Is there a difference between LED and Laser printing?

Lambda and Lightjet are both brands of laser printer companies (Durst and Océ, respectively) that developed innovative digital replacements for traditional darkroom printing. Rather than using a bulb to expose light on photographic paper, these printers use three lasers (red, green and blue) to expose light onto photographic silver halide paper, advancing through the Lambda and in the Lightjet, rolled inside a large drum. The exposed paper is then processed in photographic chemistry to create a perfectly archival, digital but traditional C Type print. Hence the term, "digital C type".

Laser printers such as Lambda and Lightjet are the preferred choice by artists and photographers the world over. Is that down to simple brand loyalty, or is there really a difference?

Well, to the non-initiated, the discussions online seem to be dominated by manufacturers of LED printers who emphatically insist that their printers are as good as laser printers.

Laser systems rely on elaborate combinations of rotating mirrors and lenses that must remain in alignment through use. LED technology uses a Light Emitting Diode print-head as a light source which is ‘solid-state’ (ie, fixed) and has no moving parts. There’s no escaping the fact that these new machines are simpler, more energy efficient and, because they use more fixed parts, much cheaper and faster to run. So LED printers are definitely the most cost effective choice for the lab!

But at Metro Imaging we know that the needs of photographers, particularly for art are quite specific and based more around the quality of the image, rather than the speed or efficiency of the machine. For artists and photographers the key issue is resolution and image quality. Here laser printers win hands down.

Compare, for example the Durst Lambda (laser) printer with a commonly used LED printer: the ZBE’s Chromira:

Printer	PPI	DPI equivalent
ZBE Chromira	300ppi	1500 dpi
Durst Lambda Laser	400ppi	4000dpi
Océ Lightjet Laser	300ppi	4000dpi

Read more: all sources are all the manufacturers own materials:

Durst Lambda
ZBE Chromira1
ZBE CHromira 2
Océ Lightjet

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