photo printer
 

I just bought a Canon Digital Rebel and I love it.
I have an old Epson 770 which does great to be as old as it is, but it is now broken.

I would like anyone's advice on what photo printer to buy and links to websites where they are rated or compared.

Thanks for any advice.
gary

My sister just bought a Canon i400 series...I think the i445 or i455. She sent me a print and it was amazing! And after rebate she spent something like $50.

She looked at the higher models and said that the biggest difference between the i445's from the i475 was the "bells and whistles" on the printer case: digital readout, etc.

She opted for the lower model, and from what I've seen, I'm impressed.

It is an "all purpose" printer (not photo specific) but also does the borderless and some special photo stuff...

http://www.usa.canon.com/html/conCpr...&section=10199

...just my 2 cents,

MBN

Don't know as I don't have one but see the Epson Stylus Photo printers the other day and they were very nice.

http://www.epson.com/cgi-bin/Store/P...=yes&oid=-8165

Lookat at the Epson Stylus Photo R300M, Epson Stylus Photo 1280 and Epson Stylus Photo 2200.

The cool thing about the R300M was it also printed on CD's and DVD's printable disk.

I have one of the Epson Photo Stylus printers, either 800 or 900 series. Works great, but I must say the reason I bought it was that I thought I would save money over printing it at a store or photo shop. I have started to think that is not true.

Those big stores get discounts for buying the economy size ink and paper. As it is, I pay about $10 for 40 sheets of generic glossy 4 X 5 paper, $27 for a black ink cartridge that lasts a long time (200 prints, maybe more), and another $23 for a color cartridge that lasts about 60 to 70 prints. I figured it out that it was costing me about the same as taking to the local grocery store and they use Kodak paper.

Maybe I am doing something wrong, but I don't see me printing in bulk any more on it, but it is great for a picture or two on short notice.

printing
 

I was wondering about the cost also. I have been getting prints made from digital at Ofoto for $.29 each. I want to use my printer just when I need it realy quick, or I print collages sometimes.
Thanks!

Does anybody know anything else about the cost?

I find its cheaper to order your prints off the net or it seems here in the UK development in shops appears cheaper, great offers !

Yes with the cost of inks and the paper needed for photos it can be cheaper to take them to some place to have them don't for you.

Walgreens has had ads on TV that says just bring in your memory cards etc. and crop your images etc. Then they will give you prints for 29 cents each that last a life time.
http://www.walgreens.com/photo/default.jhtml

Yeah shops across the waters.........50 6x4' s for £5 from any memory card

I had some done at Walgreens. It is very easy to do and very quick but the quality of the prints were very, very disappointing.
I took them with 6.3 megapixel camera on highest setting and they weren't as good quality as my 3.0 megapixel. I hope it is the processing. I am sending some of same prints to Ofoto to compare. I will let you know.

What make of camera ?

Canon digital Rebel is the 6.3 and Nikon 995 is the other

Ok........ let us know the comparisons ?

Thanks Gary, let us know because sounds like what should of been great was downgraded by Walgreens.

I’m surprised that Walgren’s gave you bad prints. I thought they used the Fuji Frontier system, which is supposed to be excellent. Usually people are happy with prints from the Fuji system from Wal-Mart or Walgrens.

Your best bet in a standard sized photo printer is the Canon i960 IMO. It is fast and frugal with ink. http://www.steves-digicams.com/2003_...anon_i960.html Photo quality prints are at least as good as anything currently available.

Steve measured 1:25 for an 8 X 10 at best photo quality. Normal for a good photo printer is in the 7-10 minute range. He got 14:35 for an 8.5 X 11 on a more expensive Epson 960 for comparison. It is at least 3 times as fast as the nearest competition.

About 3 years ago Canon went to a much stronger dye in their inks and went from worst to best in ink costs. From some older tests in Tom’s Hardware you can expect to pay less than half compared to HP and considerably less than Epson in ink costs per photo.

You can also easily refill Canon cartridges. The difficulty level is very high in Epsons because the printer estimates the ink you use and the printer will not print with a cartridge it thinks is empty unless you can reprogram the chip in the cartridge. Unlike Epson and HP, Canon actually measures the ink in the cartridge so it shows full when you refill it. Inkjet Goodies and MIS both market excellent Canon compatible ink.

Black cartridges on 4 color GP HP printers are even easier than Canon to refill, but the color cartridges are more difficult. I have no experience filling the HP 6/7 color printers but they look to be harder than the Canon. Refilling is a skill worth learning if you want to print a lot.

My digital cameras are all 4:3 and a 4 inch height print ends up 5 1/3 wide if you don’t crop. I like the prints better that way anyway. I can get 4 on a 8.5 X 11 sheet and Red River regularly puts some decent photo paper on sale so that my cost is about 6c a photo refilling my own ink. Your Digital Rebel uses the 35mm format and 4 X 6 is the proper format for you. You could get only 3 on a sheet and it is cumbersome. I print mostly 5 X 7 prints to pass around and pay about 12c each to print them.

I have a wide format photo printer and won’t ever have less. 13 X 19 prints look nice on the wall where anything smaller seems to get lost. I’m still using my older Canon S9000 and am waiting for Canon to put the heads from the i960 into a wide format printer before upgrading. The Canon i9100 is a little better than my S9000 but not enough to justify an upgrade.

Inkjet prints fade. Epson has a couple of printers with pigmented ink that fade less, but they are pricey and the quality isn’t quite as good as the best dye based printers. If I were selling prints I would get an Epson 2200 and buy a continuous inking system for it. But for personal use I can just reprint any print that fades on display. Prints stored out of the light don’t fade and seem to hold up well.

Any photo printer will give decent looking prints if you don’t look too closely. Even photo prints from my old HP 930 look good. But considering printing costs you would do better to go with a decent quality printer. The higher quality Canons with the separate tanks use considerably less ink than the cheaper Canons.

WOW! Thanks for the information. This is exactly the type of info I was looking for.