printer suggestions????

[RICHinNC]

Any suggestions on a good....$500 range max.....printer to print my digital pictures??? And, where can I get it?

thanks

[TedJ]

I've been pleased with my HP 7550- $299 costco.
TEdJ

[Scubatooth]

rich

just a couple of questions to narrow the hundreds of printers down.

1. what is the largest size print that you want to do?

2. do you have a brand preference (canon, epson, hp, etc)

from there i can narrow it down and help you out

Dan

[PEIDiver]

I've been very happy with my Epson Photo Stylus 820. Printers in the Photo Stylus family seem popular for photo printing and some can be used to produce large format prints. I'd recommend looking at the six color style printers as they are considered to reproduce color better.

This subject has been discussed a lot on photo.net, I'd do a search there, you should come up with some good info.

Steve.

[XJae]

I've been happy with my sony sv55, for the price anyway ~$150.
it's a dye sublimation printer which means it creates the photo with translucent layers of magenta cyan and yellow, and greys.
it will only make 3x5 or 4x6 prints.
the paper pack comes with a cartridge that will layer exactly the number of sheets it came with.
it's hard to tell the difference from a lab print.
the paper cost you ~ 60 cents per print.

[Dee]

My old HP712 Deskjet does an OK job but I've been thinking about an Epson 1280. 6 inks, large prints

[japan-diver]

Just upgraded to a Canon Pixus 950i (about $300) a few months ago and love it great quality and allows numerous print sizes (even more if you can use the Japanese printing programs) and has options for printing onto my CD's and DVD's directly so I don't need labels.

[annie]

I just bought a HP 7150 and the quality is fantastic. And I find it very quiet as well.

The thing I would consider is that if you want to print on card or slightly stiffer paper you may want to look for a printer that doesn't bend the paper around as it's printing. However I haven't tried this on the HP 7150.

[SimonJ]

Personally I would recommend the Epsom Photo Stylus range. As a rule they use more colours than most other models (6 rather than 4), and so can produce sharper images. Mine has produced some great results upto Letter/A4 size.

The other thing is the quality of the paper. You can spend a small fortune buying photo quality paper for inkjet print printers. This paper does produce the best result, but my experience is to go a grade or two down from the best, and you will find only marginally worse results for a lot less money.

Hope this helps,
Simon

[RICHinNC]

thanks all.....
scubatooth....i think 8x10 would be the biggest....and i would probably do most in smaller than 5 x 7 format....
and...i have no pref on brand.

i have seen a couple of hp printers results and they were pretty good.

the 6 ink item and the no bending the paper item is interesting... does hp bend paper??

[nlbford]

My suggestion would be to definitely go Epson and get on of the Photostylus printers. The quality is awesom and they are extremely reliable in my experience. I spent years working in a digital photo lab and to my eye, the Epson quality is great even on a basic consumer level. My 1280 does a great job that surpasses the quality of some of the high-end professional printers in use just a few years ago and at a fraction of the cost. Even my relatively inexpensive 925 that I got for the wife is great.

Some of the other makes do a fine job as well. But with Espon you can't go wrong and it's the only brand I will purchase.

[Wyno]

For other opinions go to dpreview.com go to the forums section and read the printer section.

http://www.dpreview.com/forums/forum.asp?forum=1003


I have a Canon i950 and totally happy with it. 6 colors and fast even when printing full 8X10. HP is the least thought of when it comes to printing pictures. Don’t think you could go wrong with the Canon or the Epson. Canon seemed to be better when I bought mine a few months back so that is what I decided to go with.

Dan

[medic13]

For the most part I would stay with two brands.
I have had to do very few repairs on either one of these
Epsom 1280
or any HP PHoto smart printers
Stay away from cannon , and especially lex-mark
I base these on past experience of repairing them and my usage of them

[Wyno]

Again stay away from HP for printing pics. So if you use the above comments and mine I guess you’re left with Epson.


Dan

[Scubatooth]

medic13 once bubbled...
For the most part I would stay with two brands.
I have had to do very few repairs on either one of these
Epsom 1280
or any HP PHoto smart printers
Stay away from cannon , and especially lex-mark
I base these on past experience of repairing them and my usage of them

any particular reason to stay away from canons ? i know several pro photogs that use the canons along with the epsons and have had no problems with them, there are areas that canons dont do as well as the epsons but they know that and use it with in those limits

[tx.lakerats]

I just bought a new printer two weeks ago. I got the Epson Photo Stylus 960 and the prints are AWESOME... With seperate ink cart.'s I don't have to worry about running out of only one ink.. I would HIGHLY recommend this one!

[medic13]

other than they need repairing all the time nothing else,
new ones have good quality in printing just don't seem to be built well as epson and HP professional or photo series .

[annie]

What I meant with the paper bending is that on my HP 7150, the paper goes in the front, gets bended around, printed on and comes out the front. I'm not sure how that affects thicker card etc but I think you can get printers where the paper goes in one side and out the other hence no bending. But am not sure of this at all and of course it depends on whether this would be an issue for you.

[chippy]

I've been very happy with my Canon S9000, which I've had for just over a year now. It does guzzle ink when churning out A3 prints, but the results are well worth it, and the seperate ink tanks are a little easier on the pocket.

I recently did an A3 collage of my locally taken 2003 pics, and personallised it for my LDS. They "bought" the rights off me to reproduce it for postcards, the quality of the print sold it, and A3 prints do have that extra wow factor.

[SubMariner]

ROCKS!

We've had ours for about 3 years now. The 8" x 10" hi res prints we get out of it are amazing.

AAMOF, I defy anyone who looks at our Diving Wall to be able to tell which pictures are prints from slide film and which ones are prints from our digital camera.... they are THAT crisp!

I have also found this a great printer for making our scuba cards. Also, our graphic artist at the office did banners that came out very nice.

[wetman]

Olympus P400

Its not inkjet so doesnt have the limitations of inkjet, paper costs are about the same and printing costs are not far off for full size sheets. I dont think you can get closer to true photo quality than this printer. It uses a process called dye sublimation and you really cant beat the quality.

steve

[mwpowell]

I also have an Olympus P400 dye sub. Near photo quality prints.

[plr0]

I have an Epson 1280, and it is super. I really like the borderless prints. The quality is great and it will print up to 13". I just printed a photo at 13 X 19 -- and it looks great. It was an arrow crab photo taken with Oly C5050.

[Mo2vation]

I've been an Oly dealer for years - and for a long time I drooled over the P400. I insisted that there was no stink-jet printer that could rival a dye sub. Jet printers for photos... please.

I bought the P400 - they dumped them recently and the prices right now are unreal.

Brought it home, hooked it up, and realized that my wife is a 1st grade teacher. And this printer will only print photos. So before I installed the film, I bought an HP7550. Last January Office Depot had it for like $274.99 with a $50 rebate and a $50 gift card...or something crazy like that.

Woah.

This printer, with the nice matt paper for portraits and the gloss for fine prints just rocks. It takes pre-cut 4 X 6 paper (PMAI - Photo Marketing Assn states something like 86 - 90+% of all prints are 4 X 6) as well as 8.5 X 11 sheets. I print a lot of photos, and probably print one or two 8.5 X 11 to every 25 4 X 6's. The oversize print arguement is lost on me.

Three tanks, integrated card slots, color LCD screen, borderless prints and decent software. Supplies are easy to find, its a workhorse in out house. Its recently been discontinued, so prices are falling. You can get this printer for way under $200 on eBay.

Plus, it also will print color for the teacher in the house - cards, invitations, and fun school stuff.

I eBayed the P400. For all of my home printing and gift printing, I use the 7550. For the big stuff (up to 20 X 30) its cheaper and easier to go to Shutterfly. For the giant stuff, I use Kinkos.

I give huge thumbs up to the 7550 - it totally converted this dye sub snob - and for the price, its the best sub $200 photo printer going right now.

k