Laser Printer for Photos

r2015

I'm thinking of buying a new monochrome laser printer and came across this colour laser printer while researching.


http://www.amazon.co.uk/Brother-HL3140CW-Colour-Wireless-Printer/dp/B00BJOA3HQ/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1441739377&sr=8-1&keywords=wifi+laser+printer


I also have a Kodak colour inkjet for my holiday snaps but fed up replacing the ink cartridges all the time.


Would that laser printer produce photos in a similar quality to my inkjet printer.

Big_Graeme

r2015 wrote: »

Would that laser printer produce photos in a similar quality to my inkjet printer.

In general no, laser printers are not as good as good inkjets at printing photos. Having not used a Kodak printer I couldn't tell you what the photo printing is like.

Nilrem

Aye, IIRC laser printers are typically far worse at printing photos than Inkjets (and in turn they're often worse than dye sublimation from memory) because of the way they put the colours onto the page.

It's something to do with the ability to do the gradients, with a laser it's (from memory) applying a static charge to a roller to pick up the toner pigment, then heating it to fix it to the paper, and there are limits to how well it can do that reliably at different levels of pickup.
IIRC with some cheap lasers you can see the problems it has with different colour densities even with just black/white/greyscale.
Hence part of the reason lasers are great for office use (charts/diagrams where the colours are generally solid chunks), but not so good for pictures.

With an inkjet it's applying drops of ink at differing densities, often with proper inkjet photo printers having 6+ colours of ink to start with (so it can start off with a colour that is nearer to what is wanted).

For cheap home photo printing you may be best looking for a printer that has a continuous ink system available, as that replaces the small carts inside the printer with a far larger set of refillable carts that sit next to it, connected to a dummy cart set on the print head via small plastic tubes.
You used to be able to get a kit for some epson printers that had the equivalent to about 5-10 carts worth of ink for the same price as one or two official carts, then had the option to just buy the bottled ink in the future.

Personally I'd probably say it's better just to look around for deals on getting the photos done by one of the companies that specialises in them, as IIRC you can get deals where it works out about 5-7p a print* which is far cheaper than you'll likely manage at home given the cost of the printer, the cost of the ink and the cost of the paper.
Just the cost of the paper for a proper quality home photo print will likely cost more than the cost of a print from the likes of Photobox (the last time I bought photo paper for an inkjet it worked out about 50p or more per A4 sheet).

*Truprint are currently doing a deal (I saw it on the amazon local deals) for 200x 7x5" prints for £13.

Nodding_Donkey

Part of the problem is that you can't use photo paper in a laser printer. The paper has a plastic coating which will melt and stick to the hot roller used in the laser process to fuse the toner. This will totally !!!!!! up the printer.

Nilrem

Nodding_Donkey wrote: »

Part of the problem is that you can't use photo paper in a laser printer. The paper has a plastic coating which will melt and stick to the hot roller used in the laser process to fuse the toner. This will totally !!!!!! up the printer.

I hadn't actually thought about that issue (I usually only ever use copier paper in my laser, and on rare occasions card stock on my inkjets).

[Deleted User]

I never print photographs a home.

I have them photographically printed at ASDA.

bsod

lasers for printing, shops for photo's, inkjets for the skip