Photo printer

[crainbow]

I have two Epson printers. The R800 and the 2880. I use the R800 for the 4x6's and the 2880 for anything else. I will never send out for prints.

The 2880 uses the same inks as the super large commercial printers, plus I get the option of what paper I am going to use. I have been experimenting with the various papers that are on the market. And they can make a big difference in the look of the image.

Chuck

 

[KarenAylwood]

I guess my feeling is that I know I'll pay more for prints, but I want the luxury of being able to manipulate the photo the way I want, reprint if I'm unhappy with the results, and print whenever I want. It's not about the price per print to me. I guess my class really spoiled me because I never saw differences in print quality like I do now.

For those who have the Pixma Pro9000, thanks for the replies on the quality. It gets amazing reviews, and in a "printers for photographers" article it was rated one of the best under the "budget" category (the best in the regular category ranged from $2K to $16K ).

I was sort of wondering if the ability to print whenever is as great as I think it'll be (hence the "do you love it?" question). I was afraid of not being happy with the quality so I researched the Pro9000 a lot before deciding on it. The other Pixmas were good, but not great in quality. From the reviews I've read from serious photographers, the printer is incredible for the money.

I guess I'm realizing it really does depend on the person. Some swear they'll never send them out again, and others swear they'll never print at home again. I guess I have a week or so to decide, but I'm leaning towards buying it.

For those who love their printer- is $330 shipped a good deal for this printer? Retail is $500, average price online is $400 before shipping, and this model was released a year and a half ago.

 

[MICKEY88]

I have a good photo printer, I like the job it does, but I rarely use it.
if I'm hosting a party or family get together I often take some pictures and print them out for guests, otherwise I feel my time is better spent doing other photography related tasks.
Granted the seeds for that thought process were probably planted 20+ years ago when I took a course in photography and they emphasized that unless you absolutely loved spending time in the darkroom, a photographers time was best spent behind the camera..

Once I've processed a folder of pictures I find it much easier to just upload to mpix and let professionals do my printing, pay 5 dollars extra for overnight shipping, and I have near instant gratification.

I call photography my anti-drug, there is the high when first viewing a shot in camera, then the high when viewing it larger on a 22 inch monitor, then the high of viewing the print, by sending them out for printing, I extend the length of the overall high..

for the most part it is a matter of personal preference..

to me taking the photos and post processing them, are relaxing passions..

printing is work...

 

[MICKEY88]

I think the only way to truly evalute print quality would be to take several photos on film, develop them and do the same shots with digital, print them and compare them all side by side.

that would be good for comparing film to digital,

but if you want to compare home printing to commercial printing, wouldn't it make more sense to shoot with digital, and use the same file to print at home, and to send to a commercial lab for printing..

 

[bnorm27]

I currently have an HP Photosmart 7550. This printer is about 6 years old. It does a great job with 4x6 prints. 8x10's not as good for some reason. It takes 3 ink cartridges (56,57 & 58), and normally costs around $75-80 to replace all three. As we use this for general printing too, it is hard to state what it costs per print.

I am really considering the new Kodak series of printers (ESP 5, 7 or 9). The ink is only about $15 per color cartridge, and $10 for black. They have been getting some good early reviews.

 

[2x_dis_dad]

I have a Samsung photo printer. It only prints 4 x 6's and is a dye sublimation printer. There is no ink for it. The paper it uses comes with a printer ribbon of sorts. The ribbon does exactly as many as there is paper. It prints perfectly.

 

[Tuffcookie]

I have the Canon Pixma ip5000. I think it does just as good as SnapFish (or better).

I like being able to manipulate and adjust the pictures until I have what I want and the instant gratification is another nice feature!

TC

 

[Amy]

This has nothing to do with photography, but you folks are very tech-savvy and I'm not, so I figured I'd ask here if you don't mind.

Had a little extra cash this month, so I decided to finally get rid of that POS Dell printer that I've had for years (came free with our computer), and I bought a Canon wireless printer. I followed all the installation directions, and my desktop computer works just fine with it, communicating through our FiOS router.

DS18 doesn't go back to college until this weekend, so last night we decided to see if his school laptop could print to the new wireless printer. He's a freshman and the college supplies laptops to all freshmen, so it's a fairly new computer (he got it in August). I have an older (4 years old) Canon photo printer that's connected to my desktop computer via USB cable; DS's laptop had no problem finding the "old" printer and installing the drivers and printing to that printer.

The problem arose when we tried adding the new wireless printer to DS's laptop: the laptop found the printer on our home network with no problem, but when he went to download the drivers, he got an error message that an administrator needed to login and supply a password, and it listed the domain as his college. DS went into his profile on his laptop, and he's listed as a "SophosAdministrator" (whatever that is). He wanted to try to change his settings, but I wouldn't let him because I didn't want to mess up his connection to the college network (and also because neither of us really knew what we were doing ).

Anyway, I know here at work we aren't allowed to download anything to our computers without going through our system administrators - we can't even update Adobe/Flash when a new version comes out. So I'm thinking that the college has a similar type of security installed on the school-issued laptops so the students aren't out there downloading things loaded with viruses to infect the college's network.

Am I correct in thinking that's what happened when DS tried to download the drivers for the new wireless printer? Whatever security settings the college has on his laptop recognized my "old" printer and let him download those drivers, but the new wireless printer is too new and the security didn't recognize the new printer, so it wouldn't let him download the drivers without a system administrator's ok?

Or am I totally wrong and we missed a step in adding the wireless printer to his list of available printers?

 

[EnnEss]

Well, you're right and you're wrong. Your son has a computer with which he has no access rights to. Its basically a word processing brick and hopefully they didn't charge him for that if they're going to so severly limit access. On the other hand if they're running vista they might just be clueless as to what they set the settings to (really bad admin). Either way he should go talk to whoever does it at the school and get it changed or at least pester them a couple times a week to install something new.

I could walk you through how to change the security settings but it sounds like your son doesn't have access to do that, the admin will know how and its really easy anyways. Any security program would let drivers through or adobe for that matter, its definately a system access issue. Sounds like both your work opted to dumb proof their systems as opposed to relying on security programs (which dont work for anything mildly sophisticated anyways).

There's another way around this using 2 files installed on a thumb drive if your son really struggles to get them to help him. You could use it too, its fairly common among admins to shortcut systems but its usually grounds for dismissal as you're circumventing your "firewall" so I wouldn't reccommend it if you're not an admin. Im not sure what they'd do at school with that type of thing, in all honesty they probably dont pay close enough attention at most schools and its a common method to get around p2p bans at them, again wrong and could lead to suspension etc., and in America downloading is illegal, here its legal schools just ban it to stop massive bandwidth usage.

 

[ilovmy3kidz]

For Christmas with my new camera DH got me a Canon MX310 all in one printer to replace the Dell all in one. After one month it is warning us that ink is low. I've only printed 6-10 pictures and some normal home usage things (kids reports for school, etc). I'm sure we've printed more than I remember, but I know we only replaced the high yield dell ink about 2x a year! And they cost about $75 for 3 cartridges (I would order 2 black 1 color, then next time order 2 coler one black). I went to office max and the mid range canon are like $35 each! There is no way I'm spending $70 a month on ink! An internet search found places selling either their brand or remanufactured for $20 range. Anyone order from a reputable online seller? I'm about to go out to the garage and get the dell back! The feed tray is broken and sometimes it eats 2 sheets of paper at a time, but at least the ink cost won't kill me!

 

[MICKEY88]

you might want to check your ink cartridge to see if it was a full size cartridge, some printers only ship with a trial size ink cartridge just to get you started

 

[Chikabowa]

We usually buy our ink from Laser Monks.
Also, our local Office Max does some sort of ink swap/recycle program, so you bring in the cartridges, and they refill them for a fraction of the price of buying new cartridges. I like doing that a lot - plus, it's about reusing something instead of throwing it away.
We've, on occasion, found good deals on cartridges at Costco as well.

 

[jann1033]

i have an hp but it's ink just went way up ( i think about $7+ a cartridge) so could be other brands went up as well. i had a canon before and the best thing about it was separate ink cartridges, the hp has all color and photo inks in one cartridge( each) which totally wastes the ink. nothing you can do now but just something to look for next printer you buy.

check your warranty carefully before using refilled cartridges, if i used them, they invalidated my warranty( hmm could that be so hp could see more ink, i'm sure not )

 

[2manypets]

My DH & DD just got new SLR camera and now we're looking at photo printers. He really likes the Canon Pro-9000, but would like to hear about personal experiences with it or suggestions for a good photo printer.

TIA

 

[MICKEY88]

online photo labs, cheaper, less work and professionals doing the printing..

 

[boBQuincy]

I have a Pro9000 (and it's predecessor i9900), this printer can produce prints that equal or surpass anything I have seen from *any* lab.

However... it won't be easy or inexpensive. For the best results we need to start with a calibrated monitor. Canon printers have all the profiles set up for Canon paper but when we start using other paper we need profiles. Fortunately there are many available from Ilford and others.

Next we will need software that recognizes profiles and provides soft proofing (Photoshop does).

Recently Canon has stepped up their efforts to provide good paper and now offer some *really* nice fine art rag paper (made by Hahnemuhle). The Pro9000 with this paper produces great prints!

 

[2manypets]

Thank Bob, this is exactly what my DH was looking for. He's so excited to get new "toys" for his camera.

 

[kpadalik]

I'm hoping this is the right place to post this (you can move it if needed, mods) and I'm hoping that you all can help me.

I've had an HP Photosmart 7150 printer for almost 9 years now. It has been a fabulous printer for printing out pictures. I'm an avid scrapbooker and I constantly print 4x6 pictures, sometimes 5x7, and rarely 8x10. However, after all these years, my printer has just about died and gone to printer heaven. I've cleaned it, got new ink cartridges, etc - all to no avail.

Does anyone have any recommendations for a good photo printer? I don't want to spend hundreds of dollars on one, but I want a good one that is going to print up good pictures. My HP used to print out almost-lab quality pics.

Thanks for your help! I will be a very happy camper when I can start getting pics printed at home instead of running up to Walgreens all the time!

 

[jrc-elpaso]

Given the price of ink and paper it might be cheaper to upload your pics to Walmart or Walgreens photo shop - I've found both to be good. I generally use Walmart since I grocery shop there every weekend and then I just pick my prints up then. They also do a very good job on enlargements. I've gotten a couple of 12 x 18 prints and was very pleased (those took a few days since they only do up to 8 x 10 prints in-house.
If you like scrapbooking have you ever tried putting together a printed photobook? I've used Picaboo and am working on one using Smilebooks. In both cases you download their software (FREE) and put your book together - layouts, backgrounds, etc. Then upload the book and have it printed. The one I got from Picaboo for our Alaska cruise last year turned out gorgeous - and I had a ball putting it together.

 

[broberts]

If you were very pleased with your previous printer, why not get another HP? They have some pretty nice models