Recomendations for a photo printer?

The Grim Squeaker · Post by **The Grim Squeaker** » 2006-07-21 05:48am

I and my Dad have been mulling over getting a new printer.
Specifically one that'll let me print out a few dozen (Around 60 or so) os my favourite pictures so that we can frame them or put them up on a wall (Not full poster size, but still a respectable size).

So, can anyone recomend a good bang for buck printer that does not have very high printing costs, gives high quality prints and can print decently sized photographs?

Spyder · Post by **Spyder** » 2006-07-22 07:37pm

Something from the Epson R or Canon pixma series maybe. Not sure about printing costs though, costs of using photo printers typically run quite high.

Glocksman · Post by **Glocksman** » 2006-07-22 08:59pm

Costs will be high no matter what brand you choose, but Lexmarks are known to be among the highest, so I wouldn't get one of them.

Epsons make damn good pictures, but I know both from personal experience and reports all over the internet that unless you use the printer a lot, the ink heads will become clogged and stay that way no matter how many cleaning cycles you run.

Other printers have the same problem, but its easy to fix on them as the print head is either built into the ink cartridge or is designed for easy user replacement.

On the Epsons though, the heads are built into the printer and are not user replaceable.
This means that once they clog up, you wind up buying a new printer.

If you plan on volume printing, I'd get a Epson.
If you don't plan on using the printer everyday, I'd get (I replaced my Epson with a Photosmart 7960) an HP Photosmart printer.

Spyder · Post by **Spyder** » 2006-07-22 09:47pm

Lexmark's are expensive to run and product shitty results when we're talking about photo reproduction. Unless you're only doing relatively unimportant documents I'd avoid them like the plague. Their only real strength is that the units themselves are fairly cheap, which is negated by the ongoing print costs.

Shadowhawk · Post by **Shadowhawk** » 2006-07-23 04:05am

My answer's simple: None.

Home photo printing is probably the biggest money pit you'll ever come across in the realm of digital photography. Even the 'cheap' tank-based printers will result in lots of money spent on replacing tanks, especially when you're printing pages of 3x5s or 8x10s.

Take them to a development place.