Are photo printers worth the cost????

Amba_Gambla

Hi
I've been a digital convert for years now, and was just wondering, are photo printers worth the cost/effort???

is it any cheaper/easier than going to pay 10p per print somewhere else - I live in the back !!!!!! of beyond, and have narrowband internet, so online oprdering won't be worth it....


can anyone offer any opinions please????
cheers


AG

seth

Also most large supermarket take memory sticks and CD.
If you don't want to waste CD each time use a rewritable one and take it to the store, rather than posting.

With free calls to landlines from 18866 and 1899 perhaps you could dial up your ISP and upload at night to get some of the cheap web prices.

The photo printers are good. You can gets lots of pictures onto an A4 page. The paper is getting cheaper. I refill my ink cartridges and have never had to buy a new cartridge, I have a Canon i965 2400x4800 photo / cd / inkjet. Morgan computers have some refrubs for £90! I paid £230 for mine 2 years ago!

For ink I got mine from Selectafont, refilly kits from euroinkjet. Paper from Morrisons (Illford Pro) and Viking.

I also got a paper cutter to trim the photos neatly about £13 from Viking Direct.

Its not an either or printers are good, and so is bulk developing. I got some done in the pohotbox offer 100 6x4 prints for £1.50 inc postage bargain!! Quality and services was very good.

Epson also offer free A3 prints a cheap way of getting poster prints cheap! Search the freebies board.

Hope this helps.

Amba_Gambla

cheers, that's useful..... I suppose you have to fork out in the first place to get a decent machine......

Sofa_Sogood

Amba_Gambla wrote:

Hi
I've been a digital convert for years now, and was just wondering, are photo printers worth the cost/effort???

is it any cheaper/easier than going to pay 10p per print somewhere else - I live in the back !!!!!! of beyond, and have narrowband internet, so online oprdering won't be worth it....


can anyone offer any opinions please????
cheers


AG

We bought the Kodak package when they first came out (cost a fortune then lol) and hardly used it because it seemed to be so expensive. In fact, it ran out of ink after one night. We've since lent it out and haven't missed it

I've just received the one that Index mispriced but I thought was in the sale, and after Photobox's offer at 1p a print, I might be reluctant to use that one too.

By the way, I live in the sticks on dial-up and although it took forever to upload the pictures to Photobox, it still seemed worth it to me.

Don't ask me anything technical will you? I don't rate printing at home but that's only my opinion. I haven't tried the new one yet.

seth

Amba_Gambla wrote:

cheers, that's useful..... I suppose you have to fork out in the first place to get a decent machine......

The manufactures sell them at cost and make margin on the inks. Note that the dedicated photo printers are the most expensive to run. I got the Canon i965 becuase it was cheap to run, with 6 large tanks. It is even cheaper if you shop for discout paper and bulk buy. The refill ink you buy MUST be top quality not cheap. I paid £75 for the ones from Selectafont. But these are micros filtered inks. They must be as the nossle pumps out 2 pico litres at a time that is 2 x 10 minus 9 of a lite 0.0000000002 litres, so obisouly dirt is an issue!

The bulk of clone cartriges are filled with the stock inks which are not suitable hence the messages on the consumables boards on MSE about blocked printers!

I can refill a cartridge in about 2 minutes now. The first time it took me about 10! Take care and get all the stuff ready. Also the kits for refilling need to be cleaned and stored free from dirt and dust. Not a problem if you are organised

Finally the abilty to print any size and crop and edit photos for frames etc is a real boon!

I saw some nice prints at Kew Gardens today of Orchids. I took some macro zoom snaps of some with the wife's IXUS-400 (old by today's standard) but the prints are good enough to print out and give frames as presents to my Aunt. Again the freedom and expressive toolset is great. I'd recommend a good photo editing suite at the bottom end (free!) use Adobe's Photoshop Album Starter edition. If you like it the full version is only £19! Superb. I have phtoshop as well and to be honest the tools in Photshop Alum (£19) get used 99.99% of the time, I think I've use Photoshop (£450) twice this year!

For good photos you need

1) Decent printer (Canon is the simplest to refill) and cheap inks and photo paper etc (Tip bulk buy these, my £75 spent on ink the day I bought the printer is still being used today 2 YEARS later!!)
2) Decent camera (3.3mp and x2 optical zoom) again under £100 these days
3) Some books on basic photography (Library is a good free source and there are freely downloadable books, and mazagine tutorials.

You can use these for anything from just taking better snaps, to building clip art for web sites, to semi professional art work.

Amba_Gambla

that's a load of help, cheers guys....might have to have a browse around this site for the best photo printer deal!

seth

Morgan Computers have some refrub Canon photo/ desktop / CD / DVD printers for not much money, check what cartridges they take and how to fill them before you get the printers. They also have some refub Konica (Minolta) cameras, the one for £65 is very good, stainless steel case and lens covers, 3x optical zoom, and 3.3 mp also takes SD and Smartmedia. Note that ebuyer have some smart media reader fors 99p in vat and P&P see the grab it while you can section.

condyk

Epson R200 or R300 come highly recommended.

Amba_Gambla

I already got myself a kick !!!!!! camera (bought a spanking digital SLR in singapore!) but just thinking about printers.....am looking into these as we speak cheers!

JohnLeary

condyk wrote:

Epson R200 or R300 come highly recommended.

What about the ink cost?
I do agree the R200 is a good printer, well R800 is even better but the ink cost is killing me.
Is there any who has good solution on inexpensive ink solution.
I've tried needle fill type of ink, but it is really painful to refill and my printer clogged few times because of the refill.