Noritsu

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Noritsu America Corporation is the North American company that sells, distributes and repairs photo processing machines designed and manufactured by Noritsu Koki, Ltd. of Japan. Founded in 1978, the company has a dedicated sales, technical support and field support staff based in Buena Park, California.

Noritsu printer-paper processors (called minilabs) are typically designated a model number beginning with "QSS" followed by a number which increases with each new model. As on April, 2006, the newest Noritsu minilab is the QSS-3411. Noritsu film processors for both C-41 negative and E-6 slide films are typically designated QSF, followed by a letter/number combination.

Noritsu is unique among companies that produce 1 hour photofinishing equipment in that they do not produce consumer photographic products such as film, photographic paper and chemistry. Because of this, Noritsu has allied themselves with the Eastman Kodak corporation, which produces film, photographic paper and chemistry, but not photofinishing equipment. In the past, some Noritsu models have been re-branded and sold by Kodak as their own equipment. More recently, Noritsu has sold their digital minilabs under their own name, but with Kodak's software (called DLS for Digital Lab System) providing image processing and a user interface, rather than Noritsu's own software. Machines with Kodak DLS software typically have the last digit in their model number changed to a 2 (i.e. a QSS-3011 will be called a QSS-3012 with Kodak DLS.) Additionally, Noritsu sold and supported Kodak's "Picture Maker" kiosks when they were first introduced in the mid 1990s.

Although Noritsu promotes the use of Kodak paper and chemistry in their equipment, other brands can be used, such as Fuji, or Trebla.

Noritsu printer-paper processors are designed for color photographic prints, but can be modified to print black and white. This procedure involves removing the yellow and cyan dichroic filters (the magenta filter is retained for a contrast filter) and replacing the heaters which warm the RA-4 color developer with a chiller.

Although Noritsu has typically produced minilabs that utilize traditional silver halide papers and photographic exposure systems, since 2003, in partnership with Epson, inkjet printing systems have been added to the product line. Noritsu refers to them as "digital dry printers" and designated them with a model number beginning with "dDP" (sic.)