Printing at home or in copy centers? Pls help!

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Guys, share your experience please! Do you print your photos at home or in copy centers? What is more cheaper?
recently... i found this video Epson CISS vs original cartridges. I don't know, but it seems to be true. And now I'm thinking about own good small printer.
Nevertheless, I am afraid to use non-original cartridges. What can you say?
 
Unless you want to print to control the whole process or are doing volume runs, I can't see any economical reason to print at home.
 
I use the Fotospeed CIS with my Epson R2400 - On another recent thread a couple of us outlined annual savings.

On average, I go through about 125ml of ink (in each cartridge) in a year (some more than others). The ink costs for this year are £200 to Fotospeed. If I was buying originals it would have cost me £900!!

Ink quality is every bit as good as the originals.

It's STILL cheaper to send your prints to somewhere like dscl. At 60p for a 10x10 print I can't buy decent paper that cheap never mind the ink!!! And that doesn't include the cost of owning the printer in the first place. Sure you also have to build in some P&P into that too of course.....

Add in lost ink from changing cartridges and the odd clean and home printeing is really only useful if you want to print on different papers (POAH reminded me of that in another thread).

If you are happy to print at home and don't mind the extra expense it's very useful to do so.
 
As a very general rule of thumb, if you don't mind having images printed on glossy paper ( as that's what most labs use) then you are probably better off financially sending your images out for printing.

It's difficult to work out exact costs to compare like with like as using inkjet printers the main cost is in the ink, and that depends on how much ink is used. However as Jim pointed out, if you want to use different papers then you need to think about printing the images yourself.

However if you need prints quickly then printing yourself may be the only answer. Another point is that you may feel that to get the most out of your photography you you need to produce the final print yourself . This is dificult to put a price on.
 
Chappers said:
As a very general rule of thumb, if you don't mind having images printed on glossy paper ( as that's what most labs use) then you are probably better off financially sending your images out for printing.

It's difficult to work out exact costs to compare like with like as using inkjet printers the main cost is in the ink, and that depends on how much ink is used. However as Jim pointed out, if you want to use different papers then you need to think about printing the images yourself.

However if you need prints quickly then printing yourself may be the only answer. Another point is that you may feel that to get the most out of your photography you you need to produce the final print yourself . This is dificult to put a price on.
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I'm not sure ink is the main cost for a print. Paper is expensive too! DSCL's images are cheaper than the paper I use never mind the cost of the ink!
 
Ink cost are difficult to calculate, but if you look at the cost of an pack of 25 sheets of A3 paper ( Say Ilford Galerie smooth pearl) it's about £24 for 25 sheets. ( Ilford Galerie Gold Fiber Silk is considerably more expensive) A set of Epson inks for the 2880 is around £90. From experience you'll get through two maybe three sets of ink per 25 sheets. Hence my submission that ink is the main contributor to cost.

However if you use paper such as Gold Fiber Silk or one of the Hahnemuhle or similar products then paper cost does to become a major factor as well.
 
Chappers said:
Ink cost are difficult to calculate, but if you look at the cost of an pack of 25 sheets of A3 paper ( Say Ilford Galerie smooth pearl) it's about £24 for 25 sheets. ( Ilford Galerie Gold Fiber Silk is considerably more expensive) A set of Epson inks for the 2880 is around £90. From experience you'll get through two maybe three sets of ink per 25 sheets. Hence my submission that ink is the main contributor to cost.

However if you use paper such as Gold Fiber Silk or one of the Hahnemuhle or similar products then paper cost does to become a major factor as well.
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Chappers with the greatest respect I think that is MILES out. I think you may have that round the wrong way. 2 or 3 sets of PAPER per set of ink.....

What printer do you use? I print my own wedding albums at times and can go through quite a few 10x10 prints without having to restart the printer (30+). I've never measured and it couyld be quite a lot more than 30.
 
I normally use the printer for A3 and A3+ prints, but did a set of around 40 odd A4 a few months ago ,and I recon I got through a set of inks on the 2880. Now it's a bit rough and ready as different carts run out at different times, plus there was a lot of ink lay down on the images.

However irrespective of how many prints you get from a set of cartridges, it's still cheaper to get prints made at a commercial lab, such as Sams then it is to print your own. Maybe not as satiating though :)
 
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Chappers said:
I normally use the printer for A3 and A3+ prints, but did a set of around 40 odd A4 a few months ago ,and I recon I got through a set of inks on the 2880. Now it's a bit rough and ready as different carts run out at different times, plus there was a lot of ink lay down on the images.

However irrespective of how many prints you get from a set of cartridges, it's still cheaper to get prints made at a commercial lab, such as Sams then it is to print your own. Maybe not as satiating though :)
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So 40 prints for a set now :) You said three sets of ink for 25 sheets (hence my surprise)

I totally agree it's cheaper to send to a lab. Like I said I can't buy the paper alone cheaper than I can get prints from Sams or DSCL.

For an A4 sheet I recon ink costs can't be far off £1 to £2 depending on what you print and the paper a further £50p to £1 per sheet - so not cheap
 
Obviously we are making comparisons on two differnt print methods - ink jet and standrd photographic 'wet' process.

not exactly a fair contest.
 
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