advice on photo printers

[bulletmonk]

i recently bought a digi camera, its a fuji 202 and was around £120, hardly top of the range, but for my first camera im very pleased.
part of the reason for getting the camera was to print up my own pictures.i have been thinking of changing my printer and i saw some photo printers on the net. i wasent aware of them till know, but i am hardly upto date on these things.
i just wanted a bit of advice about them and how they work and any attachments id need to print off pictures from the camera etc. i have under £200 to spend, not a great deal but its what i can afford.

hope you can help.

[jholloway]

You don't need a "photo" printer to print excellent photos. In fact, Consumer Reports (USA) in their testing found that most non-photo printers did as good or better job with photos than the "photo" printers. High on their list were Canon and HP. A $100 Canon (S520) was their top printer - but it seems not to be available in the UK. So, for less than £200 you should be able to find a very good printer.

The advantage of the photo printers is that they will take some of the memory cards and you don't have to go through your computer to print photos. But this gives you very limited, if any, editing features.

You will need some sort of editing programme, Irfan View is a free download, limited but usable. Some printers come with a basic programme. HP usually have one. The company web sites will tell you what is included with each printer.

[jerryctx]

My definition of "photo printer" is a printer that uses 6 inks instead of the usual 4 inks. 6 inks do make better photo prints, though the 4 ink printers may be slightly better with text.

My preference is the Epson 820 which sells for $100 US. If it is available in the UK it should be within your budget.

[bulletmonk]

when i have been looking at the specs for various printers i have noticed 6 inks mentioned but i never knew what it meant. i have just seen an epson 830 photo printer for £86.

what are epson like, i have some friends who use them and say they are very good, my only printer is a hp. the main reason for changing as well as to print my pics out is the ink price, especially if i use the printer more know to print pics, uptil know its been ok as i dont use it much, and if i do get a new one it will be mainly for printing pics.

i am going to have a look in the shops over the next few days so i will look out for the epson, especially at that price. but will i need to look for any attachment to connect camera to printer? i assume i can use a photo printer like any other one, printing whats on the p.c, but if i just wanted to print off a memory card would i need an accessory with this printer?

many thanks

[slipe]

HP defines a photo printer as any with camera connectivity. Canon and Epson define a photo printer as one with 6 ink colors.

If you already have a decent inkjet for documents get a photo printer with 6 ink colors. If it is to be your only printer get one with 4 colors as the black text on the 6 color printers is weak. The reason for this is that the black in the 4 color printers is strong pigmented ink but the black in the 6 color printers is a photo black that can mix with the colors.

The printer that does it all well is the Canon i850. http://www.steves-digicams.com/2002_...anon_i850.html It should be right at the top end of your budget though. It isn’t quite up to the quality of a good photo printer but it is very close.

[jerryctx]

The 820 prints only from the computer. You must first download from the camera to the computer but you have to do this anyway in order to save the pictures before you erase the camera memory chip.

If for some reason you must have the ability to print without the computer, the Epson 825 and 925 offer the same print quality as the 820 but also can print from the camera's memory card. The 825 may still be within your budget. Please note that printing directly from the memory card is much slower than printing from the computer and you have less control over the image (cropping, color balance, etc).

I prefer the Epsons because they offer borderless prints in all four standard sizes (4x6, 5x7, 8x10, 8.5x11 inches in the US), they will make panoramic prints (44 inches long), they use alcohol based inks (as do Canon) which are faster drying, less likely to smear, and less likely to waffle the paper if you use very thin paper. The 825 and 925 also can use roll paper which is a bit cheaper and more convenient if you make large quantities of prints. The 925 even includes a paper cutter.

Re 6 ink versus 4 ink printers. Conventional printers use 3 dye based color inks and a black pigmented ink. The black is used only for text. Pigment ink tends to stand on top of the paper, without spreading so you get very sharp text. For color prints, since there is only one shade of each color, the printer must leave varying amounts of white space around each ink dot to control how dark the color appears. As a result color photos don't have very smooth tones.

6 ink printers have light and dark shades each of magenta and cyan. They can mix the colors to vary the density giving smoother tones. They also use a dye based black which can be used in the photos but is less sharp for text.

HP offers printers that let you switch between 4 and 6 inks by exchanging a cartridge. Check out the HP's if both text and photo prints are important to you.

[bulletmonk]

i just thought, photo printer no need for computer, stick the memory card in and away you go. but as you said i need to download them and store them on my p.c. anyway and then there is the ability to alter or change the picture which i wont have if i just printed from a card.

as for text printing, as long as its readable then thats ok. its only for things i might do in word etc. but i will be using it mainly for images, and for the price, looks good. as i said in my original thread i am new to digital photography so i dont want to get too far ahead, ive done that before with electronic stuff bought too expensive without really looking when something more affordable would have suited my needs. im not going to get the cheapest just because of price, ill get it if it does what i want.

thanks for all the input, its been very helpful. a bit to think about before i buy, but that should be soon. ill let you know what i get.

cheers.

[TheGorx]

I have an older epson 870 that works fine
I've also read reviews that say epson ink is good quality ink
also I found epson ink to be less expensive
and when you think about it it's all about the price of the ink $$$

[bulletmonk]

your right about the ink. when i bought my printer a couple of years back i never even considered the price of the ink. some friends had said you can get cheaper ink but when i asked for my make and number, you couldnt. i have used the printer quite a bit, but with the price of the ink being so high i never used it as much as i will a new one.

so i will be taking that into consideration here.

cheers.

[photolady]

I'm another Epson fan. I have a 1270 and wouldn't part with it. I'm a pro photographer and sell my photos printed with my Epson. I took a photo I had printed out with the 1270 to a photo lab and they couldn't tell which was the original print from a lab and which was the one from my inkjet.

Hope this helps!!

[jholloway]

A quick bit on costs of printing photos - again from Consumer Reports - and for the US.

To print an 8x10 colour photo.

All Canons 80 cents, except the Canon Photo Printer S8300 which was 90 Cents.

HP PhotoSmarts $1.10.

Epson Stylus Photo 960 90 cents.

Epson Stylus Photo 820 $1.10.

Epson Stylus C62 80 cents.

These Epsons rated as top notch for photos.

As is Photolady, I am a professional photographer, but I use HP printers with the same results (but not the "photo" models). However, I think my next buy will be Canon.

[Aramok]

Another option is collect the photos you want printing onto either a cd or your 'smart media' or other digital media, then take it down to your local photo processors. Most now have the ability to download your pictures there and then and print them out for you... and it is certainly cheaper than purchasing a 'photo' printer, the extra ink and one thing people also forgot to mention is that fact that you really need proper photo paper as well...

I print most of my digital photos from a hp deskjet 895cxi on hp premium photo paper, in best mode. Providing the pitcure is less than A5 size, it is fine, you can only tell it is a printed photo if you look very very closely. Much past A5 and I take it to the local photographers for them to print...

[jholloway]

There is a lot of good advice here, but there is one problem - price. Just did a quick price check (Canon because it was handy). A Canon S820 is $100 but £148.90; a Canon i950 is $249.99 but £288.90. And the other day I priced a film scanner at about $300 which was over £320 in the UK. Most of the Epson printers listed for sale in the US aren't listed for the UK (as are many of the Canons) - at least so far as the item number, so I couldn't compare prices for them.

Bulletmonk should be able to stay within £200 and get a very good printer, but suggesting models isn't going to be easy for him.

And £148.90 at the present rate of exchange is about $253.13 - well over twice as much. Even a few weeks ago at about $1.50 for a £, it would be $223.35. Why so much in the UK for the same piece of equipment? And the prices given don't include VAT (or sales tax for that matter, but sales tax is usually quite a bit lower than VAT).

[slipe]

Once you realize how much it costs to print photos you won’t be printing the photos directly from the camera regardless of whether the printer has the feature. You want to sort, crop and tweak them. But I think the printer would double as a card reader, which would be convenient.

I subscribe to Consumer Reports and find them valuable for appliances, but their computer equipment knowledge and testing is poor. I just rolled my eyes at the print cost report. You have to use the paper manufactured by the printer maker to get the output exact without profiling. There is constant discussion on paper prices over on the dpreview printers forum, so I know what it goes for. Canon paper is especially pricey, and there is no way they could have purchased the Canon premium glossy (Pro) locally for 90c a sheet – and that is assuming the ink is free. And if they didn’t use Canon paper as they should, I can guarantee from reading their tests they don’t have anyone there that would have a clue about profiling.

I think the black on the HPs that you can change out to get a 6 color printer are only 17ml compared to 42ml on their 4 color printers. It could bankrupt you in a hurry if you printed much text.

I couldn’t afford to print in the quantities I do if I didn’t refill my own ink. Canons are easy to refill and Epsons have a chip in the tank you have to reprogram – a hassle I wouldn’t want to mess with. You have to use quality ink designed specifically for your make and model. The Canons are about 3 times as fast as their Epson counterparts in the higher end photo printers but lose that edge as you get cheaper.

I think all current inkjets print borderless.

Most cameras let you download the photos and sort, crop and tweak them. Format the card in the camera and upload the processed photos back into the camera for transport to the photofinisher. You can do that with any card reader. And if you have a CD writer all photofinishers can read those. If you print mostly snapshot sized prints and start with paper that size you can’t compete in price with the photofinisher. If you print 4 on an 8 ½ X 11 you can match their price. If you print 4 onto an 8 ½ X 11 using Red River Paper and Inkjet Goodies ink you end up at about 6c a print, which the photofinisher can’t touch. If you profile correctly for the ink and paper you can’t see the difference between a good inkjet print from a photo printer and one from the photofinisher.

[semble]

I think the black on the HPs that you can change out to get a 6 color printer are only 17ml compared to 42ml on their 4 color printers. It could bankrupt you in a hurry if you printed much text.

hp 45: 42ml $29.99
hp 15: 21ml $29.99

most 4 color printers from hp now use the 15. I think the 900 series printers were the last to use the 45.

hp 56: 17ml $19.99

so.. the black ink is actually cheaper for the six color printers.