Anhow, since I did a copy before I hit submit, all is not lost… even though the title is almost good enough.
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I’ve been holding off on buying a new printer for a while now, but the time to take the plunge is coming up quickly. I did a bit of browsing the other day and every model that I looked at 1 year ago is no longer being sold… they’ve all been replaced with the newest, better thing. When I was last looking the best DPI I could find was something like 2400x1200 or 2880x720. Now, they’re up to 4800 or some ungodly thing.
I would ideally like to do some photo printing (5x7 and 8x10) and also just run-of-the-mill printing as well. I’d like to spend under $300 if possible.
Any recomendations or websites that have some recomendations/reviews?
How usable are the features that print photos directly from the camera or memory card?
I bought the Epsom Stylus C-82, and everybody who has seen the results is really impressed, including me. I paid $179, but I see a 149 price in the link.
A good printer printer is only as good as its source material, so you might need to upgrade your scanner too. I got the Epsom 1660 on this page, and my pal Barry has the 2450 on the same page, as he’s a serious photographer. I’m real happy with the 1660.
As to your last question, here’s what I don’t like out printing straight out of the camera.
Glossy photo paper is pretty pricey, about 80 cents a pop for 8-1/2 x 11. I much prefer looking at the picture on a good monitor, and making minor fixes if necessary, before printing. Or deciding to try taking the picture again after seeing some flaws that I missed earlier.
Another recommendation for the Stylus C82. Bought one about three weeks ago, and couldn’t be happier. Individual ink tanks, USB connection, high resolution, and FAST. I mean really fast. Also, color printing doesn’t result in wrinkled, soggy paper if you are printing on standard paper (like when I printed my ticket for RAW Monday night).
I have an Epson Stylus C40UX and it’s pretty nice. I was able to choose it for free with my Gateway bundle.
All the Epsons I’ve ever seen have been pretty nice.
grrr… I (almost) know which one NOT to buy - the crappy Lexmark Laser model that we have in my lab at school. you have to stand there and feed the pages to it one-by-one, and if you accidently feed two, it jams, requireing you to cram your hand into it to try and yank the paper out…I hate that printer… (I had to print something today, so I’m bitter)
I have an Epson 777. Its an old cheap model, but pretty decent, so I have a good opinion of the company, so far.
Epsons are great printers, there’s no doubt about that, but I do find the drivers a little buggy. I’ve also found that, despite the whole ‘status monitor’ thing, what usually happens when one of the inks run out is that you just get an error saying the printer is not responding and the status monitor hangs (it does on our PCs under W98SE for several varieties of epson printer anyway).
Whatever you buy, make sure it has separate ink tanks for each colour.
My recommendation is to get a colour inkjet printer with separate cartridges for all the colours. Cannon has some good ones, esp. the ones with 6 colours.
You don’t need a resolution higher than 1200x1200 dpi. That’s pretty high end even in printing colour images on glossy paper.
I haven’t had too much luck with Epson printers. The two color laser printers at work break down so often that it’s rare to see both up and running. My old Epson inkjet printer clogged up when it wasn’t used for half a year, and since the head isn’t removable I had to throw it away. My father’s Epson laser has been reliable, but it’s poorly designed - the paper path is so convoluted that one time a jammed piece of paper got stuck and could not be removed. He had to pay for a repair.
On the other hand, I recently dug up my 7-year old HP Deskjet printer that hasn’t been used in two years, and with an unused but 2-year old cartridge it works fine.
Of course these are anecdotal evidence based on older models, so they may not mean much. And I do agree that the output quality of Epson printers are excellent.
I have an older Epson Stylus Photo EX. It prints photos very well. You can hardly tell its not a lab print if you hold it about 8 inches from your face. It is very slow though.
I`ve been shopping for a new faster model and I think the C-82 is the way to go.
I like the Lexmark inkjet printers. You will probably be told that the ink cartridges are expensive. Yes, you will pay more for a Lexmark cartidge than for, say an HP. My experince is, however, that the HP cartridges plug up too quickly. I have never had a plugged jet on my Lexmark Z52. That was the reason I finally got rid of my old Epson. My father used to use HP printers. He switched because anytime he left it sitting for more than a month or two he would have to replace the plugged up cartridge.
My Z52 prints damned fine photos that are hard to tell from photolab prints.
The color matching is also the best I’ve ever seen. I once started to calibrate my whole system (monitor, scanner, printer) and discovered that when I had my monitor properly calibrated, that I didn’t need to do anything to get prints that looked the same on paper. Really, all I had to do was calibrate the monitor and the scanner. The printer color (using original cartridges and the recommended paper) calibration was so good that there is no difference visible to the eye.
Oh. Some folks complain that the Lexmark printers don’t print cleanly, that they print streaks or fuzzy letters. That’s only true if you don’t do a print head position calibration when you change cartridges. You have to look over the test print with a magnifying glass in good light, but it is worth it.
Lexmark is also on of the few companies that also provides printer drivers for Linux (i386 systems only.)
Similar to most of the info here, my evidence is anecdotal and regards what NOT to buy. Do not, under any circumstances buy an HP printer unless you fully understand the hassle you are about to undertake. They make great calculators, but their customer service eats it.
The problem is 1) terrible phone trees (seriously 2 hours for me to reach a live person 2) lack of service personnel (to get it fixed I had to pay a $249 fee plus shipping.) Apparently no one besides certified technicians will even look at them, and you can replace them for half that! Fie on HP, may their children develop canker sores!
I haven’t had any problems with the Epson that replaced the evil machine, but I stopped using it for the most part when I got out of school…Epson = inconclusive.
Similar to most of the info here, my evidence is anecdotal and regards what NOT to buy. Do not, under any circumstances buy an HP printer unless you fully understand the hassle you are about to undertake. They make great calculators, but their customer service eats it.
The problem is 1) terrible phone trees (seriously 2 hours for me to reach a live person 2) lack of service personnel (to get it fixed I had to pay a $249 fee plus shipping.) Apparently no one besides certified technicians will even look at them, and you can replace them for half that! Fie on HP, may their children develop canker sores!
I haven’t had any problems with the Epson that replaced the evil machine, but I stopped using it for the most part when I got out of school…Epson = inconclusive.
bernse, perhaps this is dumb of me to ask but I think the hampsters ate your computer type, so is this a PC?
Best thing is to visit a store like office depot or circuit city & look at some real printouts.
Inkjet ink can run if it gets wet....Mine do.
HP Photosmart printers are nice, look for them ebay.com you can get like 50 pc of 4x6 paper for them there for $10.00 or so
I prefer the Epson models, but the print cartridges are more expensive. . But I do find if you are using the best paper Epson gives the best print quality. I don’t have a printer at the moment but my Dad has a Stylus Photo 890 and the quality is excellent.
Also in my experience they tend to be more reliable but as ever YMMV.
I would second handy’s motion to go and see some print outs in a store somewhere.
I am not sure what “lacking” entails, but consider these factors:
Paper - photo prints look a lot better on special paper.
RGB vs CMYK. Anything you see on the monitor uses the RGB (red - green - blue) model. Anything printed out uses the CMYK (cyan - magenta - yellow - black) model. So an image printed out on paper will be different from what you see on the monitor, unless you use sophisticated software to process the images into CMYK first.
Even when your image is CMYK on the monitor, it will probably look somewhat different from a printout because of the difference in media.
Printer - how well is it in mixing the primary colours? Sometimes you need to do calibration first.
Ink - are you using original cartridges or generic replacements?
Size - are you expanding small images into big ones? Don’t. Remember even on SVGA monitors (800 x 600), the resolution is a mere 96 dpi. So printed images will be a lot smaller than what you see on screen.
File format - jpeg images can come out blocky.
This is all I can think of off the top of my head now.
