Photo printers?

nicks

I have a Canon photo printer which doesn't give true colour when printing photos, plus the heads need cleaning all the time. Is it worth upgrading to something like this for example - http://www.pcworld.co.uk/martprd/store/pcw_page.jsp?BV_SessionID=@@@@0289123757.1221221479@@@@&BV_EngineID=ccegadefeelhleecflgceggdhhmdgmk.0&page=Product&fm=null&sm=null&tm=null&sku=304405&category_oid=#productInformationSection

or just use On-line services? Which I have never used before...

Any advice would be great.

Thanks

Nicks

Marty_J

Personally, I can't be bothered having a photo printer. £149 can get you 2500 6x4 photos online, which I imagine are of equal or better quality than the ones you can print out at home. Plus on top of that £149 you'll have to pay the running costs of the printer, buying the paper, etc.

On the other hand, if you need any serious quality control, printing out at home will allow you to do it until you get it the way you want it. It just depends what you want to use the printer and your photos for.

This is an interesting read:

http://www.kenrockwell.com/tech/printers.htm

Reaper

I would strongly suggest you don't buy a printer to print photos. The online services are easy to use and cost less than printing it yourself.

I suggest you try them out before throwing away money on another printer. Pretty much all of them offer your first few photos free. There's a thread somewhere listing all the offers. Even after using up the free photos you have to pay as little a 5p per print after that. That's half to a third of the cost of using your own printer.

Personally I use Photobox and have always been happy with the speed of delivery and quality. They'll give you 40 free photos when you sign up.

EDIT: It's not the thread I was thinking of but here is one discussing free photos.

fwor

nicks wrote: »

the heads need cleaning all the time.

Is your Canon powered on for long periods of time or turned off at the mains switch?

IIRC all Canon printers have a capping mechanism to stop the printhead drying out - but it is only applied when the printer goes through a full power-down sequence.

nicks

Many thanks for the replies. I will certainly look into the online services. Makes sense (financially) to use them.

FWOR - My Canon is only switched on when needed. I use aonly Canon ink refills, so not sure what causes the problem.....

Nicks

shadowdragon

dont ASDA/Tesco do photo printing pretty cheap? you take a CD or your SDcard and print em out, that might be worth looking into too.

isofa

Although for convenience they are good, and the quality from dye-sub dedicated printers are excellent. An ink-jet printer will never be able to beat the quality, although they are much more flexible. I agree with everyone else, just burn to a CD, print out somewhere decent like Jessops, or upload them to a company such as PhotoBox to order your prints - cheaper per print by far, especially in quantity.

bookduck

if you are printing loads. look for CIS and even look on ebay for CIS