Printer Reccomendation

[rmjranch]

I only shoot film, 120 & 35mm. Film goes to a professional lab for developing & scanning. Need a printer to print 4x6, 5x5 up to 8x10. These are just proof prints but still want good quality. They go to clients. Do not want to spend much time in front of a computer. Budget open. Final prints go back to the professional lab. Thanking you in advance.

 

[ann]

When my 3800 died. I went to the epson p600. Very happy with the results and basically just use the built in paper specs. Of course they don't match my monitor but I haven't found the need to calibrate that monitor

 

[juan]

I'd go to the Epson site and see what they have on sale. I've had good luck with buying refurbished products from them.

 

[ParkerSmithPhoto]

Epson 1400 and 1430 are great little printers, a bit finicky about thicker sheets, but if you want an easy, glossy compatible printer that will go up to 13", that's your best bet. Also, very easy to find inexpensive after market carts if you want to try some of the carbon B&W pigments like Eboni. I use these and they are beautiful.

 

[John_M_King]

I will go with the P600 as a damn good printer and does all I ever want. But it is expensive.

The Epson 1400 is not now in production, but I believe this has been seperceded by the 1500. So long as you don't want black and white without colour casts that would be perfctley good. However as you say you max print size is about 10x8 there is also the option of using an A4 printer which will be cheaper still.

If you need pure Black and white, then I'm afraid that the P600 is the one to go for.

 

[John_M_King]

I will go with the P600 as a damn good printer and does all I ever want. But it is expensive.

The Epson 1400 is not now in production, but I believe this has been seperceded by the 1500. So long as you don't want black and white without colour casts that would be perfctley good. However as you say you max print size is about 10x8 there is also the option of using an A4 printer which will be cheaper still.

If you need pure Black and white, then I'm afraid that the P600 is the one to go for.

 

[RalphLambrecht]

When my 3800 died. I went to the epson p600. Very happy with the results and basically just use the built in paper specs. Of course they don't match my monitor but I haven't found the need to calibrate that monitor

apparently, you have found that reason. I can recommend The Color Munki Photo for monitor and printer calibration.my prints match my monitor now.

 

[jeffreyg]

Since your budget is open you may want to consider a printer and size capable of producing prints that you now send out. By either calibrating or with a little bit of trial you might find it is not so time consuming to produce high quality prints for your clients . I had an Epson 2200 that produced beautiful prints. i now have an Epson 3880 which has been in service for several years (I donated the 2200 to a youth program). With a few packs of sample papers, I settled on two papers. One is for proofing and one for finished exhibition quality prints. I am far from a computer wiz but I can produce prints that compare to darkroom prints. I still print in the darkroom but not as often as before and mostly for platinum/palladium printing. I haven't done any calibration and while I have a number of paper profiles, I use printer manages color, perceptual, presets - default, luster paper AccuPhoto HD2 and color mode off. Whatever all that means. I'm working with scanned negatives in PhotoShop CS5 with a couple of plugins and getting excellent results. This is from black and white film. The occasional color print is usually from digital capture which I eyeball tweak. Since I'm not doing this professionally I'm not having to match colors precisely to someone's liking but they also come out just fine.

http://www.jeffreyglasser.com/