Instant Prints for Mall Booth

A Mall here in town asked to to be the Photog for a Picture Booth they will have in Nov to Dec for Xmas ( You Know Santa ).....

They will create the booth and hire the talent all i need is take the picute and hand over a print may be 5x7 or 8x11 wich they will pay per print so i want to keep it low. ( Good thing i can also sell packs on the side to the clients at my price extra)

I need a good work printer for this ( the instant ones the mall will give away ). I have read and seen the Kodak ESP line of printers . Would one of them be good for this ? i know the ink is good and cheap and the photo paper is very good.

Looking at 100 pics a day for 2 months. can you guys recommend an other ?

Thank you .

PS i really want to keep the cost per print low for the mall since i will get a day rate plus sell my packages ....... if i keep the cost per print low for the mall they can hire me more in the year

I won't claim experience/expertise in this area, but there are two types of printers to look at:

1) Pigment ink printers are less expesive per printer and for supplies, but don't give the fastest, bestest delivery

2) Dye-sub printers can be more spendy but deliver good and fast prints and if you have retail clients, the payoff is good.

Since I am speiling off the "top of my head", I'll let other people who "know stuff" chime in...

don't know if this helps or not but..

apparently b&h had a deal recently where you buy a camera and they through in a printer

consequently, ppl who were interested in the camera jumped on the deal, but had no use for the printer so you're seeing a lot of them on craigslist

if you search on "pixma 9000" you'll get a lot of hits - i'm in southern california so i'm probably seeing a lot more than in rural america (don't know where you're writing from..)

i'm seeing it going for between $140 and $200 --- i think it normally goes for between $350 (lately) to (historically?) maybe around $500 (??)

but its a great printer - i got one yesterday (thur) for $140

but its a great *professional* grade printer - it prints up to 13x19-in

they're probably unloading inventory because photokina is about to kick off and the OEMs are probably going to be announcing the next latest-and-greatest -- i don't really care though, i just need a "good" printer and this probably way exceeds that - and the price is right so i'm good

idunno, does this help any?

The claim of the Kodak printers is that they use less ink, thus less expense. This may be the case but in my experience they are crap (owned 2).

Maybe one of the Canon Selphy printers?