Photo Printers
 

I didn't see a thread on here or see anyone talk about their printers. What printer do you use at home to print your pics? What do you recommend? I will most likely never print larger than 5x7, so a small one would be good. Are the inkjet ones good or are the dye sublimation ones better?

Any opinions or suggestions welcomed.

There are a billion choices for photo printers these days. The right one for you will depend on a few things:

How much printing do you do in a month?

Is long print life important to you?

What's your price range?

Personally, I'd recommend sticking with an inkjet over a dye-sub printer. The new pigment-based inks have amazing archival properties and huge color gamuts. Dye-sub can't come close to high-end inkjet these days.

I will probably print about 1-200 pics/month. I have a baby on the way and a new camera, so I'm sure to be snapping away alot of shots.

Long life prints isn't too much of an issue, I see most of the inks last a long time anyways.

Price range is under $250 and it shouldnt be too big.

I like the Canon Pixma and the HP Photosmart so far (have to check model #'s)

Any home printer will be very expensive to maintain if you're going to be printing 200 photos a month.

Your best (and cheapest) route is to use a photo kiosk to print the bulk of your photos, and get a decent home printer for the "one-off" runs. If you want a large print made, check out one of the great online photo labs such as www.mpix.com.

I've been quite happy with my Pixma for the last couple years and will definitely be buying another one. I go to a local lab and rent a workstation to direct print to their printers when I'm trying to do something fancy.

We have the Sony DPP-EX50. It works great for our purpose, which is to print on the average approx. 5 pictures a month. We bought it about 2 years ago so I'm sure you can find a better and more advanced printer now but we are very happy with this one.

^^ That one is nice, but my cam uses SD memory. I need one of those multi-card deals.I have a Sony p&s and a Panasonic ultra zoom.

200 is a bit much. I think I bought 2 120 sheet canon 4x6 boxes last year this time, and I still have a box left. I don't have a baby though.

I got a canon I900d along with my camera a couple years back and it still works fine. I also print out school papers and whatnot on it.

I only have one real annoyance with it, If I hav not printed a picture in a while I need to run the head deep cleaning process a couple of times to get it to print images without lines runing down it. Thats a pretty good waste of ink. Also I imagine my setup isn't anywhere near what a lab would have. My monitor isn't calibrated to the printer, or the scanner. Getting a print to come out true to life is a little like using a slot machine.

Unless you're printing things you don't want anyone else to see, or will be printing so often that you really need to have the printer in house, I'd just stick with Costco or something. We use them fairly regularly. Upload the photos at home and they're usually ready when we get there. Prints are cheap, look good and it's fairly convenient.