Printers?

Hardware and technical stuff
1

For Xmas, my wife wants a printer that will print out pics from her digital camera (along with being a normal printer). I know absolutely nothing about this kind of hardware. I’d like to spend around one to two hundred bucks. We don’t need anything fancy. If it matters, the camera she has is a Konica KD-400Z.

Thanks for making my life easier!

2

Canon Pixma - - several models, most less than $200. I love my ip600.

You may be able to get the discontinued Canon i860 models also.

3

Can you recommend a good online retailer?

4

Canon is definitely a good choice.

NewEgg.com if you want it relatively quickly.

The best price from a reliable dealer will likely be either NewEgg, or a Dell.com coupon found on Techbargains.com. But Dell can take a little while to ship sometimes.

5

Does the camera have PictBridge?
If yes, then go with the largest Pixma you can afford.
If no, then I think only the IP6000 has built in cardreader.

6

All right, I got the IP6000. Thanks for the suggestions!

Now, is there a trick to buying photo paper for this thing? I am assuming that is where they make their money, so what avenue do I wnat to take? Go to Staples and buy what’s on sale? I am sure my wife will want all different size photos, so what’s the trick?

Thanks again.

7

When I got my S800 a couple years ago, I bought $100 worth of different types of paper. I printed the exact same test target on all of them to see what the results were.

In a nutshell, if I wasn’t using the premium Canon or Epson papers, things looked like shit. Most other papers rendered the Canon inkset a bit too green. Or, they couldn’t absorb the amount of ink that the Canon printer put out in high quality mode, and smudged everything.

I ended up settling on the expensive Canon Photo Pro paper for glossy and the expensive Epson premium for matte prints (Canon didn’t make a matte paper at the time)

For ‘draft’ prints, or prints that I don’t need things to be absolutely perfect on, I used the mid/low-priced Canon Glossy Photo Paper.

8
  1. Get the largest paper size you can. 11x17, or 8x10
  2. Make an 11x17 or 8x10 montage of a bunch of different photos in Photoshop, at the size you want them.
  3. Print them all out on one sheet and trim them with a hand-held roller cutter.

For example, one 8x10 sheet can yield two 4x5s, or several wallets. You can even print color business cards. I print 8 or 10 of these to a sheet, for example:

9

If you want the photos to last you have to use original paper and original ink - other products might look just as good here and now, but some tests has shown less than one year fade resistance in unoriginal inks (others are better… but there’s no guarantees and no way of knowing).
I’t’s where they make their money - but it’s also where they put rather larghe amounts of research.