Please recommend photo printer for large prints...

mshan

Diamond Member
Nov 16, 2004
7,868
0
71
My dad currently owns a Canon i860 ink jet printer.

He wants to print out large photos (I forgot if he said 9 x 13 or 13 x 19) and was wondering what the high quality large print photo printers are.

Don't necessarily need the absolute best, but one that is reasonably priced (initial outlay and cost per print) but still produces very high quality photos.

Thanks in advance!

 
D

Deleted member 4644

You can get a Canon Pixma Pro 9000 13x19 with ebay rebates and a canon rebate for about $300 or $350 these days. I just got one, expecting great results.
 

mshan

Diamond Member
Nov 16, 2004
7,868
0
71
I take it that that Canon printer is chipped and you have to use official Canon ink?

Also, how is ink consumption compared to the Epson R1800 I saw mentioned while searching for photo printer (also Epson Stylus 1400, which Swift Ink apparently has generics for)?
 
D

Deleted member 4644

hmm not sure actually. I believe you can refill a certain number of times before the chip gives out. I'm sure you can google to find out more.
 

cputeq

Member
Sep 2, 2007
154
0
0
I have the Pixma 9000. Got it for $150 after rebates when I purchased my 40D with it :)

My impressions --

The printer is *big*. Weighs 30lbs, but really once you put it in place it's not going to move anywhere :) Has rear wheels in case you need to scoot it away from the wall (because you have to use the flat feeder for thick paper).


Ink and consumption - I loaded up my printer with the supplied 8 cartridges. So far, I think I've printed somewhere around (13) 11x14" prints, (3) 13x19" borderless, and maybe a couple of 8x10s for testing. So far, I've had to replace the PhotoMagenta and Yellow ink tanks at around $13 a pop. "red" and "green" tanks are still showing full on the monitor, so you may actually waste your money if you buy these 8-pack refills from amazon, etc.

After those prints and the replacements I installed, my ink shows as follows:

Green, 100%
Red, 100%
Photo Magenta, 100%
Black 75%
Photo Cyan 50%
Cyan 75%
Magenta 50%
Yellow 100%

Doing the math by adding up all my estimated printed square inches (disregarding the border on the 11x14 prints) and dividing the dollar amount of the ink I've already used (assuming $14 for a full tank, so a 75% tank indicates $3.5 used, etc.)

I've calculated, very roughly, the following

Cost to print 13x19 borderless = $4.15 plus paper
11 x 14 = $2.5 plus paper
8 x 10 = $1.36

Or, basically, $0.0167 per square inch printed.

Very rough numbers, but gives you a ballpark figure.

Print quality - Great. I'm using Red River Paper 11x14" Arctic Gloss, as well as Canon's own 13x19 paper. Canon's Museum Etch gives a nice effect to black and white photos.

Software - Comes with an Easy-print software which is pretty easy to use, except that you can't interface with the print driver like a normal app, so you can't select custom paper sizes.



Overall -- it's a decent printer and gives good results. Fairly speedy.

The tanks are see-through, so you can see just what the printer considers "empty", which is nice.

Now, the complaints:


1) It doesn't support 11x14 paper natively. I'm not sure what the piss Canon is thinking by not supporting this paper type...oh, it's only one of the main portrait sizes.

2) You aren't allowed to print borderless on custom page sizes. You can only print borderless on what Canon wants you to. Yep, that means I can't do borderless 11x14, but must leave about a 0.15 inch margin on the photos (which a frame should cover anyway)

You also can't print borderless on certain paper types. Remember that museum etch I mentioned? No borderless allowed.

"Photo Rag" ? No borderless allowed. It's pretty annoying, and they don't really tell you this until you unwrap the paper and on the back of the paper's instruction sheet is a note saying "oh yeah, forget borderless".

Luckily I bought a sample pack of the 13x19 Canon stuff, so I found out fairly cheaply about this limitation.

3) Ink tanks update in 25% increments. Not a huge thing, but was a large jump the first time I saw it.

4) The printer driver lets you specify paper dimensions physically larger than your printer can accept.

Overall, not a bad printer, but the lack of native support for something as common as 11x14 really irks me. It's a nice printer, though.


You might want to look up reviews of HP large format printers and maybe Epson. I know both of them support 11x14, and I believe the epson supports really long paper like 44" max, unlike the Canon.