Photograph printing recommendations

[tfboy]

A bit late to the discussion, but I use www.dscolourlabs.co.uk and have the fuji application installed on my pc. For anything up to 18x12, they're really cheap but still use proper pro fuji frontier printers. Only downside is that the delivery is pricey for just a few prints (£4.50 IIRC).

[brammers]

I'm not going to go through most of this stuff Saracen, because I think you've missed one very important point:

Where we disagree, though, is that individuals can't afford it. Some, many oin fact, can and do .... if you're an enthusiast.

Actually - no. No, as you quite rightly pointed out and as I tried to allude to in the first reply, I was making a sweeping generalisation and individuals most certainly can run whatever they want. As I also said in my first reply to you - I have a friend (actually a few) who does/do just that. 'That individuals can't afford to run' was aimed in the context of the OP - there's no way he was considering one of these. I run one myself - I'm the guy who sets the price per inch and buys the cartridges and the paper and keeps an eye on the fund that's either going to be used for head replacements or a new printer - even bearing in mind your obvious expertise I think I feel justified in saying that I know more about the costs, or at least feel them more keenly, than you do!

What we seem to disagree on is maybe the degree of plaudits that companies deserve at this point in time. Seeing as we still seem to agree that we're still in the dark ages of printing - how long ago was it when it cost £50 to swap between matte and glossy paper on an Epson? - I think there's still a long way to go before I could reccomend printing your own photos to anyone less than a serious enthusiast. I'm an enthusiast, I exhibit and sell picutres and all of that, so I manage my own printer, and wish I could own it. But dear God, the hassle it was to get it set up... And the learning curve! You'd think that going to digital from analogue printing would be a revalation, but you'd only be half right... You say that an enthusiast with a bit of money can buy one, and you're right, but the problems... These are seriously finickity machines at the moment. They're getting better by the generation - Canon ipf5000 to 5100 was a huge step up - but it's still another tool to learn rather than something that just works. Is that such a bad thing in the context of being an enthusiast? I say yes.

To me it echos digital cameras. Firstly you had scientists building their own. Then you had the pros who used them only for the speed at which you could get shots into print. Then you had serious enthusiasts, who put up with 1001 quibbles because they saw an advantage. Then digital cameras started to be perfected until I can look at my a900 and think of only maybe 5 things that I'd change. To me, printers are about at the EOS10D stage - they're becoming popular, but they're nowhere near the finished article yet. 10 years down the line I don't think we'll have these problems.

[Saracen]

First point, who knows more about the running costs, or "feels them more keenly". My opinion on that is that neither of us know enough about the other, what they do or their background, to be able to judge on either point. All I'll say is that I have been working with colour inkjets since 1991, have tested a LOT of them, from very cheap to very expensive, have regularly had access to information on a level that most people don't have, and am regularly paid for consultancy on printers, and their running costs by companies basing large capital expenditure on factors just such as running costs. One such fairly recent project involved the purchase of well over a thousand machines. You tell me, was it fairly important to get the cost analysis right? And as for my own machines, well, I get to pay for the cost of running those and, in the vast part, that's for personal use not business use. If you feel justified in feeling you know more about the running costs, well, I can't and won't contradict you because I don't know how much you know, and I certainly don't have that particular Canon printer (though I do have others). As for who feels it more "keenly", who knows?

I certainly agree about the problems with printing. But I guess it depends on how you define "maturity", and it's a moveable target. For instance, a lot depends on your own standards. If you're an enthusiast, or exhibit/sell pictures, let alone both, you're almost certainly going to have higher standards than the average user, and perhaps different criteria, like longevity and colour fastness. I have friends that are quite happy to print their photos on a standard, non-photo inkjet (or a little dedicated dye-sub), because about all they ever do is show around enprint-sized images at work, or send a few to relatives to show the kids growing up. I have another (pro) friend that has several staff that handle the lab side of the work, like the printing side, because their time is better spent taking the pictures and handling client relations and marketing. So this particular friend has developed a workflow that suits their needs. And most people even thinking about pigment printers will be somewhere in-between.

But it certainly isn't a "plug-it-in and push a button" process if you want to get optimum results. As I'm sure you're only too aware, there are a lot of factors ranging from correcting colour casts to dealing with the vagaries of the particular media you choose to print on. Many people won't care. Enthusiasts or people with commercial criteria most likely will.

I'm not convinced how much better this is going to get. Short of decent hardware calibration, which obviously comes at a price though it's notably cheaper than it used to be, it's likely to remain a bit of a black art. I think this because it's not a subject that much bothers non-enthusiasts, and enthusiasts are always likely to want top quality results, and that doesn't lend itself to simple, push-button solutions.

Printers, and both inks and paper, have certainly matured a lot, but there's room to go yet. I wouldn't say the field is yet fully mature, but it's far from infancy too.