Printing at home Vs. shop? Performance + price?

Trifid · 25 Oct 2006 at 10:55

I am debating whether to get a photo printer or not.

From what I can see is printing at home has the convenience of doing at home (obviously

) but at what point does it become cheaper? We would probably be printing 200 or so photo prints a year. Possibly more with the requesting of duplicates for members of family.

What produces the best quality prints? And what printer is recommended for doing both 4" by 6" prints and A4 word printing (+ the occasional A4 sized print.)

Thanks for the guidance. If it matters the digi cam in question is the Casio Exilim EX-Z-1000 10.1MP (would have liked a SLR if money allowed.

)

james.miller · 25 Oct 2006 at 11:01

it's not cheaper at all when you factor in the paper and especially then ink costs. For me, its far cheaper to upload everything to photobox.com and order it from there. next day delivery and last time i ordered i got 72 6x4" photos and a a3" print (all gloss) for under £12 delivered and they are all professional quality print. Assuming you want good quality prints, you cant really beat getting them developed for you.

edit: and don't bother with shops, most of them aren't much cop.

danza · 25 Oct 2006 at 11:07

Yeah, doing it yourself is a bad idea.

You'll make plenty of ****-ups too, so you'll waste a lot of ink. Leave it to the pros imo. If you get prints from Photobox that you're not happy with (quality issues such as saturation problems/colour casts), they'll re-print them and send them foc.

FranchiseJuan · 25 Oct 2006 at 13:59

Printing at home can be FAR FAR cheaper then stores when you know what you are doing, especially doing large prints (A3 or A3+) My cost for a A3+ print is around £3-4 on fine art paper, or £2-3 on Illford glossy paper. If you manage to install a continous ink system, then the price can be even cheaper.

But the main thing about being able to print at home is about the control. I have had many experiences where I sent photos to a lab with Fuji Frontier equipment, and they came back looking not how I wanted (colours off). I have my Monitor profiled, and also use different ICC profiles for each paper, and so I almost always get the exact results that I want. The other thing that happens when you start printing at home, is that you become more involved with your photography, and can drive you to go shoot more, as you can see results more quickly, and soon you will be wondering how you can stick photos onto the ceiling as you have filled every inch of wall space you have.

Also once you starting doing your own framing, then you will be very satisfied when you can see a print on the wall and know that you performed every step of the process of into making it (not to mention being able to make print sales). It is something completely different to seeing a photo on screen (unless it is a 40+ inch plasma), to seeing a framed A3+ print on the wall.

As for your question about what to get, Canon, Epson, and HP all make great A4 printers that has a lot of features. Personally I have only used Epson and Canon, and Canon 5200, Epson R320, and R800 are all good choices, and they also make all in one (Printer, Fax, copy, scan), that can make great photo prints at A4.

With the new cost of A4 sized Ilfform Gallery paper I can get 25 A4 Borderless prints for under £10 (including ink cost). Can you get that from a lab?

Jimmy_Lemon · 25 Oct 2006 at 15:13

A company I freelance for has a bank of 8 Epson R220s used for DVD cover prints. The quality is top notch!

They use Verbatim Glossy Photo Paper - Link
Epson compatable ink cartridges - Link

The printing this company does are generally not comercial products, but the quality is amazing. I have printed many photos with these printers and full A4 is amazing quality coming from a 350d

Plus the R220s are about £80!

So to print 200 copies a year I recon it would cost you about £140 all included!]

The only downside is that the black ink from the non Epson catridges arent too great

Greys tend to go slightly green.

FranchiseJuan · 25 Oct 2006 at 15:30

The R220 is supposed to be the last of the A4 Dye Sub printers from Epson, but you need to be carefull about the after market inks you use in them as some of them can be really hard to profile as the colours are not quite the same as the original inks.

The colour problem is not limited to Epson, but many Dye sub printers can have this problem on various glossy papers. Print on Matt Papers or you can create a custom colour profile to combat this.