help with buying a printer for fledgling hobby

chalky_75

Hi my husband has just retired and obviously we have more time on our hands.

We have a new laptop and a good digital camera. My aim is to take photos and print them so that I can incorporate the images on my oher hobby of card making.

Has anyone got a good idea of which printer would suit us best obviously thinking about quality of prints, cost of replacement cartridges and initial cost.

Thanks so much

chalky_75

i really would appreciate any advice -- thanks

Farway

Good quality prints are obtained from Epson, generally avoid Lexmark as printers are cheapish but ink can be very expensive, as can some Epson ones

I use Epson BTW and am very pleased with results

However if just using to incorporate into cards then my guess is that as the printed pictures will be fairly small [that is about A5 max] then any printer from Epson, HP or Canon would suit you, really all you need to do is check out cost of inks before you purchase a printer, as the ink can be the dearest part

bookduck

chalky 75, your question opens up a whole can of worms and think you had better ask on a photography forum. I agree with farway and it can be £20 or more per colour of ink.

The page count used to determine the working life of the cartridge and is calculated in 'letter mode'. It is said that 5% of the total page has ink and the rest is unprinted paper. This may very well be true for letters, but for photos it is a very different story as the majority of the page has colour. Some people say "i've only printed 16 pictures and now.... another £20"

the problems are: Printer replacement ink costs, quality of alternative cartridges (if there is one and there usually is?), cost or alternative cartridge, speed of print. quality of print, depth of colour, size of print, type of printer that will print what you want.

Then there is the paper issue: need special paper for good prints, If does not dry quick enough then the ink may run/bleed, if it blots too quickly then the edges may be too harsh or show white paper, if the paper is not flexible enough it may have trouble with some printers.

Then there is the question of ink: How long do you want to keep the pictures for? As time goes by some colours may fade more than others, fading. How good is in duration is the ink supplied with the alternative cartridges?

Then there are the technical aspects of the printer: including blocked heads, one colour not printing out and paper not feeding properly. do you want the printer to print to the very edge, or is a white boarder acceptable?

I have non of these answers except the general one buy a printer with separate colour ink cartridges. I'm no photographer so this is probably invalid - should I want a large collection of photos, I'd collect them all together on a cd/dvd and get them printed off in bulk as it is fairly cheap and so much less trouble.

However if you are printing in masses, look for the words CIS or Continual Inking System and see if there is a printer listed that will fulfill your needs.

PS Years ago I've seen a bottle of ink for CIS printer go for over £500 - think it was a 1 Litre - and no, I do not know how many pages it could print