Best Photo Printer
 

What is the best color photo printer? I want to buy in the next couple of months. I'd like to able to print photo quality 8x10's. Willing to spend a moderate amount of cash.

Epson 2200. I have it and it's awesome.

The Cannon i950 is really good at producing quality photos. Perfect for 8x10. Is priced under $300.00. (usually around $249.00)

here is some reviews of printers http://www.steves-digicams.com/printers.html , I have always heard good things about the quality of dye diffusion type printers though never owned one my self.
I find that 26 cents a 4x6 to be professionally printed can't be beat and 8x10 prints are around $2.50.

I own a i950 and I can say it reproduces color perfectly, I love the pictures that it prints off, and to top it all off if one color is used up you dont have to change a whole damn cartrage like most printers. Epson printers (most anyway) will not allow you to change the print head, the canon will. About the Dye Diffusion, You cant beat the picture quality of these BUT there also much more expensive, cost more to opperate, and finally if you do need to print on some normal paper it just doesnt pay. So in ending

If you need a good all around printer but mainly for Photos, look at the i950

If you need a pure photo printer go for one of the Dye Diffusions there what a professional photo lab uses (only MUCH bigger ;) ) Also only look at this if your willing to spend quite a bit for a good quality one that will print 8x10, most of the cheaper ones only print 4x6 and 5x7

Dye SUBLIMATION printers are the drizzling shits!!! If you plan on putting the pictures in an album DO NOT buy a dye-sub printer....The color will peel off....plus the prints only last like 5 years....I second the epson 2200

How much roughly does the epson 2200 cost to use per print?
Photo printers are VERY expensive to use :/ MUCH more expensive than getting photos developed at the store.

I'm not sure on the 2200....but i do know that compared to HP and Canon an Epson is about 1/4 the price per page

Never tried to break it down per print. But if you want to compare costs, you've got to throw in the time you spend en route and waiting at the store, gas, wear and tear on the car, etc.

Creating the pics when I want them and exactly how I want them is far more valuable to me than the pennies that would be saved going the commercial route.

Also throw in the fact that what you see on the screen isn't always what you get in the print and there's no comparison for me. Manipulating colors slightly, cropping, retouching, etc sometimes need to be redone after seeing the finished print. That alone doubles the cost when you go the commercial route.

*cough* The HP 7960 is also pretty damn fine... *cough*

Hell, we sell the entire HP Photosmart range, and have a demo setup. We've printed a 5 megapixel image on the HP Photosmart 7760, and it looks damn near perfect.

(Oh, and the price-per-print is comparable to most other printers, including the "one-cartridge-per-color" ones.)

Dragon, you must work for HP. I tested a brand new HP 7960, and Epson 2200, and an Epson R300 all with same photo with a 5MP camera on there respective companies best photo paper....The HP came in last...not by much....but it did

Nope, I just sell their printers (amongst mant other computer stuff). But how exactly do you test if some picture "comes in last"? That's very subjective, to say the least...

I can only say that I've seen the results, and they're comparable to normal prints I'd get from any photo shop.

personally i can tell diffrences in where i get my photo's professionally printed. of the 3 places i get them done at i can tell by looking at the prints which came from where.....
ofoto has the best prints, but is the highest priced, walmart is the cheapest, with decent work (better than it used to be).

Granted I have never spent over $400 on a photo printer b4 but i have never seen one with good quality prints that i would want to use for anything but last minute has to be done right now prints..... or if you wanted to do porn or something but that is up to you.....
Ink on injets tend to run or blur easy, they are slow to print ( I could ot to walmart print them and pick them back up 45 min later and drive back home b4 the same 100 pics were printed out on a desktop printer.....

My HP psc 2100 series was $150. It prints, off the black cartridge,very well. It scans pretty well, too.
It copies at the touch of a button.

It normally runs with a 3 color cart. and the black cart. When I replace the black cart. with a photo cart. I get 6 color printing.

On photo paper it looks pretty fine. I don't know what some people expect, but I think this thing spits out very good looking pics. The ink is expensive, but what ink printer isn't? At least it's not as expensive as a Lexmark; those fuckers should be SHOT.

ANyway, it looks damn fine for me, and its a buck-fifty. Beat that.

How much better is an Epson 2200 over a Canon i950? By all accounts the Epson appears to be a great printer. Is it worth twice the cost??

i sell printers...lots. and i stay the hell away from epson to be honest. i have one myself, but i hate it. shitty software and it eats ink. go cannon. the i950 is awesome. so is are a lot of their printers actually.

the only downfall is that if the printhead fails youre kinda fucked, you have to order one through cannon. or special order through staples or something.

cyc i agree with you on the software part, but on the ink you're totally mistaken...epson uses 1/4 the ink of a HP and about the same as a canon

Scoobydugan, can you back those claims up with some statistics? I very much doubt that HP uses that much ink, considering that a Dutch PC mag recently reported that the cost-per-print of the tested HP printers was pretty much equal to that of the other brands (Canon, Epson, etc.)

I have always used an Epson 1280. Not a bad printer. The reason I have stayed away from Canon i950 is that it doesnt print anything larger than 8.5x11. I frequently print panoramas or square images that need a something bigger than 8.5 inches.

I really need to test some others out. Printers are expensive though :(. I have done some experimenting with inks and papers, though--since most of my work is black and white, I needed to find a good, rich black that doesnt look pasty like most photo printers print.

epson 2200 is an archival printer. I know plenty of people who use them as professional photographers and printers.