Photo Printers

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Moab Man

Senior Member
Hoping this isn't hijacking, but I thought this question might contribute.

Dave, how often and large are you printing? I ask because I have all my prints done at a photo shop and 8x12's only run $2.50 a print and 20x13's are under $5. Owning an inkjet printer and not printing enough I would worry you have printer head issues from drying ink and not enough use versus the bit higher cost of a photo shop and no printer issues to deal with. Your input and thoughts?
 
Scott Murray

Scott Murray

Senior Member
Moab Man said:
Hoping this isn't hijacking, but I thought this question might contribute.

Dave, how often and large are you printing? I ask because I have all my prints done at a photo shop and 8x12's only run $2.50 a print and 20x13's are under $5. Owning an inkjet printer and not printing enough I would worry you have printer head issues from drying ink and not enough use versus the bit higher cost of a photo shop and no printer issues to deal with. Your input and thoughts?
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All good mate hijack away, I am keen to know aswell :)
 
hark

hark

Administrator
Staff member
Super Mod
Contributor
I am curious as to what photo printers the members use, too. After I commented about having problems with my Lightscribe burner, @BackdoorHippie told me his older Epson printer prints directly onto DVDs/CDs. Unfortunately some of the newer Epson printers aren't rated well because of problems encountered when trying to replace the ink cartridges, but there are some better rated Canon printers which offer the feature of printing directly onto DVDs/CDs. Currently I am using a 4-year old Canon printer, and its prints come out beautifully.

One other criteria I want in a new printer is to see how large a photo can be printed as I'd hope to find something that prints larger than what is currently available with mine. I don't think I can print 11"x14" with what I have now.
 
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Dave_W

The Dude
Moab Man said:
Hoping this isn't hijacking, but I thought this question might contribute.

Dave, how often and large are you printing? I ask because I have all my prints done at a photo shop and 8x12's only run $2.50 a print and 20x13's are under $5. Owning an inkjet printer and not printing enough I would worry you have printer head issues from drying ink and not enough use versus the bit higher cost of a photo shop and no printer issues to deal with. Your input and thoughts?
Click to expand...

My thoughts on printing your work is this - we all spend a small fortune on our cameras and lenses along with our computers and the software to process our images but the most important part of your work is the print. That is what everyone will see long after you're gone. Give this fact, it doesn't make sense that a photographer would leave the most important part of their art to a minimum wage kid processing hundreds of photos a day. Very subtle changes in your processing can produce large differences in your print. Even the paper you use plays a part in the final product. I know from experience that getting the image to look exactly like you intended it to look takes time and effort, not unlike taking the photo and processing it on your computer. So being the control freak with a raging case of OCD when it comes to their photography, allowing someone else to have the final say on my images was out of the question. Not only that but printing is fairly challenging and can be a lot of fun when you finally get where you want it to be. There's something very satisfying about knowing the image you hold in your hand is 100% your work from start to finish. At least for me, it is.

As for ink lines getting clogged, I've never had that problem and I've gone as long as 2 months between printing. I think Epson states that one should print at least once every 6 months in order to keep the nozzles clean. In addition, Epson's have a pretty good nozzle cleaning mode, if you do run into problems. As for print sizes, the largest the D2000 can print is 13 x 19 which is an excellent size because it requires almost no print cropping to achieve that size. As for paper, I really like Red River paper, it tends to be a thicker gauge than most of the name brands and the quality is excellent. Moreover, they have a variety of papers you can experiment with.

​All in all, printing gives you complete control over your work and can be a heck of a lot of fun. Whether or not it's cost effective depends on what level of importance you place on your final work.
 
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weebee

Senior Member
Most printers also have a nozzle clean feature to help prevent this as well. I would hope it uses less ink then printing a picture. I have a HP 5610 which is awful at printing pictures. I had a great HP photo printer, but it went belly up about 6 months ago.
 
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Steve B

Senior Member
I agree with Dave. My 3880 has gone without printing for a month or two at a time when work has kept me busy but I have never had any problems with the ink drying out or it clogging up. That being said, if you don't use it very often you will waste a lot of ink since it will go through a cleaning "cycle" when you use it after it has been setting for a while. Right now there is a $300 rebate on the 3880, the 3000 has a $250 rebate, and the 2880 and 2000 have $100 rebates. The 3880 will print borderless up to 17x22. The other ones will print up to 13x19. One other thing to consider is size of ink cartridges and cost of replacing. The 3880 uses larger cartridges but a full set of cartridges will run around $450.
 
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