are any home printers any good?

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joescrivens

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I was considering buying a printer to print my photos but I wondered in general are any of the printers anywhere near the quality of sending them away to be developed, because if not then I'm not interested in owning one.

Obviously the quality varies with price, but say a budget of around £300 will this get a pinter that can print to any quality near sending it to photobox or similar online developers. Mainly for 7x5 prints but the odd up to A4

anyone comment?

UPDATE:

got my ip4700, ink and paper and did my first print last night.

Holy cow was the quality amazing. This was without doubt at least twice as good as anything I've ever had developed from photobox.

Boy am I glad I bought this printer, the extra cost of the prints is more than worth the quality improvement and convienience
 
I've not had much luck with home printing but I'm still in favour of it.

I started with an A3 HP but it suffered from regular missfeeds so I replaced it with an Epson R2880. The quality is great but my prints are just way too dark. Googling "R2880 dark prints" shows it to be a common issue that is also mentioned in several reviews. I think some printers take a great deal of time and expertise to get the best out of whereas I just want something that plugs in and works.

So, I'm all for home printing and I find the quality of prints acceptable (missfeeds and dark prints excepted) but I think that once a shortlist of possible purchases has been made it's worthwhile doing some research and reading reviews and looking for common problems. If I'd Googled "R2880 dark prints" before buying I wouldn't have bought an Epson product.
 
My HP prints dark too, looks like a fairly common 'problem'.
Quality is excellent other than that, costs are quite high but I do tend to print A4 (10x8) so its to be expected when printing in colour. Not tried B&W with it but I expect costs wont vary much.
I have tried both the very expensive paper and the 'everyday' stuff, cant see a huge difference to justify the extra expense of the paper.

I do however like the convenience of doing it myself, then again I used to have a wet darkroom too :)

Matt
 
to get the best print quality you have to spend a good couple of thousand then on top of that theres print costs and maintenance. i would never do home printing as its easier to save money towards buying a new lens or piece of equipment and printing somewhere such as photobox, dscl, one vision, or loxley.
 
ok so I have one person saying I need to spend a couple of grand to beat photobox quality and two others saying that the home printer is better than photobox quality.

Mastertrinity, have you tried home printing? I'd like to know what you base your opinion on.
 
I use a HP 9180 that has been great for the past two years. I print colour, B & W and also prints on fine art papers and metalic papers. The quality of the prints is great and I really cannot fault my printer at all. I received a colourmunki for Christmas but have not used it yet to calibrate my monitors or printer. What I see on the screen is what is printed usually and only varies with the types of paper that I use. Some of the effects you can get with different papers are outstanding. I like the convenience of being able to print my own. I was contacted yesterday by my boss wanting a print on fine art paper for a surprise birthday present. Needed for Tuesday. I did it there and then and it will be with her later today. That doesn't happen often but it was nice to be able to do it almost instantly.

As an aside it will be focus on imaging soon and that is where I bought my printer for an excellent price a few years ago. Just a thought for anyone maybe wanting to buy one.

Chris :)
 
my 2p worth - I've tried all sorts of printers (used to be an Apple reseller) and found that as a general rule it's a major struggle to get prints that match the demos that the manufacturers supply. It also depends what software you print from. My experience was that if you used the best papers and always, always used the manufacturer's ink then you could get good results. BUT, the costs were high. So now I send them to Photobox or Pixum, the prints are so cheap I make up leaflets and wait until they send a free postage deal or similar. Pixum are currently doing 100 prints for GBP 10 all in, (6x4). Bearing in mind the time and cost send them :)
 
i dont own the printer myself but i worked with my uncle and he had one, it was really nice and it cost him around £1200 but it was really only good for proofing as the maintenance can get expensive and you need the time to look after it (a bit like a pet really) also you say your only doing the odd 7x5 and max would be around A4 so you dont need to spend all that money when you can get them prints even from somewhere like jessops.
 
I use an Epson R2880 to print my home pictures, I've also used a Canon Pixma Pro 9000. Both produce really superb quality prints. The 'prints too dark' issue is almost always a result of people calibrating and editing their photos with their monitor's brightness levels set far too high. You need to be setting the monitor to be between 80-110 cd/m2. If the image looks right when the monitor is at that brightness level then it will look bright enough when printed. Took me an awful lot of ink and paper before I realised what caused my dark prints.
 
There's lots of comments on time and costs but that is not what the OP asked. Yes, they need maintaining and can be fiddly but it is possible on a relatively cheap printer, with a fair degree of effort, to get reproducable, high quality prints.

Also, mastertrinity, when was this when your uncle had one. It's only in the last couple of years I've seen printers worth the hassle myself.
 
LJR said:
You need to be setting the monitor to be between 80-110 cd/m2. If the image looks right when the monitor is at that brightness level then it will look bright enough when printed. Took me an awful lot of ink and paper before I realised what caused my dark prints.
Click to expand...

Yup. I callibrate to 80cd/m2 and it works well.
 
I'm way too impatient to wait for prints to come back from on-line or postal services to do most of mine at home. Large batches of enprints get taken to the high street but any one offs or short runs get done here.

The printers I use are a (now elderly in hardware terms) Canon S820 A4, 6 ink printer and a Canon iX 4000 A3, 4 ink printer.

Pros:- You get to see the results almost instantly.
If a reprint needs doing, you can make any adjustments and do it straight away.
You have control of the process - need a bit more warmth? Add it. Contrast problem? Easily fixed.
While it doesn't quite match seeing a B&W print emerge in the dev tray, seeing a blank sheet emerge from the printer does have a little of that magic.

Cons:- Cost, although shopping around can reduce these quite considerably, especially if you remember to order before you actually need the inks or paper.
Desk space, especially with an A3 printer that's over 2' wide.
Print longevity, which is far better if genuine inks are used.
 
I don't print very often so I'm not that fussed about cost per print. I've maybe printed like 50 photos for myself in the last year.

I think what appeals to me is that if the printer is in front of me I am more likely to print odd photos here and there. I think I don't bother sending them off as I often only have 1 or two I want to print and it seems a bit crazy to send off and pay postage for 1 photo, so I either send off extras that I don't really want to justify the point of sending them off or I wait and then print like 20 5 months later.

Really I just want to know if I'm going to suffer with not as good quality prints as I am used to
 
grumpybadger said:
There's lots of comments on time and costs but that is not what the OP asked. Yes, they need maintaining and can be fiddly but it is possible on a relatively cheap printer, with a fair degree of effort, to get reproducable, high quality prints.

Also, mastertrinity, when was this when your uncle had one. It's only in the last couple of years I've seen printers worth the hassle myself.
Click to expand...

Yes thats exactly it.

I've been looking at the canon pixma IP4700, seems to come well reccomended. Just have to decide if I think it would be worth the extra to get an a3 one instead :shrug:
 
I love my old canon pixma...
cracking printer...
however, I think photobox is better for general prints or if I have 10-20 prints to do

I wouldn't bother with A3 unless you foresee yourself doing a lot of prints this way.
expensive with decent paper, which is a must to get the most out of my canon pixma
 
well my uncle one is only about three years old but cant remember the make of it, i just think that it would be less hassle going down to somewhere like jessops and do some instant or 1 hour prints.
 
mastertrinity said:
well my uncle one is only about three years old but cant remember the make of it, i just think that it would be less hassle going down to somewhere like jessops and do some instant or 1 hour prints.
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less hassle to drive 20 mins into town and wait around for 1 hour than to sit at my desk and bend down when the print has finished? :shrug:
 
DizMatt said:
I love my old canon pixma...
cracking printer...
however, I think photobox is better for general prints or if I have 10-20 prints to do

I wouldn't bother with A3 unless you foresee yourself doing a lot of prints this way.
expensive with decent paper, which is a must to get the most out of my canon pixma
Click to expand...

When you say better do you mean the quality of the prints you get from photobox are better?

Or do you mean printing that many and the cost of it?
 
But the question isn't about hassle but about quality.

I struggle to drive the 30 mile round trip to Jessops and find them open at a time that is convenient for me. Most of my printing gets done in the evenings.

I agree that it can be less hassle to go online but the hassle of getting prints by sending away and then finding they aren't quite right is a nightmare and actually more hassle and slower to reprint than home printing.

As for costs, they aren't cheap I agree but they are worth it to some. You don't agree, which is fine, but I don't think that opinion is helpful to the question here.

Some cost information. This is over a total of 822 A4 prints (where an A3 print is costed as 2xA4) using genuine Epson inks and a mix of Epson and Permajet paper.

Cost per sheet (consumables only, not including printer) £1.04, of which 64p is ink and 40p is paper. I've just moved to refillable cartridges, so we'll see if that helps costs going forwards...

Paul
 
Yeah I am definitely not bothered about cost. I know for a fact if I have a printer in front of me I am more likely t print some photos then bother developing them by sending them off.

If I do this though I want my pics to be of measurable quality to the ones I sent off otherwise I won't be happy.
 
"Took me an awful lot of ink and paper before I realised what caused my dark prints."

I still don't know. When I look at calibration charts I can see all that I am meant to see and all I know is that what I see on my screen pretty much matches what I see on the back of my camera and what I remember the scene to have been. The only thing which differs in this chain is the dark print from my Epson. It's prints are also darker than the same shot printed on my previous HP.

I shouldn't need to lighten pictures for printing or darken my screen and then up the picture brightness if the exposure is spot on and everything looks fine apart from the end print. I'm still a fan of home printing though but I think that manufacturers need to sort their profiles and software compatibility out.
 
You can definitely get good quality prints, but it is another skill to master. I found I didn't print often enough and I would spend so long cleaning the print heads (and wasting ink in the process) that it wasn't worth it for me.

I started taking my images to the high street such as Boots or Asda. Then I sent a couple off to Loxely with direct comparisons from Asda and the difference was night and day. Small prints are twice as expensive as as the high street but the larger prints (such as 8x10) are comparable.

Delivery is £3.50, so as another poster suggested if you send a print here and there it will end up costing a fortune. I always piggy back my own prints on the back of someone else's.

I wouldn't go back to using a home printer. You might miss the excitement of seeing it emerge from the print tray, but it's also quite exciting receiving a large package and going through your prints. :)
 
woof woof said:
I shouldn't need to lighten pictures for printing or darken my screen and then up the picture brightness if the exposure is spot on and everything looks fine apart from the end print. I'm still a fan of home printing though but I think that manufacturers need to sort their profiles and software compatibility out.
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You are transferring between two completely different forms of media. You will never get the brightness from reflective paper that you will from an emissive light source whacked up in brightness to make multimedia files looks great. It's not about altering the images to suit the media but rather getting your processing environment as close to the output media as you can in order to get a true reflection as to what the photo will look like. You need to be editing with a screen brightness of around 80-100 cd/m2
 
"You are transferring between two completely different forms of media..."

I think that the image I capture with my camera should pretty much match what I have seen. I'm no great photographer but I do know what I'm doing. What I print should therefore be a pretty close match. I don't want to hijack this thread but in my case my view that the problem lies at Epson's door is strengthened by the fact that my HP's prints were not dark, they pretty much matched what I expected to see. The same picture printed on my new Epson is darker.
 
woof woof said:
"You are transferring between two completely different forms of media..."

I think that the image I capture with my camera should pretty much match what I have seen. I'm no great photographer but I do know what I'm doing. What I print should therefore be a pretty close match. I don't want to hijack this thread but in my case my view that the problem lies at Epson's door is strengthened by the fact that my HP's prints were not dark, they pretty much matched what I expected to see. The same picture printed on my new Epson is darker.
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I wish you the best of luck with it all.
 
joescrivens said:
Yeah I am definitely not bothered about cost. I know for a fact if I have a printer in front of me I am more likely t print some photos then bother developing them by sending them off.

If I do this though I want my pics to be of measurable quality to the ones I sent off otherwise I won't be happy.
Click to expand...

I can, and sometimes do print my own, and whilst the quality is similar to those I can get from a lab TBH it costs more (in terms of paper/ink and maintenence) to get a good print, and its a lot more hassle so 99% of the time I just send them off to be printed

Hugh
 
I own an Epson R2400 and am very pleased with the prints it provides, if not the running cost in ink!
 
Photography for me is a hobby, I have a HP photosmart printer and the results for me are great. I've printed shots for friends and family and they are always very impressed. I haven't used a pro printing service yet but it won't belong as I can only print upto A4.
 
A lot will also depend on the size of prints and their intended use. If you're doing 7x5's for your album, then it's cheaper to get them done at Jessops or online at Photobox. If you're doing larger (e.g. 12x10 and upward) for exhibition or competition, then it's less clear cut. I used to send competition prints away to DSC or Photobox, and was always happy with the quality of the results.

I've recently bought an A3 printer as I want to take more control of the final output. However, I'm opened the lid on a hugely expensive pandora's box of different papers, inks, calibration, etc, but I'm confident that I'll get there, hopefully before I bankrupt myself........:lol:
 
Thanks for all the replies.

It's never been about cost for me. I couldn't care less that the home printing costs more. At the moment I rarely print because I'm never bothered to actually send them off or take them anywhere. Anytime I need to print in bulk I'll continue to send them, but the odd pic here and there that I don't print because I feel it's a bit of a faff sending 1 print off and then waiting three days to get it back I'll be able to print myself.

I was just unsure if the quality would be as good and it sounds like it will.

Thanks for all the discussion. Now I just have to work out where to buy the ink from :-)
 
joescrivens said:
Thanks for all the discussion. Now I just have to work out where to buy the ink from :-)
Click to expand...

If I'm not in a tearing hurry for the ink and paper, I get it from 7dayshop.com which brings the cost down to not-quite-as-extortionate-as-the-high-street but have also found that our local large Tesco stocks packs of the CLI-8 inks (which is what the iX4000 drinks) bundled with 50 sheets of GP-501 170gsm glossy paper at a very reasonable price.
 
cheers, just looked at 7dayshop.com and looks like they are out of stock
 
onomatopoeia said:
I own an Epson R2400 and am very pleased with the prints it provides, if not the running cost in ink!
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I too use an Epson R2400 that I bought seconhand 2 years ago. Since purchase I've converted it to a Lyson continuous ink system and fitted a waste ink tank. I only use this for A4 and above.

I use 2 different Permajet papers and also Permajet canvas. I've had custom profiles done for each of the papers and have a fully colour calibrated system throughout. The quality of the prints is absolutely superb right through to A3+.

I get lab prints done a couple of times a year to compare quality. 99% of the time the prints coming out of the Epson are equal to, or better than the lab prints. Black & white prints from the Epson are also superb with no colour casts.

Running costs are reduced using the Lyson CIS and there is no messing around changing cartridges and having endless head cleanings when you do so. One thing the waste ink tank shows is just how much ink goes to waste during head cleaning.

For 6x4, 7x5 and 9x6 I always use a HiTi 510 Dye sub, which is primarily for event use. A 6x4 from this works out about £0.21p, and takes 6 seconds making ideal for the event work. Again, I'm running it with a custom profile, although they are nearly spot on straight out the box.

I will always do my own printing. More control, consistency and immediate prints. For me it definitely works out cheaper as well. It really depends how many prints you're doing per week.
 
Camtrekker said:
I too use an Epson R2400 that I bought seconhand 2 years ago. Since purchase I've converted it to a Lyson continuous ink system and fitted a waste ink tank. I only use this for A4 and above.
Click to expand...


Are you happy with the Lyson system? I've wondered about getting a CIS but have always been deterred by stories about blockages and other problems.

Also, which permajet papers do you use?
 
onomatopoeia said:
Are you happy with the Lyson system? I've wondered about getting a CIS but have always been deterred by stories about blockages and other problems.

Also, which permajet papers do you use?
Click to expand...

You need to use the printer regularly if it's on CIS. I have had problems in the past with blockages on the head. The head cleaning clears them ok.

What I tend to do now is make sure I do a print everyday, even if it's just a 6x4, and that keeps them clear.

The main paper I use is Permajet oyster. Then Permajet Gloss and Portrait white. I also use their Digital Photo Canvas.

When I went over to the Lyson CIS 18 months ago, they paid for me to get the printer profiles done, which makes a huge difference to the quality, as the profile is done for the paper as well as the ink.

I wouldn't go back to Epson cartridges again. Too expensive and wastes far too much ink cleaning the heads when you change a cartridge.
 
Camtrekker said:
The main paper I use is Permajet oyster. Then Permajet Gloss and Portrait white. I also use their Digital Photo Canvas.

When I went over to the Lyson CIS 18 months ago, they paid for me to get the printer profiles done, which makes a huge difference to the quality, as the profile is done for the paper as well as the ink.
Click to expand...

You got paid? PermaJet do it Free for they own paper
 
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