[Murtasma]

I am debating if I just want to ditch the whole printing thing and strictly go with 3rd party services. I don't print very often. The problem I keep running into with ink jets is if you don't use the toner it dries up on you. That stuff is not cheep. If you want to have really great prints you need to have your monitor and printer properly calibrated together so you don't waste paper, ink and time. A calibration tool however is not cheep.

To me there is just too much cost involved if you want accurate prints if you don't print very often. I find it less expensive to have a printing service do them for you, they can print just about any size you need with all sorts of different paper types.

If I spend a few hours working on an image I want it too look good on a print. It can be chore to further tweak the image so it prints correctly on the printer. Not to mention making large prints use a lot of ink. Manufactures use stupid chips in their cartridges that expire on you and cause you to buy new ink when there is still ink left.

I think it's a big scheme they make all their money off ink. They will give you a nice printer for free but the cartridges can only pump out 10 - 15 8x10s before you need to spend another 15 bucks on cyan. You do some more prints and the next color runs out now you need to go to the store again. If you decide to stock up on ink and don't use it for a period of time you mine as well just lite your wallet on fire.

I find working in the darkroom to make black and white prints much more economical for my type of work. Unfortunately I have yet to experiment with color enlarging.