Thread: The Printer Recommendation Thread

Just thought a thread including printer recommendations should be a part of the great maggot database. Please share your experiences with photo printers.

Finally dragged my ass to the local electronics store and bought myself a photo printer, an Epson PX720WD (review will follow). I thought, for quite some time, about buying an R2880, since it gets good reviews and can print A3+ sized photos. What decided against it was:

-Way too big, would have had nowhere to place it in the apartment

-Cost, both running and initial such. Printing high contrast (color and mono) prints, especially at A3, is expensive, both paperwise and inkwise. The addition of a little girl(presumedly) my girlfriend and I am expecting in April (STOKED!) made the cost of a huge A3 printer and the running of such hard to rationalize.

-When am I going to print A3s? I shoot for friends, family and myself. I love looking at my own pictures and others', but don´t need them bigger than A4 to enjoy them.

I opted for the rational thing, a semi-cheap (about $200 US converted), high quality printer, that actually looks kind of good when not in use. That last bit could´ve been ignored, but I get brownie points.

Stock photo here:


Quick review:

Cons:
-Big, even compared to a few A3 printers.
-Drivers that came on the cd in the box were ignored by Snow leopard, since I did not have rosetta installed. Seeing as macs have been using intel processors for almost five years, that was a bit of a surprise. Direct communication between computer and printer is therefore non-existant.
-Ink is fucking expensive (no surprise there).

Pros:
-Print quality - shit looks great, even high contrast and "vivid" color prints. The magenta and green colors are breathtaking. High PQ++.
-Ease of use - it reads CF cards, which is actually a huge plus in my book. The LCD on the printer is easy to interpret, and directions thereon is easy-peasy.
-Print time - each photo on a full A4 takes about 4 minutes, which gives me just enough time to fine tune other photos.
-It can scan, too, but I don´t quite see when I´m going to use that feature. Let´s say it´s a useful option to have at hand.

Conclusion:
I never looked at the alternatives, just read a few good reviews and bought it. Full disclosure there, heh. I was surprised by how easy it was to make some art from some of the thousands of my photos on my hard drive, and how true to color the prints turned out to be. It´s stupid to be without a printer, I now realize, and will never be without one again.

This won't be of much help but not too long ago I bought a Canon PIXMA Pro9000 Mark II. Got it for a steal on fred miranda due to they were practically giving them away with body purchases so people were getting them as packages and dumping them to recoup some money.

As this being my first photo printer I obviously have no other printer to compare it to.

Pros:
cheap how I bought it.
able to print up to 13" x 19".
4800x2400 dpi
8 ink cartridges for good quality color reproduction

Cons:
8 ink cartridges that are expensive
it's heavy as fuck.
it's huge as fuck.

Again, there are probably so many more pros and cons but with nothing to compare it to I really can't say. What I have found so far is using the correct color profiles and certain paper have drastic effects on the overall outcome quality of the final prints. Red River has an awesome pigment ink sampler kit of a ton of their papers so you can get a feel of how each looks and is a good introductory into papers and the nomenclature of photo quality print papers for newbs like myself.

We have a PIXMA ip4000 that still prints amazingly well. Only maintenance I've done is I flushed the heads a couple of times with rubbing alcohol... maybe once every 2 years.

I have no need to print anything larger than 8.5x11 so no need to upgrade. When this printer dies I will likely get this one or its equivalent at the time:



http://www.usa.canon.com/cusa/consum...s/pixma_ip4820

I have a Canon Pro9500II for sale in SF if you are interested. I bought it for the Canon rebate and I'd love to sell it locally. Let me know if you are interested.