Olympus' new Camedia P-200 Printer is the first professional-quality, high-speed, battery-operated, portable dye-sublimation printer. The Camedia P-200 brings photo-quality printing capability to mobile professional and amateur photographers, and anyone else who needs to produce hard copy output of digital images while on the road or in the field.

Using dye sublimation printing technology, the Camedia P-200 Printer produces continuous tone images at 320 dots per inch resolution. The printer supports 128 gradation levels per color for smooth color transitions, and delivers finished A-6 size prints (3" x 4" print area) in only 90 seconds.

The Camedia is compatible with many Olympus filmless digital cameras, including the new Camedia E-10 and E-100 RS models introduced simultaneously with the P-200. It will also function with just about any digital camera that uses SmartMedia or CompactFlash cards, especially those that support the DPOF standard.

The P-200 is very quiet until it has been running for a couple of minutes and then a small builtin cooling fan comes on to keep things from getting too hot. Dye sub printers transfer the color dyes from the ribbon to the paper using heat. And it sure is portable thanks to the biggest NiMH battery pack I've seen since last year's notebook computer. The battery pack slips onto the end of the printer and charges via the printer's AC power supply in about 2.5 hours if fully discharged. Olympus claims 50 prints per charge or it can be run indefinitely when powered by AC.

When using the DPOF function the printer automatically "knows" which images you want printed and how many prints of each. There are many DPOF settings that can be attached to images, the P-200 is compatible with date printing, print copies, selection and trimming. If trimming is specified the printing may take longer. You can also manually adjust the Sharpness of images and select the degree of contour correction desired from Normal, Soft or Sharp by pressing the Sharpness button on the control panel.