Printers?

[ravncat]

Hey all,
I've not had a printer in a long time, but finally I get to purchase one again. These last four years has been like baking cakes without eating them, so ive a lot of printing to do , minimally at a3.


But printers have changed much. What do y'all recommend? I've got a spectrophotometer, so I don't have to worry as much about out of box color, I can go to maybe 700 dollars. As much as I'd like a really large format printer, that has to wait a few years.

Thanks for your help!!

[RecurrentNerve]

I'd seriously consider not bothering. If a photo's worth printing, it's worth printing well, and that means taking it to a proper shop. Even if you do invest in a really good printer you'll be paying through the nose for ink for the rest of its life. Get yourself a nice lens or something instead.

[ravncat]

I've not found a proper shop here in japan

[navcom]

I agree with Mr. Nerve. I have an Epson printer and am fed up with it. Not that it's a bad printer...it's very good. But it eats ink quicker than the dog grabs scraps from our plates. Every time I turn around, I have to add another cartridge. It's maddening! I just added a yellow cartridge last week and it used about 15% of it just to LOAD AND TEST IT!!...and it used about 10% of a couple other cartridges during the same test process!! So in reality I'm using about 50% of my ink just loading new cartridges. And it's not that old...only about 8 months or so. I called Epson on it and they said that's just the way it is.

I did a quick test study. I tracked how many photos I was printing with the printer and found out I can print 4x6's for about $.90 a piece. I can get them cheaper from the professional printer I use (including shipping!)...and I can upload them from my home today and have them in 1-2 days...and they are better quality. So the printer is only used for printing text documents now.

Research Japan for a good photo shop. They have to be there. I can't imagine there are no good photo printing shops in all of Japan.

[ravncat]

It helps to go higher on printer prices for larger ink cartridges, at this point it seems like some will give you about a 50% value - 11ml vs 44 ml costs are such.

I may be able to convince the wife to go with a large one after all, course it'll take a lot of printing to balance out

I enjoy the process and control over my papers and prints, color correction and proofing. Japanese service is not good at adapting to individual needs here, if it's not written, it generally can't be done. There's a bazillion print shops but they are not pro-lab types. Even the bigger prolab type things I've found don't get colorbalance to a high enough tolerance for me, I k ow several in the states that do. It would help if I were in Tokyo or Osaka.