Best low budget photo printer for a studio?

Question

Best low budget photo printer for a studio?

Answer 1

if you go cheap, your customers won't appreciate it...



get good quality - if necessary, hire it...

Answer 2

Not gonna find anything in that price range and even if you did, the companies make their money on selling you the inks for them. You also have to factor in the cost of a decent screen calibration tool like the Spyder 4 Pro @ 180$

http://www.henrys.com/67495-DATACOLOR-SPYDER-4-PRO.aspx



You'd be better off hiring a lab to do your printing. I use MPIXPro.com



The printer I would like to buy (if my printing needs got large enough for it to make economical sense) is the Canon IPF 5100 at 2500$

http://www.henrys.com/26758-CANON-IPF5100-PROGRAF-PRINTER-17-.aspx



Printing on a cheap printer will not generate proper professional results.

Answer 3

Best Cheap Photo Printer

Answer 4

Best Budget Photo Printer

Answer 5

Epson is popular among photographers. Just keep in mind low budget means low quality. $480 is good to start with and she should make a point to start saving to buy a professional grade printer in the $1,000 range. The other alternative is to send print jobs out and add the expense to the cost of services.

Answer 6

You need to have a large format printer with Adobe Postscript RIP (hardware or software). Unfortunately it is out of the budget for your sister. But you do get what you pay for - the print will match the screen exactly and you never waste the ink (which also costs a lot of money)



http://www.flickr.com/photos/little_pooky/5902759786/in/photostream HP Designjet 130



Here is a screen capture of the RIP software http://www.flickr.com/photos/little_pooky/6855204179/sizes/o/in/photostream/ The software costs more than the printer.



Probably best to aim for a more expensive HP Designjet that has the RIP built into it.

Answer 7

A decent printer capable of handling the volume of a studio is going to be thousands of dollars.





If you want to make traditional photographic prints the cost is going to be well over $100,000. For inkjets it will still be $1,500 or more.



I would avoid dye sublimation printers altogether. The prints only last for a few years before fading.





Unless your studio has the volume to justify spending $100k on a printer, your best bet would be to send all your printing work out to a third party lab. Here are some to consider:



whcc.com

mpix.com

acilab.com

prodpi.com

pictage.com





Edit:

Pooky: you really don't need a RIP on modern commercial printers. The only real advantage of a RIP these days is to maximize efficient use of paper and ink, but the costs of those are low enough that only the biggest labs will have an economic justification to invest in RIP software.