Newbie Needs Help buying a Printer

[Barbara House]

My apologies in advance if this is a question you get many times.....

I'm looking for a good printer to print 4x6 prints. I'm not interested in doing 8x10 - and I would prefer to not have to cut my prints down to size.

Would like great photo quality - and would prefer to be able to print from my PC. I would only be using this printer for my digital photos.

I've been somewhat overwhelmed with everything I've been reading here (dye sub vs. ink jet), etc.

Please help......

 

[sigmania]

Don't know what you budget is but a great printer is of course the Epson

1280. Also take a look at the Canon S800 . Most pro-am digital photographers/hobbyists tend to lean toward the Epsons. Some feel they are still ahead of the competition technology wise. Both the S800 and the Epson's mentioned are 6 ink systems- don't get anything less. The Epson

may be more archival(with the matte heavyweight paper) than the Canon. Check out some reviews on. The Canon does have individual tanks for each color so in theory you can replace the blue when you run out of blue but some posters on these forums feel this isn't such a big deal. The Epson is around $480 the Canon is around $300 take your pick good luck

http://www.photographyreview.com/Inkjet+Printer/Canon+S800+Color+Bubble+Jet+Photo+Printer/PRD_85126_1750crx.aspx

http://www.photographyreview.com/Inkjet+Printer/Epson+Stylus+Photo+1280+/PRD_85123_1750crx.aspx

Barbara House wrote:

 

[Barbara House]

Thanks for the info.....Is inkjet the way to go over Dye Sub? A lot of people seem impressed by the Olympus 400.......

Don't know what you budget is but a great printer is of course the
Epson
1280. Also take a look at the Canon S800 . Most pro-am digital
photographers/hobbyists tend to lean toward the Epsons. Some feel
they are still ahead of the competition technology wise. Both the
S800 and the Epson's mentioned are 6 ink systems- don't get
anything less. The Epson
may be more archival(with the matte heavyweight paper) than the
Canon. Check out some reviews on. The Canon does have individual
tanks for each color so in theory you can replace the blue when you
run out of blue but some posters on these forums feel this isn't
such a big deal. The Epson is around $480 the Canon is around $300
take your pick good luck

http://www.photographyreview.com/Inkjet+Printer/Canon+S800+Color+Bubble+Jet+Photo+Printer/PRD_85126_1750crx.aspx

http://www.photographyreview.com/Inkjet+Printer/Epson+Stylus+Photo+1280+/PRD_85123_1750crx.aspx

Barbara House wrote:

 

[Terry Thorn]

Thanks for the info.....Is inkjet the way to go over Dye Sub? A
lot of people seem impressed by the Olympus 400.......

No, the Olympus 400 has better quality AND better longevity over an inkjet. If you can swing it, that'd be better move for photo printing. For the record, Carl, both the Epson and Canon six ink printers claim the same longevity figures.

 

[sigmania]

thanks for the info but how come dye sub printers have dpi's of only 300? or so wheras ink jets seem to be much higher is that not the important feature- Are most dye subs better than inkjets in general???? thanks for any clarification!!!!

Thanks for the info.....Is inkjet the way to go over Dye Sub? A
lot of people seem impressed by the Olympus 400.......

No, the Olympus 400 has better quality AND better longevity over an
inkjet. If you can swing it, that'd be better move for photo
printing. For the record, Carl, both the Epson and Canon six ink
printers claim the same longevity figures.

 

[Sophie Wilson]

thanks for the info but how come dye sub printers have dpi's of
only 300? or so wheras ink jets seem to be much higher is that
not the important feature- Are most dye subs better than
inkjets in general???? thanks for any clarification!!!!

Dye sublimation-thermal transfer printers can print any colour (of 16 million odd) on any of their dots. Inkjets and laser printers can only print ink colours on each dot (but can vary the size of the ink blob and use any of the available inks in combination) so need to use multiple dots to approximate a particular colour. At 300dpi, an A4 dye-sub printer has about as many printable pixels as the digital camera image you're trying to print, while an inkjet printer at (say) 1440x720 dpi has about 8x as many. So the inkjet can do the approximation to the desired colour (by dithering or half-toning) and remain as sharp as the original image. (For graphic art or text, the inkjet's resolution really does count - it will be much sharper than the dye-sub - but that's not important here. Note that ink blobs are actually larger than the idealised square pixel of the 1440x720 resolution (in fact, at their smallest, they probably are still larger than a 720x720).)

--Sophie

 

[Terry Thorn]

Thanks for the info.....Is inkjet the way to go over Dye Sub? A
lot of people seem impressed by the Olympus 400.......

If you look at output from an inkjet photo printer and an Olympus P400, you'll see that the output of the Olympus looks more like a photograph. You won't have brownish fringing in the shadow areas or splotchy looking skintones. This has been my experience when using an Epson 870. The difference will especially be apparent in bright light situations.

 

[Prasanna]

How do the materials costs compare (dye sub vs. inkjet) on the average. I guess if you dont print very frequently, inks dry up, nozzles clog, etc. Is there a good resource for comparing lifecycle costs on a per-page basis?

prasanna

Thanks for the info.....Is inkjet the way to go over Dye Sub? A
lot of people seem impressed by the Olympus 400.......

If you look at output from an inkjet photo printer and an Olympus
P400, you'll see that the output of the Olympus looks more like a
photograph. You won't have brownish fringing in the shadow areas or
splotchy looking skintones. This has been my experience when using
an Epson 870. The difference will especially be apparent in bright
light situations.

 

[Barbara House]

I actually ended up buying the Olympus P-400. It arrived today and I set it up at the office. We've been doing comparison prints with an Epson 1280 -and everyone is blown away by the Olympus. It truly is an amazing picture.

For materials - the cartride is $40 and does 50 prints. The standard glossy paper is $30 for 25 sheets. So it's right around $2.00 a sheet. You can get (3) 4x6 images to a page - so the cost per image is .67 each.

prasanna

Thanks for the info.....Is inkjet the way to go over Dye Sub? A
lot of people seem impressed by the Olympus 400.......

If you look at output from an inkjet photo printer and an Olympus
P400, you'll see that the output of the Olympus looks more like a
photograph. You won't have brownish fringing in the shadow areas or
splotchy looking skintones. This has been my experience when using
an Epson 870. The difference will especially be apparent in bright
light situations.

 

[Mike Flaherty]

Sony makes some inexpensive dye-subs that do exclusively 4X6. Supplies for dye-sub printers are quite expensive, however. You can also buy the HP Photosmart printers that have a 4X6 photo tray for printing just that size.

Mike Flaherty

My apologies in advance if this is a question you get many times.....

I'm looking for a good printer to print 4x6 prints. I'm not
interested in doing 8x10 - and I would prefer to not have to cut my
prints down to size.

Would like great photo quality - and would prefer to be able to
print from my PC. I would only be using this printer for my
digital photos.

I've been somewhat overwhelmed with everything I've been reading
here (dye sub vs. ink jet), etc.

Please help......

 

[sigmania]

I posted a question earlier and after reading some answers, I happened into B&H and I spoke with a nice guy at B&H He said that the dye subs in general are way !!! better than ink jet. I told him I was concerned about dye subs only being 300 dpi vs much higher for ink jet, but he reasured me that dye subs are a different technology in that there are no dots to really measure. In his opinion the prints from the Oly 400 would look more like photos than the inkjets. One disadvantage was the fact that the dye subs have to use the paper from the specific printer maker (accoring to him) so you basically get only 2-3 types of paper for the Oly 400. Of course they are more expensive in general. looks like i'm going to be leaning towards the dye sub Oly at least for now. off the subject--- an interesting thing he said was that 35 mm film emulsion is roughly equivalent to 8-9 million megapixels- if that's true we are really not that far off --- late 2003 by my guess when affordable digi cams will be as good if not better than film!!! (from a pure megapixel comparison) Although some mags say film is equivalent to 20-30 million megapixels- who knows another forum perhaps!
later