Is home printing cost-effective ?

I have never printed pictures at home and am thinking of buying a

canon ip6000D. lets leave the printer price aside for this discussion.

 

my main concern is "is it cost effective to print color photos at home

?" I can get 4X6 prints for around 20-25 cents each (in us) and 8X10

for around $4-5 each.

 

how many pictures can I print from one set of cartridges ? I know

thats difficult to estimate because of the different colors. Are there

any ballpark numbers out there on any website/forum that I can go and

study ? say roughly x-to-y 4X6 OR x-to-y 8X10 ? looking for something

like that.

 

What are you guys' experiences ? can we say its cost-effective for

8X10 and not for 4X6 ? just based on price of ink and good glossy

picture paper ?

 

at the back of my mind i know i will end up spending more with home

printing...just because i will take many more prints than what I would

have :-) lets not complicate matters by putting that in the equation

:-) lab is very close to my place and hence collecting prints is not

an issue.

 

say, i have to print 100 8X10 pictures...wud home printing be cheaper

? or say, 200 4X6 ? what wud be cheaper

 

Thanks in advance for helping me go through this dilemma

 

Kaustubh

I doubt it's cheaper. I do it for the control I have over the output.

When I was researching printers I found this web page: http://www.luminous-landscape.com/reviews/printers/2200-2nd-opinion.shtml

that has some ballpark prices for ink costs for an Epson 2200. The numbers quoted are $0.43 per 4x6 print on Epson Premium Lustre paper and $1.43 per 8x10 print on the same paper. This does suggest that home printing might actually be cheaper than your photo lab in some cases, at least at the larger print sizes, but there are so many variables (costs of different brands of ink, amount of ink used by different printers, amount of ink used for different types of papers, costs of different types of papers...) that it does get hard to make really solid comparisons.

 

Like Dion, I went to printing my pictures myself to gain more control over the process. I needed to be able to make a print and study it to see if there is anything that needs to be tweaked and then try printing again, and so on. Yes, this uses more paper and ink, but it also produces better prints.

 

If you like to get 4x6 prints of pretty much every picture you shoot it may well make sense to have those done at the lab and just focus making the enlargements at home.

I don't think it cheaper either. I do it for control as well. Also my prints are MUCH better than what I could get from any affordable local alternative. I also like to do "digital darkroom" work myself, especially experimenting with various papers for B&W printing.

I used to print at home, but I don't anymore, because it just wasn't worth the cost, and wasn't worth the hassle of clogged nozzles, and all the other associated maintenance, plus the room that 2 printers take (1 for color, the other dedicated to B&W)

 

What I've found out is that a properly corrected/adjusted and profiled image (in PS) will produce great controlled results at a commercial printer, assuming you give them the proper instructions.

 

I print at my local Costco, and always ask them to print to the Noritsu 2901. I also specifically request that they make NO digital adjustments, nor crop in any way.

 

Of course, my images are profiled for that specific printer and for Fuji Crystal Archive paper, which my local Costco uses.

 

An 8x12 is less than $2.

For small prints (4x6) probably not.

 

for 8x10 yes. As low as 1/4 of the cost of what you're paying (assuming a printer with low ink costs like the Epson R2400 rather than one of the smaller printers, which will only net around 1/2 your cost for 8x10)

 

Prints per cart depends on the printer and the image.

For small prints it's probably cheaper to have them printed by a lab, for larger prints (A4+) it's cheaper to do them at home.

A key factor is what your time is worth to you. For amateur work, this is a hypothetical. If you're shooting professionally, you're almost certain to be billing more for the hours you spend shooting that the hours you spend printing.

I use www.mpix.com lately for printing and at about $2-3 for very good 8x10s there's little reason to print at home.

Our photography is just not cost effective if we factor in our time. I believe I could hire a pro or buy prints for the time and money I have spent.

 

I do it because I like to see MY results. That includes shooting, developing and printing. After all it is just an enjoyable hobby for me.

 

If you just like shooting but don't like printing, have someone print for you. That's OK. But there is no part of what we do that can be cost justified.

What does this have to do with film and processing? If you're talking about inkjets, you should definitely be in the digital darkroom forum. If you were smart, you'd be printing RA-4/ I can get an 8x10 for ~40c using RA-4 paper and chemistry.

I use a Canon 4400 and never regretted getting it. I figure the cost per image (4x6 or 5x7) is probably about the same as store bought, maybe slightly higher, but the control and selectivity I have of what images I want to print far out weighs the slight difference in cost.

<p>I don't print 4x6" prints at home. Good quality photo paper in this size costs about 50¢ (all figures in Canadian dollars) per page. My local photo lab does good Frontier prints for 35¢ each, so even if the ink were free, it would still cost more to print at home. Good quality 8.5x11" photo paper costs about $1 per page, and you can print three 4x6" prints on it, cutting the paper cost to about the same as getting prints done at the lab, but again, since ink isn't free, the lab still works out to be cheaper. I don't know what the ink cost is, but as a rough ballpark guesstimate, I've seen the suggestion that the cost of ink is at least as much as the cost of paper, so printing three 4x6" prints on one 8.5x11" page probably costs at least double what the lab charges.</p>

 

<p>Getting an 8x10" print at the lab, on the other hand, costs around $6; the cost to do it at home is $1 for the paper and probably $1-2 for the ink.</p>

 

<p>So my conclusion is that printing 4x6" at home is probably twice as expensive as getting them done at the lab, but the opposite applies to 8x10".</p>

<p>Oh, and of course, I'm totally ignoring the cost of the printer itself. A lot of photo printers these days sell for a price that's about the same as the retail price of the ink cartridges (i.e. if you're accounting for consumables as part of the per-page price, as I did above, the hardware itself is pretty close to being free), but that typically doesn't apply to the higher-end printers.</p>