For the 3rd year in a row, KIS has won the 1st prize in the DIMA Shoot-Out in the digital Minilab category, with the DKS 1510 and the System 89 DLS

Last year the company broke records by becoming the first vendor to be presented 1st prize two years in a row and, against all the competition, Kis has been awarded for an unprecedented third year running, the DIMA Award for its Digital Minilab DKS 1510 (in the 8’’category), thus confirming the quality and efficiency of its technological choices. In addition, in the 10” category for the Digital minilabs, the Kodak System 89 DLS was awarded 1st prize. This is the DKS 1550 marketed by Kodak within the framework of a worldwide partnership between the two companies.

This is the 10th year that DIMA has been conducting industry standard comparison events known as the DIMA Shoot-Outs where different digital imaging systems are evaluated on a level playing field. All companies exhibiting at the PMA Trade show are eligible to participate in the competition, including Fuji, AGFA, Konica and Noritsu. The vote was held on February 21st, 2005. The jury was comprised of photographers, professionals in the field of photographic printing and journalists. To guarantee an objective vote, the origin of the prints was not disclosed. The DKS 1510, winner in the digital minilab category (8’’ format), confirmed its superiority despite the quality of the competition, including the Agfa D-Lab and the Noritsu QSS 32. The DKS 1510 received the highest mark out of all the categories, (8’’, 10’’ and 12’’), thereby reinforcing its position as leader in terms of photo quality, now held by Kis for three years. The MSB™ (Microlens Sharpened Beam) exposure system patented by KIS and integrated into the DKS 15 Series, delivers

perfect photographic quality, with a resolution of 340 dpi in the 20x30 cm format. The MSB™ projects the scanned image, loaded into an LCD onto the photographic paper, whilst multiplying the matrix resolution by 9. The LCD is animated by a piezo-electric system and manages the shape of the pixels and their relative position with extreme precision.

The KIS digital processing software, built into the DKS 15 Series, offers an extremely advanced algorithm for processing digital images. It is simple to use and user-friendly, offering a range of value added functions and services, without compromising the very easy management of orders and an archiving capacity up to 50,000 images.

The DKS 15 Series accepts all digital input formats, as well as traditional formats (135, APS, 120, 220, positives and mounted slides) thanks to the Im-1500 high resolution scanner, which also automatically detects and corrects dust and scratches.

The DKS 15 Series, producing 800 prints per hour in 3.5x5” and 4x6” formats, offers the best value for money on the market.

The DKS 15 Series is also marketed by Kodak under the name of System 80 DLS, within the framework of a worldwide partnership.

The entire range of the DKS 15 Series (DKS 1510, 1530, 1550) includes innovations rewarded in 2003 for the DKS 1500, in 2004 for the DKS 1550 and in 2005 for the DKS 1510. This prize awarded to KIS for the 3rd time, covers the entire range of KIS minilabs.

In addition, the Innovative Digital Product Award went to “Perfectly ClearTM”, a technology that has been incorporated into Kis’s range of digital minilabs and kiosks. “Perfectly ClearTM” accurately improves, not only dark images but images at nearly every level, using a patented process. In traditional film-based labs, technicians used to put a lot of effort into arbitrarily “correcting” poorly exposed images but with this leading edge algorithm, poorly exposed images can be “improved” at the click of a button, without slowing down production time, resulting in correction quality that is extremely impressive.