printer help

[Paul Sanders]

Hi,

My photo printer seems to have bitten the dust (must be all from my negs) does anyone or can anyone recomend a good quality printer that will do A4 high quality photo printing. The one I had was a HP which did a nice job but now it spends days aligning the cartridges.
I don't think my budget would stretch to an A3 but happy to look.

Thanks

Paul

[Joanna Carter]

Hi Paul, I have always tended to stick with Epson printers but that may well be force of habit Most models will turn out a fairly decent colour picture but it will be when you want to print black & white that the differences start to notice. Far and away the best printers for B&W has to be the Epson K3 printers, but that does mean going to the A3 sizes.

[DJ]

Paul,

One of your concerns and considerations should also be ink cost. Smaller printers use smaller cartridges and therefore the inks costs are generally high overall ( as opposed to the bulk cartridges of large format printers ). Different manufacturers also have different pricing of ink, but, and this is true for all of them, this is where they make most of their money, ink sales, so it's worth checking the price of cartridges before buying.

There are two types of printer ink, dye, and pigment. It is pigment inks which are to be found in the high quality long lasting photo printers. The reputation of fading belongs to dye inks, though they are still very good, and there have been some recent advances which have closed the gap between dye and pigment, but pigment will always be the longer lasting.

If you're wanting to create prints for giving away to other people and longevity is an concern, go for a pigment ink printer, if they're just for yourself and you're not so bothered, dye would be ok.

Epsons are very good, like Joanna, I tend to stick to them as they pioneered the photo-inkjet industry to the quality point it is at today, though Canon and HP have recently made strides to catch up.

HP do an interesting range, and some smaller pigment based printers. Canon have also recently started doing pigment printers, but only in large models, so most of theirs are still dye based, though the quality of output is still very good.

Another point to note, and it's a problem you may never encounter, is the difference in print-head technology. Epsons use piezo-electric heads, and HP and Canon use thermal "bubble-jet" heads. In general use this won't make any difference to you, but long term, leads to different "issues". The piezo heads have a tendency to clog, it happens, and they can almost always be cleaned with a standard cleaning cycle on the printer. Really tricky clogs can usually be shifted with a power-cleaning cycle. The heads are designed to last for the lifetime of the printer and it's very rare to have a clog that can't be shifted. HP and Canon's heads also have ink clogs of course, it's unavoidable, however, they behave differently in dealing with them. The bubble-jet heads have a bunch of extra nozzles which are not used, when one nozzle gets clogged, the printer may try a simple head-clean, but if it is not successful, that nozzle will be disabled permanently, and one of the spare nozzles assigned to replace it. So it continues, until the head runs out of spare nozzles, at which point you are required to buy a new head. With Canon these are quite expensive, HP less so. If used properly, you may never encounter this problem, but it's a potential extra expense down the line. Personally, that's always what has put me off using them, but each to their own.

In the Epson range, there are the R800 and R1800 (A4 & A3) respectively, which are Ultrachrome pigment inks, with Gloss Optimiser. The 2400 (A3) which uses Ultrachrome K3 pigment inks, unfortunately it doesn't seem like Epson do anything smaller with K3. There's also the 1400 which is an A3 printer using Epson's new longer lasting Claria dye inks.

I don't have too much experience of the models in the Canon or HP range, if they are pigment ink based, it should always say so, as it's a strong selling point ( and usually means it will cost more ). Generally speaking, the more inks it has, the better.

[Lynne Evans]

Hi Paul

I have the Epson R2400 printer, which it has to be said produces excellent quality prints in both colour and B&W. It has to be said though that the printer eats cartidges which isn't helped by (i) the pitiful capacity of each individual cartridge and (ii) it's irritating habit of headcleaning at every opportunity, resulting in the changing of one cartridge resulting in the emptying of any that are nearing the end of their life. Total cost of each full refill is now £100+, so this is a very expensive printer to run. I have just forked out for a Fotospeed continuous inkflow system but haven't had chance to test it yet. This should save £££££ if it is as good as they say.

Good luck!

Lynne

[Charles Twist]

I realise this is near-blasphemous, but given the cost of ink and printer, isn't it cheaper to send a large file to a printer like BPD who can knock out the A3 print for £8 or so? I know nothing about the cost of home printers, so apologies if I have spoken sillyly.
Charles

[DJ]

I realise this is near-blasphemous, but given the cost of ink and printer, isn't it cheaper to send a large file to a printer like BPD who can knock out the A3 print for £8 or so? I know nothing about the cost of home printers, so apologies if I have spoken sillyly.
Charles

I imagine if you were doing prints regularly, that would become far more costly than owning a printer yourself, even a large format one.

The sad fact is that the "consumer" targeted printers use small capacity ink cartridges, and this is where the manufacturers make their money. The larger printers take large capacity cartridges and drastically reduce the cost of printing, but you have the higher cost of buying the unit in the first place.

e.g. ( choosing printers using the same ink )
- for the "consumer" Epson 2100, the (16ml) colour cartridge is £9.75
- for the "professional" Epson 4000/7600/9600, the (110ml) colour cartridge is £32.99
- for the "professional" Epson 4000/7600/9600, the (220ml) colour cartridge is £55
exactly the same ink, for all these printers, R800 and R1800 also use these, but I don't know their cartridge capacity. It puts up the cost of a complete inkset into the several hundreds of pounds range, however, they do last a long time, you certainly feel like you're getting your money's worth, even if buying new cartridges does tend to sting the wallet.

Using one of the large format printers, the cost of an A2 print can drop to between £1-£2, including paper. The newer models are more economical on ink usage as well. Using roll paper is also cheaper than cut-sheets.

It all depends on how much you print really, if you're doing a good amount of printing, the larger printers can pay for themselves in reduced consumables costs, if not, they're a bit of a luxury item.

[Paul Sanders]

Took the plunge am now proud owner of the epson 2400 - lovely prints am very happy apart from it's frustrating habit of either not loaded my lovely archive matt paper of just spitting through at a fair rate of knots with no image on it - any thoughts?

[DJ]

First thing to do is make sure you've downloaded the lastest drivers from the Epson website.