I have yet to see laser printer output that matches the photographic quality from an Epson 1270. At 13"x19" as well.

Cheers

They use basically crayons, rectangle shaped crayons of different colors that go in the top.

I can see how you might mistake a wax printer for die sub. Tektronix has a range of printers all called Phaser's with different model numbers. IIRC the 450 is a die sub and the 350 is wax.

Dye sub printers are 3 or 4 pass systems (cym or cymk). A donor roll with page size patches of cyan, magenta, yellow and black dyes is used to transfer color to the paper. The dyes build on top of, and merge with, each other. Each pixel renders 16 million color shades. No dithering. The donor roll is single use, and easy to replace. A 600 dpi inkjet is not the equal of a 300dpi die sub printer.

The only bad thing about dye sub is the cost $5-8 bucks per 8.5x11 sheet. (I'm told that inkjets can be high cost too. Depends on saturation and fill). It really makes you cry when you find all the supplies burned off by someone printing emails.

IMHO, Die sub printers are the best for printing photos. Too expensive for most anything else.

Hi Tony

Congratulations with your new camera.

I I were you I would save the money and use the printer you have already.

When you want high quality printout's use some of the online photoservices like www.shutterfly.com instead. They Print on real photo-paper.

Best regards

Ole

This is an interesting alternative which I had not considered.

Does anyone have any experience with these kinds of services? Do the prints last?

Hmm, their drag-and-drop browser plugin is one sweet piece of technology. I just did 7 megs worth of files and it rocked. Totally seamless. Hmmm, nice service, I'll try their sample prints and see how it goes...

These services use a digital minilab, like the ones in the back of many photo-shops.

They print our digital image on ordinary photopaper, just as if it were an image comming from an ordinary analog film/negative. (actully, if you take an analog film to a photo-shop today and ask for prints, ther minilab will most likely:
1) Develop the film
2) Scan the negatives at high resolution
2) Print the digital imagefile)

The best you can do is to try it out for yourself.
Shutterfly currently has 15 free prints to new customers.

best regards

Ole

I'd have to agree with Mark. Having seen the difference between a colour laser printout and a deskjet printout of the same photograph, I'd take the quality of the deskjet anyday about that of the laser.
Of course, if your printout's only 16 colours, nothing can beat a laser printer.
The only alternative that's left then are dye-sublimation wax printer, but I believe those are *really* expensive.

If you want to do your own custom cropping and enlargements, using a remote photolab is about the same as using a film camera versus a digital camera. Which one you choose depends upon how much instant control/feedback/correctibility you want.

Cheers

Something else about wax printers, they take a long time to warm up, and really need some level of constant use, otherwise the print heads tend to clog. Heck even with usage they eventually clog.

You've got it correct except for the cost. $1.82/A4 (roughly 8x10) for the P400. No maintenance on the dye sub except to change out the donor roll every 50 sheets and add paper.

1) zero maintenance except to change the donor roll and add paper
2) It doesn't care if you don't use it for a couple of weeks nor does it care if you come home smelling like someone else's dog.
3) never even noticed the drivers
4) Never printed a black and white with it (understand that I'm prejudiced having done lots of 4x5 sheet film with a view camera for black and white).
5) Never tried the Fuji but seen output from the Kodaks.
I'll do a color and black and white one for you just send me the files and I'll print em out for you - no charge.

B&H has them at a special price of $729. I got mine out of Austin at Precision Camera.

Forgot to add you can get a JetDirect ethernet to parallel. Kind of expensive though. $225?

PM'ed you, thanks Blitz!

Greg

Link doesn't work.. I've PMd you an email address to send the file to.

In reply to:

---

If your budget can stand a $1200 hit, you can shop around and find an HP-4550N color laser printer that will (IMHO) produce better quality pictures at a fraction of the cost per picture of an ink jet printer. (You'll be paying 7--10 cents per page instead of 50--75 cents per page.)

---

Hmm.. you think so? We have one of these at work, and while it's very fast/nice color, it doesn't really compare to the color output that I'm used to from the higher-end HP photo inkjet printers...
-mark

Hmm.. you think so? We have one of these at work, and while it's very fast/nice color, it doesn't really compare to the color output that I'm used to from the higher-end HP photo inkjet printers...

I think I know where the disparity of opinion is coming from, and we may both be right.

All of the color printing that I do is pretty much line-art, with solid colors, as opposed to photographic output. For that kind of printing, the results seem to favor the laser printer as far as saturation, crispness, and sharpness of imaging. And especially cost per page.

tanstaafl.

I am mistaken and stand corrected. FYI. The printer we have at work is a Phaser 850.

Calvin

We have an HP 970cxi and an Epson 870. While color print outs of our digital photographs look good on both, particularly on photo quality heavy matte paper, we rarely use them for that purpose.

In reality we print out very few of the digital pictures we take. Only the best get chosen and only when we can not send them to friends or family as an email attachment. We use www.ofoto.com, a Kodak company. We upload the image, select the size of the print and how many, give them a delivery address and take another hit on our credit card.

The results over the last ten months and some fifty prints have been excellent. I am still not quite sure how they deal with images we upload to them that do not have the same aspect ratio as normal photo stock paper. Perhaps there is cropping going on that we do not recognize but in any case the results look good and the service is good.

The best part is that we no longer fiddle with B&W trial runs and disappointing color prints when we did not get everything set as we should have before hitting "Print."

These two articles review a number of photo printing companies.

Part one: http://db.tidbits.com/getbits.acgi?tbart=06717
Part two: http://db.tidbits.com/getbits.acgi?tbart=06721

Thanks David. Those are interesting articles in Tidbits.

Michael

Thank you for those links, David. I am more confident about trying some of these services.

Got the photo yesterday, looks good! Shadows were kept well. A little greenish but I read that's easily fixable in some technote somewhere.

g

(Bumping this up to the top...)

I almost mentioned this thread on a Slashdot thread on the same basic topic that appeared today.

Then I thought better of it. It's been said before, but it's worth saying again. The signal to noise ratio here is so much better than you find elsewhere. Thank you, everybody.

By the way, since this thread got bumped to the top, I ended up getting the Canon S820 and I'm quite happy with it. It meets all of my criteria.

I take it you're a huge fan of Canons.

Calvin

No, it's the first Canon printer I've ever owned, so I wouldn't say a huge fan. I'm just happy with this particular purchase.

I'm also happy with the Canon camera, but it was purchased on its own merits and I didn't use it as a criteria for the printer purchase (I know the camera and printer divisions are probably completely separate in everything but name).

Saw this bumped back up and thought I'd make a comment. I just got my 15 free 4x6 prints from Shutterfly, and I must say they look REALLY good. I didn't even use full resolution pictures. I'm going to try printing out some 8x10s and see how they look. But, it looks like I might be sticking with them, and not worry about buying my own fancy inkjet.

I ordered a 20x30 print from Ofoto.com of a photo that a guy took of the moon at 3/4 phase through a telescope. Looks really sweet, but I only order prints for stuff I really want ot look nice, or be real BIG.
And of course I take advantage of as many bonus prints for signing up to the different online photo places...

I finally got my camera... I opted for the new S330 and got the waterproof case (good up to 100' underwater). Seems like a keeper to me, small size and I can take it wherever I go this summer and not have to worry about getting it wet.

Later