By Graham K. Rogers

At the start of this week, I was sent a link to an interesting video on YouTube that had Simon Roberts explaining what was involved in taking photographs on a large format film camera and seeing the process through to printing large, high quality images.

It is clear that digital is not dead and there are still many creative people in the world who care about quality output, whatever medium they use.

The renowned Japanese designer, Kansai Yamamoto, has a history of showing his work at international events. As well as his noted 1971 debut in London, he has also produced work for shows that combine fashion with music, dance and entertainment on a large scale in locations such as Red Square in Moscow, Nehru Stadium in India and Tokyo Dome.

His concern with quality output for his work with textiles led to an approach to Epson whose printers he used for his "Fashion in Motion: Kansai Yamamoto" held in 2013 at London's Victoria & Albert museum. With the success of that show he again teamed with Epson for the "HELLO ISTANBUL!!" show held last October.

For the show some 800 m² were printed onto polyester fabrics using Epson SureColor SC-F7100 series dye sublimation printers. Nylon and cotton fabric was printed using the Epson SurePress FP-30160 direct-to-garment printer, and the Monna Lisa. Using such techniques allowed Kansai Yamamoto full control over the creation process while ensuring that the designs were faithfully reproduced, with some spectacular results.

Epson's PrecisionCore printhead boosts productivity thanks to high-density 720-dpi nozzles that can each fire up to 40,000 ink droplets per second. The SurePress FP-30160 and SureColor SC-F7100 series deliver both high throughput and amazing image quality at speeds of 35 m²/ hour and 58.9 m²/ hour respectively in default.

An interview with Kansai Yamamoto can be seen on YouTube and the detailed press release on the use of Epson print solutions by Kansai Yamamoto is available on the Epson site.

Graham K. Rogers teaches at the Faculty of Engineering, Mahidol University in Thailand where he is also Assistant Dean. He wrote in the Bangkok Post, Database supplement on IT subjects. For the last seven years of Database he wrote a column on Apple and Macs. He is now continuing that in the Bangkok Post supplement, Life.