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Photo Printer?

V

vroom_skies

[H]ard|Gawd
Joined
Sep 25, 2005
Messages
1,390
Hey there you guys,

For Christmas I was given a photo printer, the Epson R280 to be exact.
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16828103212&Tpk=r280

Now I know almost nothing about photo printers. So I have come here for help.
I haven't opened it yet as to leave room for returns and upgrades or what not.

Are any of you experts on printers? What would be nice is if there is a photo printer and good scanner all in one.

For the price of ink is it even worth it to have a photo printer? Or would it just be better to get your pics printed at a 3rd party company?
I'm looking to stay below $150.00USD, but feel free to link higher priced units.

Thanks for the help
Bob
 
If you rarely print your own photos then do them through a third party. If you are looking to have complete creative control then do it yourself. The 280 is what I would classify as a nice, basic photo printer. It is capable of printer standard sized prints that most home users would probably be interested in.

It would help to know what your expectations are in using such a printer.
 
vroom_skies said:
Hey there you guys,

For Christmas I was given a photo printer, the Epson R280 to be exact.
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16828103212&Tpk=r280

Now I know almost nothing about photo printers. So I have come here for help.
I haven't opened it yet as to leave room for returns and upgrades or what not.

Are any of you experts on printers? What would be nice is if there is a photo printer and good scanner all in one.

For the price of ink is it even worth it to have a photo printer? Or would it just be better to get your pics printed at a 3rd party company?
I'm looking to stay below $150.00USD, but feel free to link higher priced units.

Thanks for the help
Bob
Click to expand...

You can keep with the R280, you can go up a bit to the R380. You need to print enough for it to matter. It will cost you between 20 to 30 cents per print. The ink last 6 months once you open it. Ink will be your most expensive aspect. If you are planning on printing alot of shots 300 to 400 in 6 months then get one. I will be getting the R800 in about 6 months. I will be splitting the cost as my father-in-law wants to print as well. Its most cost effective for us to do it that way. The extra cost of the printer will be worth it for us.
 
Exactly. I have an R1800 and I print alot of photographs out on larger stock. At some point I am going to get a continuous ink system to make the costs more palatable.
 
but buying ink for the 1800 and such is where the money gets spent and on paper, for home prints the r series photo are great, i own the r270, the r1800 / 2000 would be my next step if people were to buy my images.
 
Even though it may be slightly pushing what you want to spend I've been very happy with my Canon iPixma MP600. Of course it's a multi-function photo printer so you're paying for that too. Of course if you rather have a straight photo printer the ones mentioned a good ideas.
 
I love my pixma MP970 does what I want. Excellent photos, 2 separate paper feeds. Plus it is networked through my router.,
 
I'm coming late to the party on this coversation, but I have a few things to add that may be helpful to people buying photo printers.

There are a couple generic rules that apply to photo printers, though there are exceptions.

1. In almost all cases, ink jet printers produce the best results when matching ink and paper. Epson printers (for example) look fantastic when using Epson paper and ink, but can look terrible when using other combinations.

2. There are two types of ink jets. Pigment based and Dye Sublimated. Cheap inkjets like the r280 are dye sublimated. While they produce fantastic looking results most dye sublimated prints fade relatively quickly. You will find that photo pro's only use pigment based inkjets like the r800.

That said, there are exceptions. HP has an ink that when matched with a specific HP paper is archival quality (100+ year). But, testing has shown when used with other paper photos fade after a year or two. Epson now has the Claria ink which is rated at 100+ years on display 200+ in dark storage (photo albums etc). No word on how long it lasts on non-epson paper, so best bet is still epson paper.

There are several decent all in ones out there. I just picked up the RX680 by epson. It has some great features and uses the claria inks. That said, I don't think the scanner very good at all, resolution wise. I already had an Epson perfection 4180 scanner and it blows away the sanning abilites. Optical resolutions of most all in one scanners tend to run in the 1500dpi range, while a good Flat bed scanner like the 4180 will be about 4800dpi. There is a noticable difference in scan quality. But that really applies to photos. Text, photo copying and even same size photo to same size photo printing is pretty good.

I haven't tested other all in ones, so I can't tell you which is better or worse, but for photo printing it's all in the ink. Pigment based is best, Long lasting dye inks like Claria is a good alternative, everything else will look nice but fade after a few years.
 
I've just replaced my aging Epson R200 with a Canon PIXMA iP4500. 9600dpi, with Fine 1pl, ChromaLife 100 year inks CD/DVD direct printing, selectable paper feed and duplexing. All for less that £60GBP:D
 
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