Starting to Print

[kwsharp]

<p>I've had my camera for about 11 months and have taken images I like, but have not printed anything yet. Given a budget of around $500 what would be a good printer for color. What is the real cost of ink?<br>

Large format is not important to me yet. 8 by 10 would be fine.<br>

-Ken</p>

[josephbraun]

<p>You could buy a used HP 2400. That does 11X14 and makes awesome prints. very expensive ink though. make sure you also buy monitor calibration/ paper profiling gear ($300), or your prints won't look like they do on the screen :)</p>

[garydem]

<p>you can get a hp7960 if you can find one. in the reviews it was found to make RGB color charts dead on if you used the hp paper it is recommended for. in any event make sure you get a monitor calibrator hard/software. i use and recommend the eyeone display 2.<br>

note-you do not have to get a printer/paper profiler if you KNOW the printer can print a specific color gamut to geat accuracy. this does limit you to the papers you can use but it does work. this is the precise reason i use the hp7960, it will make great RGB colors but you have to use the hp paper. for me this not a problem.</p>

[jpo3136b]

<p>Ken, have you tried sending any of your work out? I take it that your interest is more of that of a beginning amateur, rather than looking for the heavy-duty high-end printouts? Maybe an occasional one that would be really good; then go for the bigger enlargements?</p>

<p>There are several companies out there; if your internet connection is at broadband speeds, they really might be a good option. I mention this because of ink cartridges. You're not going to believe this, but as the result of one little adventure, I became Mister Ink Cartridge at work for a while. I ended up doing a comprehensive survey of ink cartridge costs for home-style printers, and had to gain a little expertise in that area. My specific findings are long since dated, but I cannot recommend any home-style printer for economical use. Pretty much, the industry standard is a set of delayed costs for the user.</p>

<p>The only printers that I found really met my personal approvals were expensive business-industrial models, costing thousands up front. Pretty much, after months of constant review, my die hard opinion is that companies are lowering the initial outlay by building cheaper printer units, locked down with proprietary controls. The infamous ink cartridge usage capacitor is only one of many.</p>

<p>One of the things I recommend people look for in a printer is whether or not that company sells that model to the United States federal government. I know that many people think the US government is a wasteful, bureaucratic entity. However, we actually see many companies in the market today who cannot successfully sell their equipment to the US; and, often part of it is because their consumer controls on their products are deemed too wasteful.</p>

<p>If the printer is seen as bad purchase by US government, it's really going to score poorly with people on a tight budget. Meanwhile, acceptance by the US government is not necessarily an indicator of performance superiority.</p>

<p>I mention this because I found that some of the larger companies, particularly Epson and Canon, were, at the time, marketing products that really just were not cutting it. Canon did have some models, particularly among their small, portable laptop-style printers, that did well. Epson, while it is probably the industry leader in consumer home printers, just did horribly under my cost analysis. They make equipment that works, and it meets a lot people's needs; but, it clearly failed to perform when it came to economy for the end user.</p>

<p>After spending so much time and heartache (I didn't particularly like having to carry out a project about ink cartridges, but it was important at the time) on the question of the cost of ink; well, I'd say, send it out.</p>

<p>Kodak offers a pretty good deal on 8X10s and below. If you pick and choose right, and you're interested in the smaller prints, for 4x6 print size, you can come up with a subtotal on the order of about 36 prints, mailed free, for a little over five dollars. This would be the digital equivalent of getting an old fashioned roll of 35mm printed and mailed to you. I think they also have a same-day pickup deal with CVS drug stores.</p>

<p>Mpix, I've seen them recommended. No matter what send-out service you might choose, the key will be preparing the files in a way that you know you will be able to get satisfactory prints from them. That'll be the case, no matter who does the printing. Right now, for consumer needs, I think Kodak looks favorable.</p>

<p>I know that what I wrote might run counter to your intentions. And, I'm sure that some people will disagree with me. However, I mention all this about the ink cartridges, after really having spent time, trying to pursue an effective solution. At the time, I was looking over every possible combination on the market for over 25 different types of printers. There were a few models that required cartridges that I thought were not as bad as others. But, really, I just saw across the board poor performance economically from consumer home printers.</p>

<p>So, I think, send out a small order to Kodak; keep it around five bucks to test 'em out. Maybe do something similar with your local Kinkos. And, also, whatever easy and obvious franchise printing operations may be in your area. I'd consider budgeting maybe $50, broken down on smaller orders, some small format prints, maybe two 8X10s per printer, and see how they all stack up. If you find someone that does well for you, then your $50 test will have paid off. It could save you from purchasing a less effective home printer.</p>

<p>If you're set on a home printer, I recommend you do what I did, and make a serious market survey of sustainment costs. What printer uses what ink cartridge. I'll tell you this: those page per cartridge estimates can sometimes be off by as much as 50%. Actions like cleaning and periods of disuse can really decrease an individual cartridge's performance capacity.</p>

<p>So, like I said, I don't have any current data anymore. And, I refuse to do such a survey again. I wracked my brains on it, and I found nothing -- nothing -- that met my approval. I really can't recommend any consumer home printers. Sorry.</p>

<p>Good luck. We will now hear from someone who loves their home computer printer! J.</p>

[c._f.]

<p>Other then local drugstore, a relatively decent place for "home prints" is shutterfly and winkflash. The only thing with them is make sure you uncheck whatever auto-enhance options they have checked by default.<br>

I ordered some black/whites from them that came back with a red-like tint. I sent them back the order, they reprinted it and corrected the order and claimed that the fault was due to auto enhance option being turned on. Oh and they covered the cost of shipping back to them.<br>

Good Luck<br>

Adam</p>

[kari v]

<p>Unless you want to start right away with special papers and do a lot of b&w stuff I agree with John. Send out and see how it turns out.</p>

<p>Learn to edit your files properly and quality/price ratio will be very good indeed. There may be some hickups but at least for me that means something like 1-2% is off. (I usually send out at least 50 image batchs). I can live with that. Don't think that prints just start coming right up perfect from your home unit and then there's the cost of papers and inks.<br>

B&W is a bit different though, many places seem to have problems producing untinted prints, not such a big problem if you like to tone your b&w so it's effectively color, but still. Also, you may not find nice matte or semi-matte papers at all sizes, which I happen to like.</p>

<p>So, yes, there are pros to home printing but also a lot of cons. For $500 you can buy one serious set of prints. Here you can get a 8x10 - 8x12 for about one euro. That's 500 8x10s (or 5000 4x6s) without much additional cost to speak of. At home it's $500 for the printer and one set of inks (perhaps a half full set) only.</p>

<p>Calibration gear is not totally necessary. It doesn't hurt of course but if your display is ok and well adjusted then prints will be fine. (And if you're using a cheap laptop there's no tool in the world that's going to fully correct it anyway.)<br>

Same goes for lab printer profiles. Sometimes they make a nice difference but quite often simple sRGB is all you need. Try it yourself with couple of labs. Just make sure you tell them to disable any auto adjustments.</p>

[mike_earussi1]

<p>Ken, the quality of most ink jets today is so high it's hard to find a bad one. I was recently looking for a new one and found that all the 8.5x11 dedicated printers that were so common only a few years ago had been turned into "all-in-one" types, so I had to look at the larger 13x19 ones. Unfortunately I wasn't wanting to spend that much money as the larger printers tended to be a lot more expensive, so I was happy to luck upon a good deal at Fry's. They were selling an Epson 1400 for $200, which is about $100 less than normal and so was now within my price range. It is an excellent printer, but John is correct about the cost of inks, they can rapidly eat up what budget you have if you're not careful.</p>

<p>But printing at home is not about cost, it's about control, as well as quality. It is true that Walmart can produce 8x10s cheaper than you can but you "pay" for that savings in image quality. You bring them a digital file and then you hope. Their process lowers the resolution to whatever their machine is set up for and can't be changed, so you have no control over final dpi. You do have some control over color but the look of even the best RA-4 print cannot rival that of the best ink jet in either color or clarity. My Epson 1400 will run rings around any chemical based print out there, in sharpness, contrast, clarity and in the ability to print a wider range of colors (I had my own color darkroom printing both RA-4 and R-3 for over 10 years, so I know) . It is true that there are also professional printing services that can turn out higher quality RA-4 prints than Walmart but then you pay for that, this time in money, as my local professional lab charges $6.00 for an 8x10, about twice what my 1400 costs, and it still won't look as good as my 1400.<br>

So I would say go for it, get yourself a decent printer and have fun. Just be cognizant of the costs and once you get your monitor calibrated to your printer the costs won't be that bad.</p>

[jpo3136b]

<p>I know I wrote a lot, but there was one thing I wanted to come back and add about the printers.</p>

<p>To my surprise, it was the laptop-style printers that, as a category, performed really well. They hit the cusp of economy and size and quality of operation. This was a completely unexpected finding at the time. As things were shaping up as I worked over the numbers, I had assumed that the portable laptop printers would do even worse than the desktop printers, this was not true.</p>

<p>I had assumed that companies would try to capitalize on someone's desperation to make a print in a portable situation. Not true. Instead, we saw those companies putting their best foot forward. Prices of the units were about the same, they often had a battery power option, and consumption rates were slightly more efficient. What put them over the top was that the cartridges used by those models were generally in the bottom 1/3 of the cost spread. When reviewing the cost for ink cartridges, I found that there were actually several different kinds that could work in a given printer, even though one would be the main one marketed. To discover this, I had to look at what the printer model recommended or came with, and then look up the cartridge, and then backsolve for equivalents. Never saw any advantage in pricing by trying to find a lesser used cartridge model.</p>

<p>But, point is, those laptop-style printers were so good, I had to wonder: why did they not just do a lot of these. Also saw a higher satisfaction level from the users. Once someone got one of those, they felt special; they wanted that one, and would even try to discourage others from trying to use it. "No, you want to use the big printer," that type of thing.</p>

<p>HP 450's were the top choices, overall. The Canon portable laptop printers were one. Really, the overall high performer was a laptop printer put out by HP, Hewlett-Packard. I believe it came out with a few variant models, but they were all centered around an HP 450 design. Coincidentally, that particular printer used a cartridge that was apparently used in several models, but it was still kind of crippled at about 50 pages per. What had ended up happening was that the operation costs looked like they were going to be higher, but in the long run were coming out lower. Also, those models were showing a higher level of durability; and, we didn't see as much consumption per instance of cleaning; also, really, just a much higher user satisfaction in those (but that wasn't part of the operating costs part, it was more about an overall decision, later).</p>

<p>All of these laptop printers were little rectangular printers whose top-side dimensions were about 2/3 the space of a laptop lid, but the printers would be about four inches thick in depth. I had initially expected them to be high in operation costs, and low in quality, but that was not true. Overall, the companies showed their best when they made the laptop printers. Maybe an option to consider if you are buying. Again, though, it'd go back to running the numbers and seeing what you see and thinking over the ones you actually find. Good luck. J.</p>