What to look for in a printer

[cebrooker]

Hello all,

I am in the market for a new printer. On the basis that my old man is always keen to have a source of A3 printing. I was just wondering what sort of money I would have to look at spending on something I could use for printing photographs for framing and what should I look for in terms of spec?

Thanks,

Charles

[22rabbits]

for just sizes slightly above and around A2 look at the epson 3880 http://www.amazon.co.uk/Epson-Stylus-Ul ... s+Pro+3880

or smaller printer with a little review for black and white printing

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=J-gZ5RXVp0Y

[youtube]https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=J-gZ5RXVp0Y[/youtube]

[IFGL]

What is your budget and are you using it just for personal use or do you plan on printing pictures for customers, is an A3+ printer big enough?

[cebrooker]

It was more a pie in the sky sort of thing, I just wanted to know what is the level of printer is actually good enough for photos. I suspect it would work out cheaper using an online firm!

[Chris_h]

It was more a pie in the sky sort of thing, I just wanted to know what is the level of printer is actually good enough for photos. I suspect it would work out cheaper using an online firm!

A small £100 printer can produce good photo quality prints, however it costs a lot due to the high cost of the small ink tanks. If set up properly an older secondhand large format printer like an Epson 7800 will produce fantastic quality for not a lot of money, however it ideally would need to be used pretty much every day or two if not you will have lots of issues with blocked nozzles constantly.

[Trinity]

Someone else's
Echoing the last post they're dear things unless in fairly constant use. Inks are used in a cleaning process which fills the maintenance tanks up quickly and if left the nozzles clog and print head failure follows.

[chris62]

I have had a 7800 since new. zero clogs, waste tanks can be emptied and reset, one power clean only in its lifetime. it is just as good almost in output as a 7900 but none of the problems. You just have to have the right environment for it.

[22rabbits]

I have had a 7800 since new. zero clogs, waste tanks can be emptied and reset, one power clean only in its lifetime. it is just as good almost in output as a 7900 but none of the problems. You just have to have the right environment for it.

We have both those printer at the moment and while i agree the clogs isnt a huge issue. the tank can be swapped out cheaply for a new one, the power cleaning should be done regularly and the 7900 is hugely better in print quality.

As for just wanting to print a few photos every now a then, your best bet is to go to a printers. even if you can get a large format printer the inks are very expensive (only go genuine) and also go-off after a year and its truely gone-off as in crap prints.

[Chris_h]

My Epson 7800 was a brilliant printer, but I upgraded last year to the 7890 and it was a fantastic move. I used to have so many more blocked nozzles in the 7800 and it used to use so much ink cleaning them. Now the 7890 hardly ever clogs and if it does you can quickly run cleaning on colour pairs.

It's also a lot faster on prints. One thing that is much worse is when printing on A4 sheets though.

[IFGL]

The 7800 has a less vibrant magenta ink, I find pretty much zero difference between the 7880 and 7900 on 99.9% of prints so long as you are using custom profiles, we have 7880, 7900 and 9890 machines nothing to note between any of them, apart from speed, shiraz rip and a i1 profiler and off you go, perfect prints every time.

[22rabbits]

The 7800 has a less vibrant magenta ink, I find pretty much zero difference between the 7880 and 7900 on 99.9% of prints so long as you are using custom profiles, we have 7880, 7900 and 9890 machines nothing to note between any of them, apart from speed, shiraz rip and a i1 profiler and off you go, perfect prints every time.

the 7900 also utlises green and orange. It also can print beyond Adobe RGB where the previous generation cant even fully print Abode RGB secpturm, the result being a larger gamut or deepth to the image

[Whitewater Gallery]

Charles, I used to order all of my prints from Photobox and never had a problem with quality, and on the 2 occasions I had customer complaints they sent no quibble replacements. I eventually bought an HP Z3200 24" printer as it has a gloss enhancer that stops whites looking dull when printing photos, and it also has the longest life for prints (from memory Epson 90 years, Canon 120 and HP 180 years - though I am not intending to be around to test them!), but this was important for the marketing of my wife's Giclee prints. I now have a Canon IPF8400 44" printer that I use for photos, I got sold on it as it is the only printer (at the time if not currently) that could actually use the colour information to print from a TIFF file, and also I I use Canon cameras so I for some reason thought that the camera/printer combination might be best (I think I let the salesman do a good job on me with that!).

I did allot of reading before buying and I concluded that every printer has its fans and detractors alike so there is no right or wrong choice. I (rightly or wrongly) concluded that Epson is fine if you are printing a number of prints everyday as it will waste more ink than the other printers when waking up. The HP (I think) uses the least ink as each print head has 200 nozzles so rather than blast ink through a blocked one it just moves to the next thus saving ink but eventually needing the expense of the new print head. The canon sits somewhere between the 2!

If you are trying to develop a business, and would like to print for others and produce your own canvas prints, then I would look to go to a 24" printer. Although the initial cost is higher (and ours replaced the dining room sideboard!) go to the Photo show at the NEC this March (I think it is then) and you can play all of the suppliers off against each other and try get full inks rather then starter included which gives you much cheaper printing that you get with an A3 printer. If you can afford it, and are going to produce prints for the next 5 years it could well be the cheaper option whist also giving you a larger potential market.

[IFGL]

I think you may have misunderstood me 22rabbits, yes the 7900/9900's have a wider gamut, the vast majority of files to print will not take advantage of the wider gamut, therefore unless you have a very vibrant print using prophoto rgb colour space then there will be no visible difference on the vast majority of prints if you are using correctly calibrated profiles, and the correct rendering intent.
We have all of the above printers, I have only once seen any difference between them, this was on a image of a Ferrari which had the red artificially increased, it was coming out too dull on mat paper, on our 9890, looked great on photo paper on our 7880, it looks great on the 7900 with mat or photo lustre.

Each paper type also has it's maximum gamut.

[22rabbits]

That fair enough, and i agree that if the print doesnt have the gamut there is no real difference i.e. a cutomers iphone photo recently didnt make use of the better printer, but on the flip to that is Iv yet to see any of our own studio photography not avail of the 7900's abilities. We also have had fair few of these printers with current lineup of a 3800, 7800 and 7900 taking the brunt of the workload. We also only print on a very high quality photo paper brand and so even our mat paper would have a very good gamut (for a mat paper)

So ye i coincide to your point IFGL but for us at least it's not a common occurrence