Reader's Comments - Index of - Free

Color Printers
color-intensive originals with which the photographer is seeking interesting design
qualities or expressive color rendition, rather than photographic fidelity. I ve seen
some striking results with this kind of work. It's also very promising for black and
white - and I'm eager to try the quadtone inks for this reason.
PS: I have used the new HP PhotoSmart 1100 printer (they're claiming 2400 dpi)
and the resolution is excellent, but the results are a tad washed out. Unlike Epson,
HP is trying to obtain photo quality from a 4 color cartridge. Nevertheless, this is a
nice machine - very quiet, fast, and sturdy seeming.
Joshua Daniels jdaniels@percon.com
-- Joshua Daniels, December 2, 1999
Forget Inkjet printers, NOT waterproof, will not stand the test of time. In a recent
experiment at my company we printed 4 pages on photo quality paper. One from a
HP color laser, one from an epson injet, another from an HP inkjet lastly from an
ALPS MD 5000P. Hands down the ALPS dye sub printer is the quality (under a
jewelers loop) winner, also the prints are water proof, real photo quality, and after 4
months in a sunny window, little or no fading. The laser and injets faded, the
inkjets were almost completly faded, gone after 4 months.
-- Allyn Phillips, December 9, 1999
One issue that I don't see discussed regarding inkjet printing is what would seem to
be the excessive cost of inks, when using any of the under 500 dollar machines like
the Epson 700 series and the 1200. I'm satisfied the issue of fading isn't what it
used to be with the availability of acid-free papers and archival inks for the Epsons
from a number of manufacturers. The favorable comments about the 1200 had me
on the verge of getting one, but reading the comments about archival MIS inks on
the tssphoto site gave me cause to wonder. They stated that you could get six full
resolution 8.5 by 11 prints out of the Epson ink cartridges. With the MIS cartridges
for the Epson printers going at 42 dollars or so - I don't know what the Epson
cartridges go for but I would assume 25 to 30 dollars - this would seem to work out
to the appalling amount of 5-7 dollars in ink per print. The cost of good glossy
photo paper, just over a dollar, then becomes irrelevant. Is this figure of six prints
per cartridge grossly under-rating the ink capacity? It seems hard to believe no one
would have mentioned this if it was really that bad. I'm looking for maximum
photo quality here, so I realize you could get many more using lesser settings. What
is the experience of other people with photo prints-to-ink cartridge ratios for the
Epson printers?
-- George Hurchalla, December 15, 1999
http://www.photo.net/equipment/digital/printers/primer (23 of 36)7/3/2005 2:20:36 AM