SRQ Guy

I'm looking for a photo printer. I want something that balances photo quality with a reasonable cost of resources. Anyone have one that they like a lot?

ScottC

A true photo printer (small format) or a large printer that can also do photos?

tfmpa

I recently purchased an HP photosmart 3310 and I've been very happy with it.

Mary2e

My husband tried many of them in all price ranges. His hobby is photography, and the last one he purchased was the HP 3300? (that is a very big guess) I do know it was about $600 and considered a workhorse. He also tried less expensive photo printers.

The end result.... it's far cheaper & easier to send your photos off to a photo processing site, such as costco or ritz camera.

Between the cost of the inks and paper, it's just not worth printing yourself.

He's thinking about listing that printer on ebay because it's just taking up space. He may have used it 6 times. But, I have a feeling he'll keep it

SRQ Guy

A full-size printer that will do photos. For one thing, I want to be able to print large photos (up to the occasional ~8x10).

RonDace

I have an HP Photosmart 7960. The photos are very good quality but that thing is EXPENSIVE to operate! The better the quality you want, the more you're going to pay not only for the initial printer but also for the ink and paper.
I also have an Epson that I use for photos and it works fairly well. About half the cost of the HP and the ink is a bit cheaper but still good quality. And if I don't use the printer enough I may have to deal with dried out ink and cleaning the printer.
I also prefer having the really good prints done by a shop (I like Snapfish) and the quality of having it done is much better than I can get at home and the price is good, too.
You could also look for a sale where they practically give away the printer. I bought a Nikon S30 and got an Epson PictureMate free. (4x6 photo size only. Never used it. Someone will get it for a Xmas present!) I also have a Canon D20 but the Nikon is good to just carry everywhere in my pocket.

SpaceBass

I've become less and less of a fan of the HPs the more I've gotten into Photography.
I just had this very conversation with a family member this morning who is a very good photographer and needed a new printer.
I absloutly love my Canon Pixmia ... I've tried a few models but both of mine are at least a year old. When I looked again this morning there was a newer lineup but pretty comparable in terms of specs. Mostly they differ in paper size (some do large format) and extras like a built in scanner.

PTravel

It's been a while since I've looked at the market, but a year or two ago, the choice for a serious photo printer came down to Canon (the i9100\9900 series) or Epson (2200, or whatever it's latest iteration might be). Both could do up to a borderless (full-bleed) 13 x 19 print, featuring photographically-accurate color. The latter is an important point -- many of the "consumer" color printers tweak the saturation, which can give a flat, over-exposed picture (typical of consumer point-and-shoot cameras) a more pleasing appearance.

The Canon is faster -- it can produce a full 13 x 19 print in about 4 minutes. The Epson takes far longer -- up to 15 minutes or more. The Canon uses dye-based inks, and the Epson uses pigment based inks, giving the Epson a significant edge on print longevity. A major downside of the Epson for the casual user is that its print heads tend to clog up if the printer isn't used on a regular basis.

I wound up going with the Canon i9100 (now the 9900) which, literally, replaced my chemical color darkroom -- after I got it, I sold my enlarger, color computer, etc. We've bought an Epson 2200 for the office. I can't see any significant difference in the output of the two and, because of speed and clogging issues, I'm glad I got my Canon.

I'd recommend that you go to a store that has the printers you're interested on display, bring a test photograph with which you are very familiar (you can also download test photos from the various camera manufacturers) and ask the salespeople to make a print on each printer in which you're interested. I believe it was Best Buy that did this for though, of course, they were only 4 x 6 prints. Also, make sure that the correct photo paper is used for each printer, and that the printer is correctly set for that paper.

It was on the basis of this kind of comparison that I made my selection of the Canon (and also ruled out an HP wide-carriage printer, which produced an inferior picture).

birdstrike

Normally I wouldn't quote an entire post of this length, but the information here is right on. I elected to go with the Canon Pixma. The Epson claims archival quality for their inks and I don't doubt it, I just won't outlive the Canon prints anyway.

I use Shutterfly for prints that I want to send out, but prints I want for myself take several iterations on the printer to get them just-so. Those are the ones I frame and keep or give as gifts.

Edit to say I have an HP all-in-one for daily printing tasks. For ~$100 it does reasonable duty as a photo printer and it is as cheap as any to run.

Edit to say it also helps to have a calibrated monitor for the initial photo editing.

lpeterman

Right On - except for instant results, then most any will do.

birdstrike

That's how I feel about audio equipment.

Based on what you've said so far, I'd go for the Canon PIXMA iP6600D.

slawecki

you should look at the xerox home printers. both the laser, and the solid ink. they do a beautiful job, and are pretty sturdy. HP, like Sony, is the household name because they spend a major portion of profit on advertising.

I have a prior generation xerox lasers 6200 & 6250. I scan art repos, and produce them. the professionals cannot tell them from the oirginals.

Emma65

I've got the canon IP4200 and it does an excellent job with photo printing. with two trays I can have one set with photo paper the other with normal printing paper.

It prints CDs too which is nice if you're burning images to disk and want to hand them off to clients.

I'd definetly go the canon route.

/E

kanebear

I know the question has already been answered but I'm going to go on record as advising AGAINST HP. Somewhere after 2001, the products lost in durability and longevity what they gained in features and industrial design. This applies from the top of their range to the bottom! I have $13,000 in HP 9000 printers that rarely go more than a day without having some sort of problem/jam/etc. They sit there mostly unused because any print-job over 50 pages will invariably jam. ALL of them. Poor design. This is after numerous service calls.

I got smart... and bought two refurbished HP 8150DNs off Ebay for $800 each. They've been running a year and a half now, one has more pages printed than both 9000s combined and we've done no more than put new fusers in each and throw toner cartridges at 'em. Rock solid and very fast. THAT was the old HP.

New inkjets? My father's been through 5 various HP models and just got an Epson. They last 3-6 months and break. The HP Biz Deskjet 2600? Never worked. My Biz Deskjet 2250? Still going strong after 5 years. Anyway, sorry for the long rant... HP was amazing stuff. It's a shame they absolutely stripped any value out of the brand.

Efrem

True, cheaper and easier, but you can't fiddle with things.

I did a test recently with a picture I took of a niece and her husband at her wedding. The pictures from photo services were pretty good but the color wasn't 100 percent. (Aside from flesh tones, I knew what colors the dresses were.) I was able to get a better picture out of my mid-range Epson after a bit of experimenting with settings. It's not something you'd want to do for every picture, it gets expensive fast, but once you get the print settings right and calibrate your monitor (not necessarily real color calibration, though that's nice, but at least get an idea of what good flesh tones and so on look like on yours) you don't have to repeat it each time to get better results than the standardized photo printing services will give you.