Canon Selphy 1300 printer worth it?

[brainmonster]

Usually I scan my 35mm photos and view them on phone, ipad, but I was thinking recently about doing prints.

Wondering if this printer is worth it? The postcard size would be sufficient for my needs. But maybe it's worth saving the cost and just viewing digitally, or printing off SD card at store kiosks.

Opinions?

 

[Lee Rust]

My mother-in-law has one of these. The prints are decent, although the color saturation is not quite brilliant and the contrast a bit low. The surface of the prints looks a little waxy but there's nothing objectionable about it. In general, the output is similar to the drug store printers. I'm told that the refill cassettes are quite expensive.

 

[mitorn]

My Brother has one of these, he uses it for family events (if he wants to make an album for everybody to sign). As Lee Rust already said, the quality is decent. If you don't take the purchase cost into account its prints (0.24€) are cheaper than the one from the self-service kiosk (0.29€), at least here in Austria.

 

[brainmonster]

My Brother has one of these, he uses it for family events (if he wants to make an album for everybody to sign). As Lee Rust already said, the quality is decent. If you don't take the purchase cost into account its prints (0.24€) are cheaper than the one from the self-service kiosk (0.29€), at least here in Austria.

Yeah it seems like it's mostly for convenience. I might get one for that reason, not for the print cost, since I can do that at walmart or elsewhere for cheap.

I might get one in the future, but I'm going on a trip so I'll probably wait till I get back and am more stable to do that. Doesn't seem to be a good option for printing while traveling (unsurprising, seems like a bit of a hassle anyway).

 

[Anaxagore]

These small dye-sub printers are not perfect. I have a previous model (CP910) and although I crop my pictures to the exact dimensions of what should be the printing surface (according to the driver), there is always a bit of it that goes over the area that remains after removing the extra pre-cut tabs.
Nevertheless, the quality is satisfactory to give pictures to the family or to print passport photos, and dye-subs have an advantage of not getting clogged print heads when the printer is used infrequently.

 

[4season]

I had the nearly identical 1200 and liked it. I generated a printer profile for it, and got to where the image as I saw it in Lightroom was pretty close to the actual print, and said prints seem pretty resistant to fading. It can produce bright, punchy color images. Not so much for black and white photos, and it's not going to be tops for shadow detail, because there are limits to what you can do with a 4-color printer. But having said that, dye sublimation (which Selphy printers are) is tops for reliable, no hassles printing, and if you go for months between printing sessions, it's not a problem at all because there's no liquid ink to dry out or cause clogging.

 

[wario]

The Canon Selphy 1300 is a compact and portable photo printer that is popular for its portability and affordability. Whether or not it is worth it depends on your specific needs and requirements. If you're looking for a small and portable photo printer that you can take with you on the go, the Selphy 1300 is a great option. It provides decent print quality and has a range of features such as Wi-Fi connectivity, memory card slots, and a large, easy-to-use LCD display. However, if you are looking for high-quality photo prints with professional-level color accuracy and resolution, the Canon Selphy 1300 may not meet your expectations. In that case, you may want to consider a professional photo printer that is designed for more demanding print requirements.

 

[jp498]

For small prints, it's consistent and fast and you don't have to deal with ink, head cleaning, etc... I used to have a different Selphy model and it was great.
Time and ink cost real money, and this is a good reliable alternative.

 

[Nitroplait]

I have one. I like it a lot for what it is. Trouble free printing - colors dyes comes with the paper and it never fails like inkjet.
And it is cost competitive compared to self service printing.

 

[Duceman]

About a decade ago, had a portable Epson unit (forget the model number), which did a decent job, but if you left it for a period of time, the inks would dry up. Got tired of that, and pretty much quit printing photos. But recently I have been rethinking that, and happened across this thread, and based hereon, purchased a Canon Selphy CP1500. Arrived the other day. Am quite pleased with the quality of photos it prints, especially black/white.

So far... only one or two slight drawbacks. First, manual says that the printer works best via Canon's Selphy smartphone app... and they ain't kidding. The app isn't difficult to use, but you need the photo on the phone in order to print. If that's what you're doing, no problems. But when using either a plug-in memory card, or printing via a computer program, I can not get it to print borders and/or it crops a small portion of the image. On another forum, someone had suggested cropping images to 1823x1232mm at 300dpi.... but this didn't change anything re: being unable to print borders. Borders print fine with Selphy phone app, though.

Second drawback is that the only plug-in memory it accepts is SD; no USB. And if you have a lot of photos on the memory card, especially in folders, the navigation to select a photo is kind of a pain.

So... looks like I'll have to play with it more to see if I can get it to print borders via computer. Or simply resort to transferring all images to the phone in order to use the Selphy app.

 

[Lee Rust]

I don't use any app and have a dedicated SD for the Selphy, so there are no folders and the only images on the card are the ones I want to print.

Borders are difficult and it's hard to predict what the Selphy will do. I use Photoshop to build a border into each image and that works pretty well, even though it still takes a bit of experimentation.