Should I buy a printer?

Hi,

Sorry for my flurry of posts but we just got this new digital camera...

How does the quality of photos you can print at home compare to the
quality you can get by having digital images printed at a photo store?

I would like to get a photo printer if the quality is close to what we
can get at the store. Also, what is the price of a decent photo
printer.

Thanks in advance,
Steve

Suggest the Canon IP4000, currently at $149 at CompUSA, probably
cheaper elsewhere.

Great quality, individual color ink tanks, reasonable cost per print.

OTOH, if all you want is 4x6 prints, many vendors are cheaper than you
can do at home! I do mostly full-page prints, for about $1 each,
cheaper than the $2-3 dollars most vendors want.

Paul B.

I wouldn't advise it. The quality of the prints will not compare with what
you will get in a photo store. And when you factor in the cost of the
printer, ink and paper the cost per print will far exceed the cost you will
pay in the store.

I use a 20D and regularly get 7"x5" prints in my local store. Just the other
day I dropped in a CD of 70 jpegs and had nice sparkling prints on Fuji
Archival paper within an hour for around 20 cents (Euro) per print.

Why would I or anyone else want to bother with home printing with
convenience and prices like that?

Regards,

John,
Ireland

carrigman wrote:

I wouldn't advise it. The quality of the prints will not compare with what
you will get in a photo store. And when you factor in the cost of the
printer, ink and paper the cost per print will far exceed the cost you will
pay in the store.

I use a 20D and regularly get 7"x5" prints in my local store. Just the other
day I dropped in a CD of 70 jpegs and had nice sparkling prints on Fuji
Archival paper within an hour for around 20 cents (Euro) per print.

Why would I or anyone else want to bother with home printing with
convenience and prices like that?

Because you can get better quality with much greater creative and
technical control if you print your own. I have a Canon 8500. Not sure
about the cost ratio, but I don't care either.

Gary Eickmeier

"carrigman" wrote in message
...
I wouldn't advise it. The quality of the prints will not compare with what
you will get in a photo store. And when you factor in the cost of the
printer, ink and paper the cost per print will far exceed the cost you will
pay in the store.

I use a 20D and regularly get 7"x5" prints in my local store. Just the
other day I dropped in a CD of 70 jpegs and had nice sparkling prints on
Fuji Archival paper within an hour for around 20 cents (Euro) per print.

Why would I or anyone else want to bother with home printing with
convenience and prices like that?

Regards,

John,
Ireland
Online ordering is the least expensive, but a pain if you don't have
broadband. We don't get 5x7's for 20c where I live (Massachusetts). Perhaps
the Costco's do but that requires membership. Quality wise, I think either
method can produce excellent results.
Dave cohen

I would not advise getting a photoprinter and expecting good quality prints
unless you want to put in the time and effort to learn how to do it.
Alas this latter necessity, taking the time and effort to learn the art and
technology of a process, is beyond the ken of most consumers addicted to
marketing promises of push-button instant gratification in everything from
toasters to religion.
If done properly your prints, and printing includes optimizing the image in
a photoprogram prior to printing, made at home will be far superior to
anything Walmart or its ilk can produce.
Otherwise you will be wasting money more than time because the process of
obtaining quality inkjet color prints is neither foolproof nor automatic.
Stick to the 100 year old Kodak model of third party photofinishing and
never bother to learn what a well finished and printed photograph can look
like.
Personally, and it has taken significant time, effort and $ to learn how to
do it, I would never have a print made by a mass market finisher unless I
needed several hundred copies for a mass mailing.

On 14-Oct-2005, wrote:

Hi,

Sorry for my flurry of posts but we just got this new digital camera...

How does the quality of photos you can print at home compare to the
quality you can get by having digital images printed at a photo store?

I would like to get a photo printer if the quality is close to what we
can get at the store. Also, what is the price of a decent photo
printer.

Thanks in advance,
Steve

Hello Steve,

Put me in the camp of recommending that you don't get a printer. I have
chased after the ultimate printer for about 3 years. When I wanted to print,
half the time the ink would be dried out. Then, I had a few of my home
printed 8"x10"'s hanging by my desk, out of direct sunlight, and in one year
they had faded really bad! If you are printing every day, or have invested
in the photography hobby big time and want the control then maybe. Then you
need to buy an archival quality printer, paper, and ink. I personally think
the control is in the software that you "enhance" your pictures with and the
printing is pretty mundane. I'm sure I'll get hit on that remark.

I upload my images to Winkflash who charge $.12 for 4"x6"; $.29 for 5"x7";
and $1.99 for 8"x10". They charge a flat $.99 for shipping. I'm sure they
have good competition out there, but they are who I use.

Good luck...dave

In article .com,
wrote:

Hi,

Sorry for my flurry of posts but we just got this new digital camera...

How does the quality of photos you can print at home compare to the
quality you can get by having digital images printed at a photo store?

I would like to get a photo printer if the quality is close to what we
can get at the store. Also, what is the price of a decent photo
printer.

Thanks in advance,
Steve


There was just an article on this in the Times.

http://www.nytimes.com/2005/10/08/te...oto.ready.html

October 8, 2005

Why Do-It-Yourself Photo Printing Doesn't Add Up
By DAMON DARLIN
Prices of printers have dropped up to 30 percent in the last few months
thanks to a savage price war. Is this then the time to buy a photo
printer for your home?
After all, for about $200 you can get the Hewlett-Packard Photosmart
8250 that in just 14 seconds spits out a photo that equals the quality
of those coming back from the photo finisher in an hour. For the same
price, Canon's iP6600D prints a borderless 4-by-6-inch photo in 46
seconds, but also prints on both sides of dual-side photo paper.
The catch is that after you make an initial investment, you are going to
pay at least 28 cents a print, if you believe the manufacturers' math.
It could be closer to 50 cents a print if you trust the testing of
product reviewers at Consumer Reports.
In the meantime, the price of printing a 4-by-6-inch snapshot at a
retailer's photo lab, like those inside a Sam's Club, is as low as 13
cents. Snapfish.com, an online mail-order service, offers prints for a
dime each if you prepay. At those prices, why bother printing at home?
Consumers seem to be saying just that. For the 12 months ended in July,
home printing accounted for just 48 percent of the 7.7 billion digital
prints made, down sharply from 64 percent in the previous 12 months,
according to the Photo Marketing Association International, a trade
group for retailers and camera makers. The number of photos spewing out
of home printers is up quite handsomely, however, because of the overall
growth of digital photo printing - up about 68 percent from the
year-earlier period - but retail labs clearly have the advantage.
You might say this is an example of the wisdom of crowds. Despite the
ceaseless efforts of manufacturers to convince consumers that printing
at home is fast, convenient and a whole lot of fun, the evidence shows
that many people are tuning out the marketing.
It does not take an advanced business degree for those consumers to see
how printer manufacturers like Hewlett-Packard and Canon make their
money. They use the "razor blade" business model. It is named from the
marketing innovation of King C. Gillette, who in the early years of the
last century sold razors for a low price but made all his money on the
high-margin disposable razor blades. Printer manufacturers also use this
tied-product strategy.
Printers return relatively low profit margins. But the ink, ounce for
ounce, is four times the cost of Krug Clos du Mesnil Champagne, which
sells for around $425 a bottle. Ink is about the same price as Joy
perfume, considered to be one of the more pricey fragrances, at $158 for
a 2.5-ounce bottle.
They don't just get you on the ink. Some photo printers force you to buy
the cartridge and paper together in a "value pack." The ink or printer
ribbon can run out before you are through with half the paper, so you
risk building an ever-increasing stack of unused photo paper.
The industry, from the photo finishers to the camera makers, has been
concerned since the rise of the digital camera that consumers weren't
printing enough pictures. There's a general sigh of relief that the
percentage of printed photos has risen from 31 percent in 2003 to a
projected 35 percent this year, the Photo Marketing Association says.
The trend is slight, but it is in the right direction.
The shallowness of the trend line also suggests that a new culture of
photographs has been created. Consumers print their photos, but
moreover, they share their photos more often and technology allows them
to do it without printing. Cameras now come with liquid-crystal-display
screens of 2.5 or 3 inches designed just for that purpose.
Consumers upload photos for free storage and sharing to Snapfish.com,
Shutterfly.com or EasyShare.com, a service owned by Eastman Kodak. You
no longer have to send printed snapshots to Grandma. You can send a URL.
The growing popularity of these services is why Hewlett bought Snapfish
and Kodak bought Ofoto.com to merge it into its online service. Wal-Mart
and Costco have also created an online service for storing and printing
photos. Snapfish allows you to order prints stored online for pickup at
your nearest Walgreens.
Storage on the online services is free and for now, they offer limitless
storage. Though each one has slightly different merchandise, you can
also use them to print out albums, calendars and mugs with your uploaded
photos on them.
Ben Nelson, the vice president and general manager of Snapfish, said
that surveys of its customers found that 46 percent did home printing
and 45 percent printed at retailers. "We were kind of scratching our
heads over that," Mr. Nelson said. What Snapfish came to realize, he
said, is that consumers vary their behavior depending on the photo. If
they want it now, they print at home. Those with 30 to 40 prints go to a
retailer. If they are creating large projects like a mass mailing
greeting card or a photo album, they seek a mail-order company.
"We've shifted our services to enable all three," he said.
That's not to say that home printers are always an uneconomical
proposition. If you want an 8-by-10-inch photo, a home printer will do
it for about a third of the $3 a copy Walgreens charges. But before you
make the plunge on these specialized printers, you should ask yourself
how often are you going to do that kind of printing. Dimitrios Delis,
who tracks facts and figures for the Photo Marketing Association, says
that 85 percent of all prints are the classic 4 by 6 inches.
Any time you print in volumes - like Christmas cards or the Little
League team picture - you'll be better off having the retailer handle
it. "If they want to make many prints at home, it is not economical or
convenient," Mr. Delis said.
Prints made at home will certainly last a long time. That's certainly
one good reason that these printers are popular with hobbyists and
professionals. Independent studies say that home printers produce copies
that should last 80 to 100 years without fading or yellowing, assuming
you used leading inks and recommended photo paper. Marketers at Canon
and Hewlett like to point out that those studies also show that prints
made by photo processors decades ago now show signs of fading. (Today's
photo processing machines are supposed to produce prints that will last
as long as the home-printed versions.)
What may be the better solution is the home office printer that can
double as a photo printer on those rare occasions that you are printing
at home. Many come with separate ink tanks, so you don't have to replace
all the colors when you inevitability run out of black ink. Canon sells
clear cartridges for ink so you can verify when the ink is gone rather
than rely on the printer to tell you to replace the cartridge.
After all, when this liquid gold is costing you $65 an ounce, you'll
want to use every last drop.
E-mail:

Copyright 2005 The New York Times Company Home Privacy Policy
Search Corrections XML Help Contact Us Work for Us Site Map Back to Top



*
Photographs by Christian Bonanno
http://christianbonanno.com/

"bmoag" wrote in message news:K1Q3f.3007
Personally, and it has taken significant time, effort and $ to learn how
to do it, I would never have a print made by a mass market finisher unless
I needed several hundred copies for a mass mailing.

The prints I get done in my local store are your typical family snapshots,
the kind of prints that I suspect the OP is interested in. The quality is
top class.

For my more "creative" work I upload files to www.photobox.co.uk I pay
about Euro15 (about 18 USD) for an 18" x 12" print. The quality is superb,
equal to if not far better than any Ilfrochrome print I would have got from
a Velvia slide.

Regards,

John,
Ireland

wrote in message
oups.com...
Hi,

Sorry for my flurry of posts but we just got this new digital camera...

How does the quality of photos you can print at home compare to the
quality you can get by having digital images printed at a photo store?

I would like to get a photo printer if the quality is close to what we
can get at the store. Also, what is the price of a decent photo
printer.

Thanks in advance,
Steve


Printers are usually heavily subsidised by the manufacturers, who hope that
they will recoup their loss by charging you extraordinarily high prices for
ink and paper.

A set of genuine Epson cartridges for their R200, for instance will cost you
more than a brand new printer with a full set of cartridges included.

However, you don't have to buy the genuine paper and ink in order to get
good (even excellent) results.

For really top quality output it has to be said that Epson ink on Epson
paper is unbeatable (on Epson printers) but there are many third party
suppliers around whose products come very close to equalling Epson quality.

I've tried quite a few of the third party brands, and the best ones so far
are the cartridges sold under the 'Ritec' and 'Datasafe' brands (actually,
both the same cartridge)

These, in conjunction with Fuji 'Everyday' photo paper give terrific
results - very bright and colourful, with deep blacks (sometimes a weakness
with third party ink) and (so far) good longevity and resistance to fading.

When I tell you that a pack of 50 sheets of Fuji A4 paper can be bought for
£6.00, and the Ritec/Datasafe cartridges are currently costing £1.36 each
(compared to genuine Epsons at £10 - £12 each) you will see that home
printing can be both economical and good quality.

Finally, I've used third party ink in every one of the four printers that
I've owned in the last 7 years - and all but one ( a Stylus 300 that wore
itself out) are still going strong with no clogging, and no ill effects from
the cheap ink.

Nothing beats the convenience (and satisfaction) of producing your own
photo's, and today's 'budget' photo printers really are marvels of precision
engineering, producing results undreamed of only a few years ago - so, imo,
get your printer and a supply of Ritec/Datasafe ink, and go for it.