The Wirecutter:
After 76 hours of research and side-by-side testing with four different models, we found the $800 Epson SureColor P600 is the best photo inkjet printer for most people.
It delivers professional-quality color prints, as well as black-and-white photographs that are as close to traditional darkroom prints as you’ll see from any digital printer around. Its prints also last longer than anything you’d get from a typical online photo service. The P600 can print on a wider variety of media than the competition, and its LCD touchscreen control panel makes setup and maintenance easy.
I’m a big proponent of printing some of your photos. There’s nothing like holding a physical representation of a memory. I have an Epson R2000 and I love taking some of my better photos and printing them out and putting them on my own walls or giving them to friends.
How often do you print photos, Shawn? There’s some magic quantity above which it makes sense to own a photo printer, and below which you’re better getting them printed at London Dugs. I was below that number, but I’d love to figure out what it is. 🙂
Depends on the photo shoots I go on and the time of year – fewer in the winter. In the summer? Maybe one large print a week. If a friend comes over, they’ll often ask to have a copy of one of the prints on my wall.
I was always fond on Cannon printers! I used a Canon Wi-Fi printer through two routers, three versions of OS X (10.8.x, 10.9.x and 10.10.x). Backpedal now handles the printer driver now and now all I have to do is used Apple’s Software Update to get the drivers!
I discovered a few years back that I used my inkjet printers too infrequently so I’d be lucky to have a full color photo print out as anything other than cyan or whichever color head was lucky enough to stay unclogged during disuse. I switched to a $100 laser printer and have never looked back. I can let it sit for months at a time, fire it up, and it always prints a perfect sheet the few times/year I need a hardcopy. I know affordable color lasers exist as well but I don’t know how they compare to ink jets like this. Ink jets are probably great for people who use them daily or weekly but for those who print something a few times a year (and don’t feel like the hassle of sending it to FedEx/Kinkos and picking it up) laser is the way to go and never clogs simply from lack of use.
It’s not only a matter of quantity, it’s a matter of enjoying the control and process of making one’s own prints.
Printing isn’t an essential part of the photographic process in the digital age, but it sure is an enjoyable one. When you can print and frame a nice 16×20 (I have an Epson 3880) and hang it on your wall or give it away or sell it, it’s a very different feeling from posting a digital image online, even if it gets a ton of attention.
Rather than thinking of printing photographs as “making hard copies” I think it helps to think of it as fine art printmaking and when you think of it like this it’s less a matter of money/quality, more a matter of making something beautiful.
Me too, but until this new Pro 1000, Canon was quite behind Epson in print quality.
I’ve been printing on an Epson 3880 for many years and it’s a great printer and I’ve made thousands of great prints on it (that’s right, thousands). But, it has its issues, the most important being ink switching for black and white work. The new Canon has different plumbing so solves that and it seems to have some nice paper path features as well. I’ve not yet tried it but I’m looking forward to Luminous Landscape’s review which will be deep and technical and then I might bite.
Interesting points, Richard. I agree. “home printing” also allows for more experimentation – although – that can get costly. 🙂
Right, the expense of wet photography (film and home or lab development and printing) was a damper on experimentation for many and now that sensors on even low end cameras have improved enough so that reasons for using film over digital are minimal (and personal) there’s a lot more experimentation in photography and more people are doing it (although it might be argued that the quality of individual photographs hasn’t improved all that much).
When I started doing my own printing it was expensive to do enough experimentation to learn to make a decent print (get color fidelity and paper type and profiling under control). But, if you get that learning any new process takes some investment of time and materials and you actually take the time to learn, the error rate drops a lot early in the process. And, this is a reason to stick with a printer, inks, papers, profiles, and processing that works for you and don’t do sea changes all that often. All printers and inks aren’t the same and all papers aren’t suitable for all images: some look great on glossy, some great on rag and there are thousands of types in between. Fun!
It’s absolutely a matter of quantity, too. Below a certain frequency, the ink dries out. I was literally getting 1-2 photos per ink cartridge… and they’re far too expensive to go through that way.
That’s not true on the better printers. They have self-cleaning routines. I’ve never had a clogged head on my 3880 in many years and thousands of prints of use. Granted, the cleaning routine uses ink but it does work.
This is a characteristic of pigment inks. If you use dye based inks there is no head clogging at all ever and dye based ink printers tend to be the lower to mid range machines which many people use. The ink isn’t quite as archival but it’s more vibrant and looks great. I printed on a Canon Pixma Pro 9000 for many years and it was great. Never a clog.
I moved to the Epson for better quality black and white prints and it was worth it. It has extra black and gray ink tanks.
That’s a good point. The problem was and is, pigment based inks on lower end printers. Most Epson printers use pigment inks. The lower end Canon printers use dye based inks and they don’t dry out.
I have an Epson 3880 which uses pigment K3 inks and it’s never had a head clog in many years of intense use. It’s less the intense use, more that the printer has a self-cleaning routine so it stays unclogged. But, before that I printed on a Canon Pro 9000 and it used dye based inks and it never clogged and it had no self-cleaning routine. The ink was wet enough so it didn’t dry out.
If you only print a few times a year then having any printer is questionable when a service could do the job for you for no doubt less money.
That’s good to know. I can’t even remember what the color printer I had was. I’m quite happy with the B&W laser and the occasional trip to the drugstore for now.
Your experience is very common and early ink jet printers, especially Epsons were notorious for clogged heads and all sorts of issues.
They’ve come a long way since the old days for sure.
I use an HP laser printer for my black and white stuff as well, have it connected to my AirPort router, works wirelessly. I only use the “expensive” ink jet for photography.