Started a business last weekend; printing nightmare!

[nickjohnson]

My best friend has been telling me I should shoot at his sister's

softball tournaments for months. This weekend I finally bit.

<p>

I'm shooting with a 10D and a bag of lenses. All this worked fine.

The hard part was printing hundreds of small prints in the span of

two days. My friend assured me that this was going to be a goldmine,

and the event coordinator said that I would be the only photographer

on the field. The credit cards would cover me until I cashed all the

money I got for the pics, right?

<P>

To cut costs on ink, I got a Lyson Cave Paint continious ink system

for my Epson 2200, and about 800 sheets of letter Red River UltraPro

Satin paper. Two days before the event the CIS and paper came in. I

tested it, and got banding at all the highspeed printing modes. I

could either print 15 photos per hour and anger 48 teams of softball

players, or get something else fast.

<P>

The next morning I ordered a Hi-Touch 640DL dye-sub printer,

overnight AM with 1000 sheets of paper/ribbon. It comes, I have one

of my grunts run it up (shooting 1.5 hours north of my house) as I'm

setting up the tent. Turn it on, red light, 15 blinks. Hey, that

errors not in the manual! Oh, and the only tech support phone number

is in Taiwan. I couldn't call even though I tried (I don't know how

to get international calls with Cingular).

<P>

So we have one CIS that bands on all high speed prints, and another

dye-sub that does't print at all, all in three days.

<P>

I convinced the people at Hi-Touch California to let me switch it out

with a local distributor, so by 2pm on Friday (games started at 8am)

I had a printer that I expected to have on Wednesday. After 42 hours

of shooting and selling in three days, I'm down 800 dollars, but at

least I was able to pay for my entry fees and the costs of

paper/ribbon. Oh, and the photos turned out great. I really love the

printer.

<P>

My favorite customer comment: "Wow, thats a really great shot of me"

and then they walk away... never to return. What a weekend.

[jwink3101]

Not that it helps but hwy didn't you look into having prints done at Costco for $0.18 for 4x6 or walmart for $0.29. You could also do adorama for the same price as walmart and just ship the CD to them and they wqould ship back prints. Overnight to tweo days for costco and walmart. A week for adorama

[majid]

Justin, I think Nicholas needed a printer for on-site use. Shlepping to Costco was probably not an option.

[scott_eaton]

First question:

Why are you using an Epson 2200 for on location team events? Not only does this not make sense, it's like trying to shoot night football games with a view camera and complaining the ground glass isn't bright enough. Who ever recommended this needs to me smacked, and with a hard object. This is a slow speed, fine art printer.

 

The dye sub was the best option in the first place. I'm just giving you a hard time of course.....I have yet to use *any* Epson printer that doesn't band at high speed. I do have some sympathy that you find out the hard way.

 

A local Frontier lab could have solved this problem, but you would have lost the margin.

[bruce_rubenstein___nyc]

I shoot High School reunions for an outfit that organizes them. It's the first year that the studio that I'm with has done this. What we've found out is that unless there is some guarantee, you cna easily make zilch on an event. Last weekend I thought we had a photography museum since so many would come look at the pictures and not buy anything. One thing to do is to put the pictures up on the web where people can order them later. We using Kodak Proshots for this. BTW, we're running a PC connected to two Sony dyesub printers.

[Jerry_]

The weekend of 18 October, I used around 35 rolls of color print film in a F5 and F100 during a local, annual festival. The thought of printing would leave me senseless, so I used a local 1-hour lab. The prints were all in little albums and delivered the following Thursday. Digital is good, but not quite there yet.....

 

 

 

A number of sporting events are OK for selling prints, but unless the parents have $$$'s to spend, it is a tough sell.

[__jon__]

More money than sense...

[oskar_ojala]

Well I hope you learned that make sure you know how to use your equipment (and choose the correct equipment for the situation!) before the actual shoot. Two days is not enough: you could've have received a faulty unit, had software problems, ie. just about anything that would have made life difficult. But as we say in my country: learning the hard way usually makes you remember what you've learned.

[nickjohnson]

I appreciate both the encouragement and criticism. I deserve both.<p>

 

Fazal,<br>

You are correct; onsite printing was the property that made my product different than most other softball photographers. Most of the customers are used to only seeing thier photos on Sunday, and I wanted to change that.<p>

Scott,<br>

I was actually getting respectable speeds on my 2200, printing 2 5x7s in the corners, then I got it to print borderlessly on 5x7 paper, at about one every 2 minutes or so. The idea was that the norm is 4x6 prints for $5, or 5 for $20. I wanted to do 5x7s instead. Better, right? And I was able to print in 1440HS with the UltraChrome inks on Premium Luster Paper (and also the Red River UltraPro Satin) using ImagePrint with little or no quality loss compared to 1440. I tried to use it because I knew it worked and wouldn't cost me an arm and a leg for my first tournament.<p>

Bruce,<br>

I would very much like to put all my photos online and have the website do the sales for me. Clients, many of them, have asked if they could buy the shots online later and I had to say no. How does the ProShots system work? Who prints the photos. How is payment from the customer handled? Who needs labs if everything is done digital? If I could get on just one ProShots powered site I think it would all make sense. BTW, I was looking at Sony 5x7 printers, but I need an assessment on their print quality, durability, and cost per print.<p>

Gerald,<br>

The thought of letting some minimum wage lab-tech handle my prints makes <b>me</b> senseless. I was able to go through and weed out the out of focus or badly composed shots before printing, and I like that idea. Many of the teams were from out of state, so there were enough sales to cover the weekend's costs. The real money is in the younger groups.<p>

Jon,<br>

More credit than sense actually. :)<p>

Oskar,<br>

I was certainly worried but also a bit greedy. Tourney date kinda sprung up on me, and when I heard that I was to be the only photog, I sprung right back! I was actually retooling my photoshop printing actions and configuring the printer between games on the first day. I think small business owners just crave stress.<p><p>

Thanks for all the comments!

[brainbubba_motornapkins]

A mind-boggling story. Let me just add, I'm glad: it wasn't me,

and it all worked out in the end.

[bruce_rubenstein___nyc]

You can look at www.lyphoto.com, Reunions. Pro Shots hosts the images, and handles the money collection, but the photographer handles the order fullfillment. There are sites which will do all of it for you and take a percentage.

[nickjohnson]

Bruce,<br>

I'm getting ready to put down the money on ProShots on monday, but if you know of a better system I'm all ears. When letting someone else print, I just feel like the customer isn't getting the best quality post processing that I could do myself. I've been working for some time on my edge seeking LUSM photoshop action. Still, I'd like to know who would do all the printing work for me.