How much do I need to spend to get a quality printer?

I've always owned basic multi function printers for general document printing etc and when they've run out of ink I've either bought a new one or purchased pirate ink but I'm starting to make reasonable money from my contracted work & I'm at a point in my career where I'm considering buying a commercial quality printer that will print up to a3 in size.

To be totally honest I wouldn't have a clue where to start.
What are some reasonable brands/models of printer?
How expensive are the consumables? (ink & paper)

I'm just after a few pointers so I can make an assessment of weather or not printing my own work it worthwhile.

Milutiche wrote in post #17867918
I've always owned basic multi function printers for general document printing etc and when they've run out of ink I've either bought a new one or purchased pirate ink but I'm starting to make reasonable money from my contracted work & I'm at a point in my career where I'm considering buying a commercial quality printer that will print up to a3 in size.

To be totally honest I wouldn't have a clue where to start.
What are some reasonable brands/models of printer?
How expensive are the consumables? (ink & paper)

I'm just after a few pointers so I can make an assessment of weather or not printing my own work it worthwhile.

Prepare for the deluge.

The general consensus seems to be that using a good quality photo lab will be cheaper than printing yourself. The reason to print yourself is speed of delivery and ease of customizing a print when you have to get it just right.

The best printers you can get cheaply are the Canon Pro series printers that are included in Camera/Printer bundles. These are sold reasonably cheaply at times because many people will get the bundle for the lower price and not need the printer. Just watch the too good to be true sales. Some of them are people selling the printers without the ink. These sellers already have one of the printers and sell the new one for a very low cost but they keep the ink for themselves.

Ebson's professional photo printers are also very good quality. They will cost you more because of the lack of people selling unopened used printers obtained from bundled deals. In my opinion Canon Pro series Pro 100/10/1 are better for the casual user than the Ebson printers but only for the reason that from what I have read, the Canon printer ink cartridges don't clog as easily as the Ebson in if you don't use the unit for months at a time.

I would advise anyone to use the ink made by the manufacturer of the unit because printer profiles are matched to the inks and the printer. Also the ink durability has been tested and they verify that they will last up to 100 years or even 200 years. If you are selling prints you print yourself, being able to say your prints are archive quality is a selling point.

If you do not need to make archive quality prints, then go ahead and use after market ink. Just profile your printer with something like the ColorMunki to get the colors right with the aftermarket ink.

being in the US you are in the right place for getting good deals on the sort of printers, and consumables that you seem to want. As Nogo said the Canon Pixma Pro 100/10/1 series of printers are very well thought of. The base model pro 100 is a dye ink based printer,while the other two are pigment which mainly differ in the number of ink colours. I think the basic one is good if you are not printing every day or two, as the dye based ink is less likely to clog if left standing. Getting one cheap in the US is often quite easy thanks to the give aways. Here in the UK the basic printer in the series retails for around £350 or about $525, but that includes the 20% sales tax that we all have to pay anyway. The top of the range model sells at about the equivalent of $900 with an RRP of $1200. So even though you can pick them up being sold off from a bundle deal for a couple of hundred dollars or less they are still really a high end product.

When it comes to consumables in the US, if you can buy in bulk you can get some really good deals in sales, of both Canon papers and OEM ink, as well as for really nice papers from the like of Red River (not available at all in the UK/EU). There are also some supposedly good continuous feed ink systems available for these printers, complete with .icc profiles. Buying thesse during the regular special offers and sales it seems that it is actually possible to bring down the price of home printing to match or beat a good quality pro lab, at least for sizes 10×8 and larger.

I can't be much more specific, much as I would like to get the Pro 1 it's going to cost me £375 and a full replacement ink set is about £100, so given my circumstances, even if I could afford the printer I couldn't afford to regularly fill it up with ink. Throw in the paper costs and an A3 print on a quality glossy paper, my personal preferred finish, I would be paying the best part of £4 a print. My lab of choice does A3/16×12 prints on Fuji Crystal Archive paper, glossy or Luster, for £1.15 each, plus £4.50 P&P. If I get ten prints done that works out at £1.60 each delivered. If I upload before 1PM they ship the prints the same day. The Royal Mail service is supposedly 2-3 day, but I usually get them next day anyway. if I really absolutely had to have it next day there is a £9.99 courier option. My last order which included a 30×20 on Fuji Pearl (metallic) paper, a 24×12 panoramic and 9 16×12s came to £28.84 in total and was delivered next day, on a Saturday.

Because of the price and quality of the lab, and the quality is as good as another lab I use for specialist finishes, that charges £9.95 for a 16×12 print on the same Fuji Crystal Archive DP II papers, and £9.99 minimum shipping fee, with a week to ten days lab time. I only print up to A4 at home. I use a Canon Pixma MG5150 multifunction with OEM ink and Canon Platinum Pro paper. Even though for photos its only a four colour CMYK printer, the results are very good. I have had the printer for about seven or eight years, and I have had prints hanging on the wall under plain glass for that time that show no sings of fading. An A4 print costs about £2.50 in paper and ink.

Alan

Check the web for pricing for your area of the world. Three things to price, more or less.

1) The printer
2) Ink
3) Media (paper, canvas, etc.)

Remember that the price of the printer usually includes a FULL ink set. You may be able to find websites that give you an idea of how much ink is used for an average print of a particular size, so you can estimate how many prints you can get out of a set of cartridges. Also, consider that there are several vendors who sell refillable cartridge systems that may save you money while preserving print quality over OEM inks. You have to try these or get sample prints with those ink sets to see if they are sufficient for your needs - however, you will probably find that those inks will require custom printer-paper profiles if you use a color managed workflow - which brings me to the next point....

Be prepared to get more familiar with color management if you not currently employing a full color managed workflow. Often the process of refining your workflow for your specific output device leads to a lot of trial and error and spent ink and paper if you do not commit to applying the tools of display calibration and profiling and soft proofing with your specific output device profiles. This costs more money.

If you employ an sRGB workflow, then you may be better off with a commercial print lab, with some tweaking here and there to refine your output for their devices.

kirk

Printer for photos? Don't bother. Walmart will do it for way less than you can at home. And they redo them until you like them, for nothing.

Bassat wrote in post #17868204
Printer for photos? Don't bother. Walmart will do it for way less than you can at home. And they redo them until you like them, for nothing.

Sure, but printing things yourself, that you shot, is fun. You, basically, control everything from beginning to end. I wouldn't print 4x6's myself, but larger, I will.

BigAl007 wrote in post #17868148
being in the US you are in the right place for getting good deals on the sort of printers, and consumables that you seem to want. As Nogo said the Canon Pixma Pro 100/10/1 series of printers are very well thought of. The base model pro 100 is a dye ink based printer,while the other two are pigment which mainly differ in the number of ink colours. I think the basic one is good if you are not printing every day or two, as the dye based ink is less likely to clog if left standing. Getting one cheap in the US is often quite easy thanks to the give aways. Here in the UK the basic printer in the series retails for around £350 or about $525, but that includes the 20% sales tax that we all have to pay anyway. The top of the range model sells at about the equivalent of $900 with an RRP of $1200. So even though you can pick them up being sold off from a bundle deal for a couple of hundred dollars or less they are still really a high end product.

When it comes to consumables in the US, if you can buy in bulk you can get some really good deals in sales, of both Canon papers and OEM ink, as well as for really nice papers from the like of Red River (not available at all in the UK/EU). There are also some supposedly good continuous feed ink systems available for these printers, complete with .icc profiles. Buying thesse during the regular special offers and sales it seems that it is actually possible to bring down the price of home printing to match or beat a good quality pro lab, at least for sizes 10×8 and larger.

I can't be much more specific, much as I would like to get the Pro 1 it's going to cost me £375 and a full replacement ink set is about £100, so given my circumstances, even if I could afford the printer I couldn't afford to regularly fill it up with ink. Throw in the paper costs and an A3 print on a quality glossy paper, my personal preferred finish, I would be paying the best part of £4 a print. My lab of choice does A3/16×12 prints on Fuji Crystal Archive paper, glossy or Luster, for £1.15 each, plus £4.50 P&P. If I get ten prints done that works out at £1.60 each delivered. If I upload before 1PM they ship the prints the same day. The Royal Mail service is supposedly 2-3 day, but I usually get them next day anyway. if I really absolutely had to have it next day there is a £9.99 courier option. My last order which included a 30×20 on Fuji Pearl (metallic) paper, a 24×12 panoramic and 9 16×12s came to £28.84 in total and was delivered next day, on a Saturday.

Because of the price and quality of the lab, and the quality is as good as another lab I use for specialist finishes, that charges £9.95 for a 16×12 print on the same Fuji Crystal Archive DP II papers, and £9.99 minimum shipping fee, with a week to ten days lab time. I only print up to A4 at home. I use a Canon Pixma MG5150 multifunction with OEM ink and Canon Platinum Pro paper. Even though for photos its only a four colour CMYK printer, the results are very good. I have had the printer for about seven or eight years, and I have had prints hanging on the wall under plain glass for that time that show no sings of fading. An A4 print costs about £2.50 in paper and ink.

Alan

Alan, can I ask which lab you use, trying out a few UK ones myself at the moment to find my fave. Metroprint is good but their packaging is doing my head in, 300 yards of sticky tape!

I used my Epson R1800 for several years, and then went thru a nightmare of clogs. To make it less expensive, I tried 3rd party refill ink (no names cause I'm not interested in liability) and ended up having to throw the printer out.

I really wanted to get back into it, but I'm not going to throw away $1,000's for the few prints I actually end up making each year.

Sigh.

Bassat wrote in post #17868204
Printer for photos? Don't bother. Walmart will do it for way less than you can at home. And they redo them until you like them, for nothing.

Walmart has places in New Zealand?!

The point is that often there are photoprinting businesses that make prints on photosensitive paper (not on an inkjet) which are very high in quality yet are less expensive alternatives to printing yourself at home...need to keep in mind both cost of paper and cost of ink when you do it yourself, not to mention the 'babysitting' of the home printer when you are doing lots of prints.

Wilt wrote in post #17868534
Walmart has places in New Zealand?!

The point is that often there are photoprinting businesses that make prints on photosensitive paper (not on an inkjet) which are very high in quality yet are less expensive alternatives to printing yourself at home...need to keep in mind both cost of paper and cost of ink when you do it yourself, not to mention the 'babysitting' of the home printer when you are doing lots of prints.

Agreed. I only meant that commercial printing will always be cheaper than you can do it at home. If you are using an inkjet printer, the commercial printer offers higher quality, also.

It would not surprise me to see a Walmart in NZ. If not, I'm sure other choices are available.

Woolmart? ( I'm welsh, I can get away with that )

welshwizard1971 wrote in post #17868436
Alan, can I ask which lab you use, trying out a few UK ones myself at the moment to find my fave. Metroprint is good but their packaging is doing my head in, 300 yards of sticky tape!

Alan, I 'd like to know also. There's a local guy here who is great for huge canvases etc but I'd like to use a lab for passport photos and smaller stuff. Would appreciate the recommendation.

welshwizard1971 wrote in post #17868565
Woolmart? ( I'm welsh, I can get away with that )

BAA, I'm Welsh too, or at least Welsh enough to have represented Wales in a sport. The lab I use the most is DS Colour Labs based in Manchester. Download the profiles that they have, and use the Pro service. You have to do ALL of the adjustments yourself to the images before upload, including scaling them correctly to 300PPI, and also converting them to the correct print .icc profile. That is the service that I use and the results have always been second to none. They have the normal ROES type of application that allows you to crop etc, and that just uses sRGB and does the profile conversion for you. If you are not into color management then maybe that would be the better option. I just wish there was some way to show the quality of the work. The Fuji Pearl paper is fantastic. I used one of their special offers to get that 30×20 Pearl print for only £9.99 instead of £14.99, which IMO is still a damn good price.

The other lab is Whitewall they are actually based in Berlin, but the site is in English, and they charge your card in the UK in sterling, so no currency problems. I use them for one specific product, they print digital monochrome images on traditional Ilford Silver Halide papers. They use Ilford MC IV papers, either the RC coated papers, or if you really want to push the boat out, there is the full Fiber based Baryta option. I have so far done one of each and if you ever worked in a wet darkroom you know what that means. The quality of the work is out of this world. The down side is the cost. A 16×12 on the RC paper, with a 1.18" white border added to it is about £17 while on the FB it's £29.99 last time I looked, plus the £9.99 delivery charge. if you do monochrome and you want the VERY BEST POSSIBLE PRINT that's it. The fiber based print takes a full two weeks of lab time and I pretty much hand finished.

I just wish there was a way to show the quality of these prints over the internet.

Whitewall used to do a very nice sample box with all of the paper choices they offer, along with acrylic blocks and prints directly on an Aluminium substrate, which was free apart from £4.99 posting. If you are a pro it's good for showing different finish types to clients, without the cost of having lots of small prints made. If you can get to the Photography show at the NEC in March both of these labs should be having stands, they did last year. It was another POTN member Sandpiper from Liverpool that put me onto DSCL, he has all his prints done there and he is quite active on the club competition scene up in the North West as I understand from his posts.

Alan

Thank you DSCL are next on my list as it happens!