A4 or A3 ?

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Brian_A

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Brian
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Hi

I'm what I guess you'd call a keen amateur. My A4 HP printer, which has served me well over several years, is showing signs of distress. I think it's time to buy a new one.

Up to now I've had anything above A4 printed by one of the online print houses.

So, question is, is it worth going to an A3 printer? I'm thinking that if I was able to easily print to A3 I'd be inclined to do more.

And a related question, is it worth shelling out for something much better? £100 or £300 or £600 ...


What does the team think? :help:
 
My canon a4 expired recently - I managed to purchase a used epson 2100 a3 printer cheaply - this was a pro standard printer and can be picked up on ebay for around £25- £50. great quality colour, b+w not so good

Andy
 
If you like big (over A4) prints and can afford the cost and footprint (desk space) of an A3 printer (they're not small!) and especially if you (like me) lack the patience to wait for prints to come through the post (or just like more control over the process than a distant processor gives you), it's a no-brainer, really! And don't forget that an A3 printer can be used for smaller prints while an A4 can only go up to A4 (unless you like taping several sheets together for psoters...).

If you ignore the original cost of the printer itself, print costs are cheaper than mail order/internet printing, although having to replace a few carts at one time can be a bit of a shock to the wallet!

As with almost all kit associated with the hobby, it's usually worth spending as much as you can afford to get the best you can afford (by afford, I mean no long term credit card or indeed credit of any kind - if you can't buy it from "disposable" income, you can't really afford it IMO). Very few inkjets of any size produce excellent mono prints - even those with several grey inks often show metamerism ( http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Metamerism_(color) ).

I use a Canon iX4000 - only a 4 ink (CMYK) printer but IMO, it produces colours as good as my old (now retired) A4 Canon s820 6 ink (CPCMPMYK) printer.
 
Nod said:
If you like big (over A4) prints and can afford the cost and footprint (desk space) of an A3 printer (they're not small!) and especially if you (like me) lack the patience to wait for prints to come through the post (or just like more control over the process than a distant processor gives you), it's a no-brainer, really!
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Yeah, that's definitely a factor with me. Plus I've had the odd occasion when something came back and the colour balance wasn't what I thought it'd be :lol:
 
Apart from when I first bought my D70 which came with a £50 printing voucher from the supplier, I've done all my digital printing at home, first on a Canon s820 and now on the iX4000. Apart from a couple of brain fade moments when I've printed A3 prints on A4 paper (inky rollers, anyone?!)and an A4 on A3 paper, I've not had a failure, least of all due to poor colours. Inks are always genuine Canon (oddly, usually bought from Tesco, who seem to knock out packs of 4 inks and 50 sheets of lightweight (but acceptable) paper for little more than 7dayshop's price for 3 carts.) and paper is (large sizes - A4 and A3) Canon or Ilford Galerie while the 6x4 is either the lightweight Canon or Lidl/Aldi own brand.
 
Nod said:
Inks are always genuine Canon (oddly, usually bought from Tesco, who seem to knock out packs of 4 inks and 50 sheets of lightweight (but acceptable) paper for little more than 7dayshop's price for 3 carts.)
Click to expand...

Useful to know :thumbs:
 
viewfromthenorth said:
I use a HP A3 printer, but I only use it for A3 sparingly as I tend to use Fotospeed paper which isn't cheap, and neither are inks. For large quantities of A3's, I'll use DS Colour Labs, as they do a decent A3 print for £1.10, which is far cheaper than I can do.
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Cheaper than the cost of Fotospeed paper?

Any special reason why Photospeed rather than HP's own?
 
Fotospeed have a far wider range of paper, and will provide custom profiles for your printer if you use their paper. I think Permajet offer a similar service.

When I was printing off my ARPS portfolio, I must have gone through a couple of boxes of paper and countless ink cartridges to get the images exactly right. It would have cost me far less to get it done at DS, but I couldn't guarantee that what was on my screen was what I would get back. For most things now though, I'm happy for a lab to print things, although I'll be doing my FRPS panel myself.
 
Thanks Andy. I'll investigate Fotospeed.
 
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viewfromthenorth said:
I use a HP A3 printer, but I only use it for A3 sparingly as I tend to use Fotospeed paper which isn't cheap, and neither are inks. For large quantities of A3's, I'll use DS Colour Labs, as they do a decent A3 print for £1.10, which is far cheaper than I can do.
Click to expand...

Depends what paper you buy.
 
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