Portable printer for small prints + keyrings

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robmills

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Hi

I'm looking at buying a printer to sell keyrings and small prints with! Needs to be small enough to be able to have in some sort of bag on me, and have a battery so that I don't need to plug it into the mains!

Was looking at the Canon SELPHY but wondering if theres an alternative.

Budget is around £200.

Thanks!
 
robmills said:
Hi

I'm looking at buying a printer to sell keyrings and small prints with! Needs to be small enough to be able to have in some sort of bag on me, and have a battery so that I don't need to plug it into the mains!

Was looking at the Canon SELPHY but wondering if theres an alternative.

Budget is around £200.

Thanks!
Click to expand...

I have an earlier Selphy (CP400) and for small prints it's great. No inks to clog or smudge, prints are dry as soon as they come out and the quality beats any inkjet.
The main downside is that it is rather slow.
I normally print 100 x 150mm (postcard size) but they also have smaller print packs that might be more suitable for your requirements.
The cost per print is comparable to an inkjet.
I use Qimage for print control and it allows you to print multiple images on one sheet of paper, although, of course, you need a computer to run it.
You didn't mention how you were sourcing your images, but I guess, for portability, you want to print straight from a memory card.

The Selphy I have is mains power only, and I'm not sure how long the optional battery for the CP800 will last, on the Canon site it says 36 postcard sized prints (which is one paper pack), which may be insufficient for your needs unless you carry a spare battery (or two).

The only other comparable printer is the Epson PictureMate Compact Photo Printer, which is a lot more bulky and appears to be mains only powered.
 
Like Brian, I have an older Selphy which had a special offer on for a free battery on application to Canon. I have the battery but only use the printer on mains power. I use mine almost exclusively as a postcard printer when on holiday - having NO liquid inks, I'm happy for it to be among the rest of the stuff in the hold baggage. I splashed out on the proper Canon bag for it since it holds plenty of paper and ink ribbons as well as cables and power supply (and a universal charger for the other batteries).

I use it both as a direct from camera/card printer and linked to a netbook - used with the netbook, I have created 6x4 images of smaller sizes to get multiple prints on a single sheet. I get my media packs from wherever has them in stock - it's getting harder to find the pre-printed-on-the-back postcard packs, although plain paper is fairly easy to get hold of (by plain paper I mean not pre printed as a postcard - you MUST use the correct paper as supplied with the ink ribbon). Last time I costed the prints, they worked out at under 20p/6x4 print - cheaper than buying postcards or getting small quantities of prints done on the high street.
 
Nod said:
it's getting harder to find the pre-printed-on-the-back postcard packs, although plain paper is fairly easy to get hold of (by plain paper I mean not pre printed as a postcard - you MUST use the correct paper as supplied with the ink ribbon). Last time I costed the prints, they worked out at under 20p/6x4 print - cheaper than buying postcards or getting small quantities of prints done on the high street.
Click to expand...

I didn't know Canon produced plain paper for the Selphy series.
All the packs I have bought have been pre-printed with the Canon logo and postcard markings on the reverse.
Academic point really, since I've never sent one as a postcard, and if you did, you could still write an address and stick a stamp on the non-printed side.

The cheapest place I've seen recently for the paper/ribbon packs is 7DayShop although it looks like they are now appear to be charging for delivery, which puts the cost up.
I always buy the 108 sheet triple packs, which work out cheaper per print than the 36 sheet single packs.
I did also recently see a good price advertised for the 108 packs on a certain on-line auction site.
One thing I always wanted to try was the so-called "panorama" paper for the Selphy, which was 100 x 200 mm (4 x 8 in the old money) but these no longer seem to be available.
I guess lack of demand has caused them to be discontinued.

Another point I also noticed is that the latest (CP 810 and later) Selphy printers appear to use a different paper pack to the older models.
Maybe that's a sign that those of us with the older models should stock up on paper/ribbon packs now before they are phased out.
 
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I've just bought a second hand Canon Selphy CP710. Just a word of warning - it can be impossible to get drivers for this and the next model (I think the CP810) for some operating systems - I think maybe Windows 7 or 8 but certainly for my Mac (OS X 10.7). I found some disgruntled people on forums when investigating this.

I have resorted to using my old laptop which runs Vista. It works fine with that. It also works fine printing straight from the camera - in fact I was absolutely amazed at the quality it produced of a RAW football shot taken under floodlights at a really high ISO - all be it on a 6x4 postcard.

I had problems when I put a jpeg from my computer onto an SD card to try and print it - couldn't get that to work. Maybe later models don't have this problem?
 
Brian, the plain paper is lighter weight than the postcard stock and doesn't travel! Like you, I try to get the 108 sheet packs to save a bob or 2 but they can be hard to find, although 7day do seem to have some at the moment. Later models do use different paper/ribbon packs. Never tried other than the 6x4 papers and that's the only size I have the tray for anyway!

Bebop, I've not found drivers for Win7 or 8 but since I tend to use mine with either cards SOOC or connected to an XP netbook, that's not a huge problem. It doesn't seem to like re-carded JPEGs but I don't really use mine for anything other than postcard printing so that's no real problem for me - if I need to do any PP, I've got the netbook running so just plug the printer in and print via that. I've also found that it doesn't like SDHC cards so I use older SD cards on holiday and carry plenty!
 
I just got a couple of 108 sheet paper/ribbon packs from the well known on-line auction site.
The "buy it now" price was the best I've seen recently with free delivery, and if you bought two packs you got a 5% discount on the second pack.
All came in original sealed Canon packaging.
These are not pre printed "postcard" sheets, and they appear to be lighter weight than the previous papers I've used. I've not opened them yet, since I bought them for future use.
The seller is advertising "more than 10 available" so if you want to stock up I'd get in soon.
Really quick delivery from the seller too, they say orders placed before 5:30pm will be shipped the same day. I ordered in the morning and the delivery arrived before 10am the next day.

I don't seem to need any special drivers to use my CP400 with Win 7 64-bit.
I also use Qimage print manager software, since I find it's the only way I can get a true borderless print with the CP400.
 
Brian, did you just plug and play the Selphy or did you just use the old drivers?
 
Nod said:
Brian, did you just plug and play the Selphy or did you just use the old drivers?
Click to expand...

TBH I cannot remember, but I can't recall any strife.

I'm sure I just plugged it in and let things take care of themselves.
The CP400 is in the list of installed printers when I open the "Devices and Printers" control panel.
It's not set up right now so I can't do a test, but I cannot recall having any problems installing it.
I'm using Windows 7 Home Premium 64-bit and using Qimage Pro Edition for printer control.
 
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Cheers. I don't need to use the Selphy on the desktop but handy to know I probably can!
 
Perhaps the Qimage Pro software sorts the drivers?

I did a fair bit of reading on the net. I think it was referring to Macs but I know some people were installing old operating systems, installing the drivers on those, upgrading the drivers. And then removing the old OS. For me, I shall just stick my pics on a USB stick and then plug that into my old Vista machine.
 
Bebop said:
Perhaps the Qimage Pro software sorts the drivers?
Click to expand...

The CP400 appears as an installed printer in the "Devices and Printers" control panel, which is part of Windows, not Qimage.

Sorry, I have no Apple knowledge so I cannot help you with that.
I know that as Apple update their OS you frequently lose the ability to run older software.
 
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