Interviewer :

When did you start working on the development of colour copiers?

Yamada :

Since Minolta launched the first digital full-color copier, the CF70.

Ito :

One model later, about 14 years ago, when the Digital CF80 was launched.

Interviewer :

Naturally your ultimate goal at Konica Minolta is to create colour reproduction of such high quality that copies are indistinguishable from originals. How do you decide the standards for evaluating colour reproduction?

Yamada :

We’ve always aimed to provide the industry’s highest standards in image quality. But deciding the criteria by which to judge whether an image’s quality is good or not is extremely tricky. Judgment criteria vary from person to person. Today we use data gathered from measuring instruments, which we convert into numerical results to assess image quality.

Interviewer :

What's the hardest part about improving colour reproduction?

Ito :

In the CF70, the hardest thing was getting smooth, overall reproduction of colour brightness during strength modulation. Strength modulation, simply put, means adjusting the strength of the light in the image. For example, if you look at the light in this room, you can see lights arranged on the ceiling. If we want to reduce the brightness in this room by half, we can turn out half the lights. In colour imaging, we reduce overall brightness, rather like turning down the volume on a stereo. In the latter case, variance in brightness between the bright spots and dark spots is much lower. That's the approach we take in obtaining smooth, even colour reproduction.

With sound volume adjustment, it’s difficult to adjust the sound to exactly the level you want. We finally succeeded in conquering this hurdle, ad we still use this unique technology in today’s machines to ensure quality and stability. Adding colour to documents was not the hard part. Ensuring that customers get high image quality and stability every time they use one of our copiers required exclusive technology that was by no means easy to develop.

Yamada :

Minolta chose an approach that solves a large number of issues in colour reproduction. Other companies have tried to imitate our success, but to this day no other company can match Konica Minolta in image quality and reliability.

Interviewer :

What's the most difficult aspect of colour reproduction?

Ito :

Interviewer :

So developing a colour photocopier requires an entirely different set of concepts than a black-and-white copier does.

Ito :

Exactly. Even in my private life, I find myself noticing things like line density and colour reproduction in all the printed matter I see. I carry my line density gauge and magnifying glass wherever I go! When I see something printed that catches my eye, I can't help but wonder how it was reproduced.