MarkBarbieri
Semi-retired
- Joined
- Aug 20, 2006
- Messages
- 6,172
I've gone through this debate many times. Should I make my own prints or send them out? I've found that I print a lot more when I'm making my own prints rather than sending them out. On the other hand, when my home printing system is disrupted, I practically quit printing altogether. You can walk around my house and see the various periods during which I printed because they cover narrow age bands of my kids. I've got pictures for the other ages, I just don't have prints.
A friend recently bought an Epson 3880 and has been making prints. The quality of his prints and his talk about how much printing has motivated him to improve his shooting has inspired me. I ordered a printer yesterday. I had expected to get an Epson (they have practically had a monopoly on large format ink jet printers for many years), but I was really impressed by the latest Canon printers and went with one of them instead. The fact that Canon is heavily discounting, giving huge cash rebates and throwing in extra inks made the decision easy for me. The cost was practically half of what the equivalent Epson would have been and the reviews of the new Canons have been very favorable.
I may be getting in over my head on this one. The first clue was when the salesman asked if I had a loading dock or forklift. I told him that my forklift is, um, out for repairs. He recommended that I pay extra to have it delivered on a truck with a lift gate. My wife is going to have a heck of a time figuring out how to get this thing upstairs. At 4'x3' of floor space, it won't fit anywhere in my overcrowded office, so it will end up in the "guest" room upstairs that doubles as my photo/video gear room.
So why go through all of this hassle when I could probably save lots of money just printing online? Primarily, because printing is another part of the creative process. I want to have that final output control. Also, it seems like fun.
My friend advises me that the consumables will easily pay for themselves just by selling large prints to the various friends/neighbors/co-workers that I shoot in our garage studio, at soccer games, at school functions, etc. Hopefully that will work out. He does a lot of wedding shooting, so it definitely works for him.
One cool feature of the printer is that you can tell the driver what your paper and inks cost and it will calculate the materials cost of each print job. That will help if I decide to sell prints. It will also be useful in helping to track my own costs.
In a departure from my usual approach of ordering photo gear from B&H, I got this from a company called Shades of Paper. I was inspired when B&H boosted the price $450 overnight on the printer in my shopping cart. Shade of Paper had it very close to the original B&H price and had free shipping (except for the lift gate charge) to boot. I can't say enough good things about Shades of Paper. The salesman spent 20 minutes on the phone with me talking about papers, printing software, setup, and everything else I was curious about or things that he thought I should know. He also invited me to call back when I get it for help with the setup process. With great prices and incredible service, I'm pretty sure they'll have my future printer/paper/ink related business.
So do you do your own printing? Has printing changed your photography?
A friend recently bought an Epson 3880 and has been making prints. The quality of his prints and his talk about how much printing has motivated him to improve his shooting has inspired me. I ordered a printer yesterday. I had expected to get an Epson (they have practically had a monopoly on large format ink jet printers for many years), but I was really impressed by the latest Canon printers and went with one of them instead. The fact that Canon is heavily discounting, giving huge cash rebates and throwing in extra inks made the decision easy for me. The cost was practically half of what the equivalent Epson would have been and the reviews of the new Canons have been very favorable.
I may be getting in over my head on this one. The first clue was when the salesman asked if I had a loading dock or forklift. I told him that my forklift is, um, out for repairs. He recommended that I pay extra to have it delivered on a truck with a lift gate. My wife is going to have a heck of a time figuring out how to get this thing upstairs. At 4'x3' of floor space, it won't fit anywhere in my overcrowded office, so it will end up in the "guest" room upstairs that doubles as my photo/video gear room.
So why go through all of this hassle when I could probably save lots of money just printing online? Primarily, because printing is another part of the creative process. I want to have that final output control. Also, it seems like fun.
My friend advises me that the consumables will easily pay for themselves just by selling large prints to the various friends/neighbors/co-workers that I shoot in our garage studio, at soccer games, at school functions, etc. Hopefully that will work out. He does a lot of wedding shooting, so it definitely works for him.
One cool feature of the printer is that you can tell the driver what your paper and inks cost and it will calculate the materials cost of each print job. That will help if I decide to sell prints. It will also be useful in helping to track my own costs.
In a departure from my usual approach of ordering photo gear from B&H, I got this from a company called Shades of Paper. I was inspired when B&H boosted the price $450 overnight on the printer in my shopping cart. Shade of Paper had it very close to the original B&H price and had free shipping (except for the lift gate charge) to boot. I can't say enough good things about Shades of Paper. The salesman spent 20 minutes on the phone with me talking about papers, printing software, setup, and everything else I was curious about or things that he thought I should know. He also invited me to call back when I get it for help with the setup process. With great prices and incredible service, I'm pretty sure they'll have my future printer/paper/ink related business.
So do you do your own printing? Has printing changed your photography?
