Photograph printing recommendations

[kasavien]

Hi all

Just a quick question, I need to print off 2 (for now) 12" * 10" photographs. Does anyone have any recommendations for which etailer to use?

Thanks

Andy

[Bobster]

sorry, i use a local pro place..

[CAT-THE-FIFTH]

Some Snappy Snaps are good but it really depends on who owns the branch(it is a franchise) and how well the equipment has been maintained and whether the staff know what they are doing. Pro places are better but you pay for the privilege.

You may also want to consider what paper the prints will be done on. Usually either Kodak or Fuji papers are used in high street labs and from my experience I tended to prefer the Kodak Royal paper a bit more than the Fuji Crystal Archive stuff.

However I tend to do most of my prints using my printer nowadays so I cannot give you any up-to-date advice!

[Saracen]

I can't help either - I do it myself.

[brammers]

Can't sleep tonight

I now do my own printing, but I've had success with snapfish before. It's Jessops' service, but without the crappy auto-adjusts that they have in-store. I'd trust them for standard quality.

If you're after something nice then find a local shop and ask them for a 'hand print'. What it means is that rather than just whacking the file through the machine, the guy will actually take the time to look at it, tweak some levels, fix some colours... It'll be expensive, but if you get a decent printer then it'll be worth it.

Final option - go find your local camera club. They often have the kind of large format pigment ink printers that individuals can't afford to run - and the expertise to go with it. In Edinburgh for example, depending on who you join you can get access to a Canon ipf5000 or an Epson 1290.

[Saracen]

....

Final option - go find your local camera club. They often have the kind of large format pigment ink printers that individuals can't afford to run - and the expertise to go with it. In Edinburgh for example, depending on who you join you can get access to a Canon ipf5000 or an Epson 1290.

Ahem ..... like the A3 pigment printers I use you mean? Or the dye-sub? Or the A2 machine?

Individuals can afford to run them, and I know lots that do.

[YorkieBen]

Saracen, you may know alot of people who run printers that cost hundreds if not thousands of pounds but the vast majority of people can't afford that. To get access to a high level printer I would have thought going via a camera club is a more realistic option

[kalniel]

Hi all

Just a quick question, I need to print off 2 (for now) 12" * 10" photographs. Does anyone have any recommendations for which etailer to use?

Thanks

Andy

Photobox.

If there's a costco near you then consider them too.

[IBM]

+1 for photobox but obviously it depends on your monitor being calibrated correctly. While you can't match your monitor settings to photobox's printers, their accuracy is usually pretty good.

In addition, I've found their customer service to be awesome. I had an issue with some photo mugs I had printed up, there was an issue, they replaced them. No quibbles, three days later, new product. Very impressed.

[Gerrard]

Gadget Show recently did a review into online printers and Snapfish came out on top for value, although OneVision was the best, but bloody expensive. The video is here:-

http://fwd.five.tv/gadget-show/video...photo-printing

[Singh400]

My sister use PhotoBox all the time. And I literally mean all of the time. Everyday we have stuff arriving from there from little prints, to huge massive prints. She uses them in her art course at uni. She highly recommends them.

[brammers]

Ahem ..... like the A3 pigment printers I use you mean? Or the dye-sub? Or the A2 machine?

Individuals can afford to run them, and I know lots that do.

Well, yes... I mean the kind of printer which costs about £1100, needs 12 inks at £50 each and has a 6 month use by date on each of those 130ml cartridges. There are cheaper ones, my mate just got an Epson 1900, but camera clubs still have some nice kit.

[Mutley]

+1 for photobox but obviously it depends on your monitor being calibrated correctly. While you can't match your monitor settings to photobox's printers, their accuracy is usually pretty good.

In addition, I've found their customer service to be awesome. I had an issue with some photo mugs I had printed up, there was an issue, they replaced them. No quibbles, three days later, new product. Very impressed.

+1 on PhotoBox. Its the best of the general, mass product photo etailers.

[DannyM]

Www.togsprint.com

[Saracen]

Well, yes... I mean the kind of printer which costs about £1100, needs 12 inks at £50 each and has a 6 month use by date on each of those 130ml cartridges. There are cheaper ones, my mate just got an Epson 1900, but camera clubs still have some nice kit.

Oh indeed. Things like the Epson 3800 are popular with camera clubs, for more or less the reasons you mention.

But .... it's not unknown for enthusiasts to go that far, or close to it (like 2880) either. I've been thinking about an upgrade, and I has my eye on the 3800, depsite the £1000 price. Why? Because of the ink. My logic is that if you';re not going to use an A3 printer a fair bit, you're probably better off buying an A4 and getting larger prints either commercially or from a mate/club. And if you are going to use A3 a lot, the running costs suggests the 3800 may well be a better bet than the 1900/2880 etc.

And sometimes a bit of lateral thinking goes a long way. I've just sold my older standby A3 pigment printer ..... for £55. Sure, it's an old Stylus 2000, but if properly calibrated will still produce pretty decent results. Add in a modestly-priced CIS (which the bloke that bought it, a friend on another forum already had) and you can keep the running costs within the bounds of the sensible too.

If I was running a business printing, or if I was selling commercial or 'art' prints, I may well be inclined to stick with genuine Epson cartridges, with all that implies for running costs. But, for a home machine, and especially if you picked up one cheap, then you're not taking a risk with a £1000 machine by running a CIS and third-party inks.

So yeah, I take your point Brammers, and my reply was kind-of tongue-in-cheek. These machines certainly can be expensive to buy and run. But you can pick up bargains if you hunt about a bit.The machine I sold, by the way, worked perfectly (at least, as far as I know, and the buyer says he's delighted) and because it was my standby, was on its second, maybe third, set of cartridges in it;s entire life! It was, to all practical purposes, virtually a brand new machine.

So combine that with a continuous inking system and you have an A3 pigment system that can be run without costing the earth. It just required a bit of luck and lateral thinking.

[Saracen]

Saracen, you may know alot of people who run printers that cost hundreds if not thousands of pounds but the vast majority of people can't afford that. To get access to a high level printer I would have thought going via a camera club is a more realistic option

If you don't know someone that has that type of machine, then camera clubs may well be a good option, and may well be a way to get to know people that have that kind of machine too.

I'm not knocking the camera club route, but I do know quite a few people with A3 pigment machines, and as far as I know, none of them are in camera clubs. All I'm saying is that it's not the only way, or that expensive that individuals don't do it, because a fair few enthusiasts do.