Photography is about to take an interesting turn, as MakerBot installed in its newly opened NoHo store a 3D printing photo booth. The 3D personal portraits are more than affordable, despite the novelty of this technology.
3D printing and the devices used for it become more and more accessible, to the point where a lot of people can afford purchasing such a printer. MakerBot Industries is a manufacturer that enjoyed a lot of publicity lately, even though this company does not make the cheapest 3D printer. The 3D printing photo booth installed in NoHo plays a marketing role, while also demonstrating the capabilities of 3D printers in a very innovative manner. Admittedly, this is not the first 3D printer to make personal portraits, but it may well be the first one to make them accessible to anyone at a low price. However, you should know that MakerBot did not do this on its own. ShapeShot, a company specialized in printing of 3D photos, has been brought to help.
The recent offer of the Japanese makes colored miniature replicas of persons, while MakerBot’s product only prints monochrome replicas of their head. You may consider that a downside, if you want, but wait till you see how much the 3D printed personal portrait costs. Upon entering the photo booth, customers will have to pay $5 for getting their head scanned (externally, there’s no MRI or CT scanning involved in here), and $20 for having the image printed. That’s it! Only $25! I could bet money that some of the readers that can’t get to that part of the world are a bit envious.
It is safe to say that MakerBot’s technology will not replace classic printing or publishing anytime soon. Still, it is nice to see that advancements are made in this direction, too. As far as public perception goes, it will take a while until people accept 3D photo booths and 3D printing on anything else than paper.
To have your portrait printed in 3D, you can either go to 298 Mulberry Street in Manhattan, where MakerBot’s store is located, or visit the online store. No matter what option you choose, one thing is sure: the 3D portrait will last a lot longer than photos printed on paper. That is, unless the company decided to use some sort of biodegradable filament that will cause the portrait to deteriorate as time passes (you can think of this as an aging process for 3D printed objects).