Print at Home Or Send to Digital Photo Lab?

[Canoman1978]

I am perplexed in which I should do. Photography is going to be my full time job, with weddings being my primary market. Cannon's new borderless photo printer is recieving rave reviews..but each option has their pros and cons ..ie. price, convienience. I will be printing my Proof sheet and having my clients choose their photo's off of it. Thank you for your help, I am wide open to any criticism, and personal experiences

[Longwatcher]

One of the few times I will say avoid an inkjet (If that is what it is) is for wedding photos.

I like inkjets and figure eventually I will find an ink/paper combination that won't fade, but at this time I would not trust them. Weddings are a one time event (or at least in theory are supposed to be) and in my opinion extra care should be taken in both shooting and printing out the wedding photos.

Most other activities for the most part can have random losses due to inkjet fading as there will be similiar shots available over a life-time. It is better to use known processes as much as possible for something that critical at least until we can trust inkjets not to fade under a variety of conditions.

For most other activities, with a life expectancy of over 25 years in most conditions inkjets are a good choice. But with no reliable evidence of actual performance over time, I would reserve older known photo processes for printing unique events of a person's life.

Just my opinion,

BTW: I have a Canon S9000 which uses BCI-6 cartridges and I have decided Canon Paper sucks in a n office environment.

[Canoman1978]

excellent reply, thank you very much. I appreciate the well thought out answer, and I agree...I am not going to go the inkjet route. I have read several comparison articles...and surprisingly Kodaks online printing service came back in 8th place out of 10. Yikes...I am now looking for an excellent printing service, if anyone can reccomend one, I would be appreciative

[JoeTampa]

I recently tried a test. I printed an 8x10 of a model I shot on my HP PhotoSmart 7550, then had both Wal-Mart and Ritz Camera print the same 8x10.

The results?

All three were VERY tough to tell apart, except for the paper. The inkjet paper was thinner (not that this would matter if in an album or mounted), and the Wal-Mart paper had a more canvassy feel to it.

The real difference was that the Wal-Mart print was borderless and trimmed well, where my 8x10 had to be trimmed from 8.5x11, and the Ritz photo had a small white border.

The additional difference was the price - Ritz was more than DOUBLE the price of Wal-Mart for no discernable difference in quality.


I then took a wedding print job to Wal-Mart. 216 4x6's (double prints), and 65 5x7's (single prints). Cut, and ready to go, cost me about $100.00, and took 1.5 hours! So, for large jobs, Wal-Mart wins hands down. For the occasional prints, the inkjet suffices.


- Joe

[Conk]

canoman1978 wrote:
excellent reply, thank you very much. I appreciate the well thought out answer, and I agree...I am not going to go the inkjet route. I have read several comparison articles...and surprisingly Kodaks online printing service came back in 8th place out of 10. Yikes...I am now looking for an excellent printing service, if anyone can reccomend one, I would be appreciative

I don't know where you are from but here is a link to a reputable place that someone I know uses for all his printing needs.http://www.millerslab.com/
What is important is calibration. Don't just go and order prints unless you phone and ask what kind of calibration methods they use to assure that the prints that you get back are going to be the same as what you saw on your monitor.
If you are north of the border in Canada or near here are a couple that I also know of.
http://www.hemlock.com/
http://www.thelabvancouver.com/