Whats a good printer for your photos?

[gregbradley]

I want to buy a Canon printer for printing astrophotos and also just for general business use.

What would you recommend?

Greg.

[ZeroID (Brent)]

By stating you want 'Canon' you have already limited yourself in choices. That being said it is going to depend on what level of print quality is acceptable to you.
Anything that is going to approximate photo quality is going to cost. Low end domestic printers, ink jet eg just do not cut the mustard at all, either in depth or resolution. Minimal would be a good laser printer. If you want anything approaching photo quality then you will be looking at specialised print equipment, some of the new solid ink printers do a good job but cost of consumables can be a bit steep.

State your budget and required level of print quality, then find a model that fits them both.

(I've worked for Xerox for 41 years, seen it all)

[Bart]

Office Works.

Always printed any of my photos just like they look on the computer and an A3 is only about $1.75 or something.

How often do you want to print and is it worth the cost of buying your own printer?

[beren]

Picked up a Epson stylus R3000 a while back, very nice, from memory think a few people here recommended them

[dannat (Daniel)]

err canon -i have always had problems with their ink, drying out -clogged cartridges / heads, epson i like better..but for good photos when you check costs better value to get them done by o/works -or if you want real big get them done in HK & mailed [they print stuff for pennies]
for general business stuff buy a cheap laser, toner lasts so much better than ink

[glend (Glen)]

If you want good quality prints, that you could hang on a wall, get them printed by professionals on good quality equipment.
If you must have a printer on your desk, then the Canon imagePROGRAF Pro-1000 would be my choice, it is $1750 at Ted's Cameras. It uses the Lucia Pro 12 ink pigment based system. The ink system consumables need to be considered ongoing.
The Canon Pixma Pro1 uses the same 12 ink system but slightly smaller format (max A3), is $1250 at Camera Warehouse. It can print RAW files as well as TIFF and JPG.

[leon]

I have used Canon all my printing life and have to say I usually wear them out before they fall apart. cannot go wrong.

And I have printed thousands upon thousands of photo's over the years.

If one uses Canon ink, good quality Ilford Galerie or similar paper you will be pleased with the results, and you don't have to pay top dollar.

Leon

[jwoody (Jeremy)]

Originally Posted by dannat

or if you want real big get them done in HK & mailed [they print stuff for pennies]

Where do you get these from Daniel?
Thanks
Jeremy

[Steffen]

I'm getting good results with my photos (not astro, mind you) at OfficeWorks
That's where I go to print photos to frame and hang.

I used to have my own inkjet, which delivered good results on quality paper but was a nightmare in every other respect, especially cost. If you don't print every day you end up using half the ink to unclog the damn jets.

These days I use a Fuji Xerox 305 colour laser at home, which cost me $180 and came with toner for 2000 pages. It's brilliant and does all my printing now including the occasional photo to give away. For my (very) few top photos and for printing large I use OfficeWorks.

[w0mbat (Ian)]

I also have a Fuji Xerox CP305d colour laser. It gives remarkably good results printing A4 photos on plain paper. I stick to the genuine toner after a bad experience with generic toner. A full set will cost you more than the printer ($400 plus) but lasts very well and as mentioned by another poster will not give problems with infrequent use like an inkjet does.
Ian

[Steffen]

I stick to genuine toner, too, that's why I bought the CP305d last week. Its predecessor (a C1110) finally ran out of toner after a few years. Instead of paying $400+ for new toner I just got the 305 for $180 from Inkman. It's bizarre, but it's the truth. Plus, I now have duplex printing

[Stonius (Markus)]

Originally Posted by Steffen

I'm getting good results with my photos (not astro, mind you) at OfficeWorks
That's where I go to print photos to frame and hang.

I used to have my own inkjet, which delivered good results on quality paper but was a nightmare in every other respect, especially cost. If you don't print every day you end up using half the ink to unclog the damn jets.

These days I use a Fuji Xerox 305 colour laser at home, which cost me $180 and came with toner for 2000 pages. It's brilliant and does all my printing now including the occasional photo to give away. For my (very) few top photos and for printing large I use OfficeWorks.

That's the way to go, IMHO. Bubble jets clog all the time for infrequent printers because the heads dry out. But if you're a frequent user, you'd probably go a laser printer anyway, so bubble jets make no sense to me. I owned several well-reviewed and not inexpensive bubble jets over the years. They all gave me nothing but trouble. Bought a second-hand colour laser printer and haven't looked back. It's nice to hit 'print' knowing I won't spend the next hour troubleshooting.

[gregbradley]

Thanks for the replies. Very helpful.

I like the idea of using Officeworks to print better images into prints rather than doing it at home on 2nd rate gear.

So a simple Canon home printer for general printing and Officeworks for a print. Sounds good.

Greg.

[acropolite (Phil)]

+1 for printing elsewhere. I have an Epson R1800 A3 printer, results were all over the place until I realised that the problem was with Photoshop. Prints from Canon's DPP software however were consistent in quality and repeatability. The print quality and fade resistance from Epson's pigment basd inkjets is excellent . I have to agree with the cost comments, the cost of running the higher quality printers is horrendous, not sure about Canon but the Epson printers "blow their noses" every time they are powered up to keep the inkjet nozzles clear, they also report cartridges as empty long before they are actually empty. This resulted in a succesful class action law suit in the us against Epson.
From memory I worked out that a standard postcard print was costing over $2.

[rally]

Greg,

What max size do you want to print ? or rather what is the max size you would mostly want to print to satisfy 90% of your needs ?

I dont think any of the laser printers are going to get near the 9 or 12 colour inkjet printers in terms of tonal quality

I use the Epson Stylus 3800 - its an A2+ sized colour inkjet printer, there are choices of 9 ink systems that you can use - depending on your needs.
The cost of quality presentation paper is obviously much higher than photocopy paper, but if you want high gloss or matt finish exhibition quality paper you would expect that.
But its not particularly expensive either when you buy it by the pack.

Mine only ever gets occasional use - sometimes being turned off for many months to more than a year at a time and then lots of printing in a session.
Never had a blockage !

I bought it for printing a lot of A2 & smaller prints for an art exhibition and can only recommend it - there is very little difference between the output of this and a colour photograph when viewed on the wall and even fairly closely.

Is it big enough for Poster sized work ? - not really - I'd love to have a bigger printer A1 to A0 ! but that isnt justifiable for the few prints I need to do.
So I just pay the money for bigger prints when I need them.

As Phil said - you do need to make sure you are working in the right colour space and that your monitor is calibrated appropriately.

Rally

[g__day (Matthew)]

Query - why buy a $xxx printer to occassionally print colour photos rather then use Harvey Norman or whomevers $xxx,xxx printers when they run a 4 cents per shot special as they do several times a year?

When we came back from Norway / Sweden trip this year we had thousands of photos - some quite good. We culled it down to 4,000 then printed these for a total cost of about $220. The combined weight of those prints was about 10kgs!

If you live anywhere close to a bulk printer store - consider the logic of just batching up your favourites then bulk colour printing as speicals occur. There is no way a $300 printer can compete with the output quality of a $500,000 printer...

[RickS (Rick)]

Originally Posted by g__day

There is no way a $300 printer can compete with the output quality of a $500,000 printer...

That's only true if the folks running and maintaining the $500,000 printer have a clue and also care about the results My experience with printing in non-specialist stores is that the results are pretty ordinary. Some of the local specialist photo printers I tried were better but not a lot.

I have an Epson 3800 like Rally and with some tweaking I can get excellent results from it. For really big prints I use Image Science in Melbourne. Using their printer profiles and soft proofing in Lightroom gets prints as close to perfect as I have been able to achieve...

Cheers,
Rick.

[leon]

Have to agree with Rick on this one, these big and expensive machines will only produce top quality prints if they, the operators use top quality products.
And they generally don't, except professional printing places.

If one wants top quality work one has to get themselves a reasonable good printer and use that printers consumables, (ink and Paper) and do it yourself.

Otherwise you may as well go to Harvey Norman and print for a few cents a print, which will be done on bulk ink and cheap low quality paper.

Leon

[rally]

The Epson Stylus 3800 isn't a $300 printer !
. . . and its output compares most favourably with a $500,000 printer - probably better.

I dont use it for printing postcard size paper, I only use it to print on A2
They cost a lot more than 4c per image !!

It paid for itself on the first few uses - one, in terms of what it would otherwise have cost me to print the same size images through a bureau at that time (things cost a lot more then than they do now), but two, because some of what was printed got sold.

At the end of the day there is the convenience factor of being able to print off what you want, when you want it (at 3.00am in the morning ready for the following morning), without all the running around, but also the confidence that when you do send something off - you already know what it will look like in a small size before you waste lots of money on the larger size.
Things might look OK on the big bright LCD screen but its funny how sometimes things dont look nearly so good when you see them on printed on paper.

But if I wanted 4000 postcard pics I'd be doing the same as you.

Originally Posted by g__day

Query - why buy a $xxx printer to occassionally print colour photos rather then use Harvey Norman or whomevers $xxx,xxx printers when they run a 4 cents per shot special as they do several times a year?

When we came back from Norway / Sweden trip this year we had thousands of photos - some quite good. We culled it down to 4,000 then printed these for a total cost of about $220. The combined weight of those prints was about 10kgs!

If you live anywhere close to a bulk printer store - consider the logic of just batching up your favourites then bulk colour printing as speicals occur. There is no way a $300 printer can compete with the output quality of a $500,000 printer...

[RickS (Rick)]

I ordered some A2 prints on Sunday night from Image Science in Melbourne. I used their printer profiles for soft proofing. The prints arrived in Brisbane today and look fabulous, and just like I expected from the soft proof.

Just sayin'

Cheers,
Rick.