locker room passes are all printed on the Mitsubishi printers. We have been easily able to handle increasing workloads with a very quick turnaround time, at much lower costs and hassle than using a lab. We send absolutely nothing out to labs anymore.”