Paul Lester Photo

I guess that it would seem to be a natural progression, but as soon as I started printing my photos, I want more! I own an HP Photosmart 7760, which is about 4 years old. It prints excellent photos up to 8.5 x 11, especially black and white!; however, you cannot get custom ICC profiles for it. It is a consumer grade printer, first and foremost. I’d keep it for printing the smaller stuff, but use the ‘better’ printer for larger photos.

From the little that I understand about color management, custom profiles and a profiled monitor, combined with the right choice of paper can give unsurpassed print quality.

From what I can see, my 7760 gives really good prints, but that could be because I have nothing to compare it to. I started looking into the so-called, entry-level professional printers, more specifically the HP B9180 (7 inks) at $625 and Epson R2400 (8 inks), $769 – $100 rebate. In reading various forums and opinions, the slight nod seems to go to the Epson, which has slightly lower costs for ink, long time experience in pigment ink technology, the ability to accept a roll of 13 inch paper, rather than individual sheets, and finally, there seem to be an abundance of ICC profiles for the Epson, supporting most any type of paper ever made. I’m leaning towards the Epson.

I’ve seen it said in a few places that getting one of these printers does not reduce your cost of printing. In other words, it’s not cheaper than sending them out to be printed. I’ve priced some of the papers and they can be quite expense, especially the fine art paper, coming in at $2+ sheet. However, the quality and longevity is supposed to be amazing. My best guess is that, depending on paper, it can cost between $2 – $6 per print.

I’m just wondering if there is anyone out there with experience (Mark?, Paul?) in these entry-level printers and if you have any recommendations. I need something to put on my Christmas list! Actually, I could use it before Christmas! I plan on giving some big photos for Christmas and I’d like to print them myself!

I was pretty much a frugal shooter when I shot film. As film was a continuing cost, the object was to enjoy photography, but still be able to afford it. The more film that I shot, the more developer, stop bath, fixer, paper, etc. that I needed. You could rack up fairly high costs in consumables. Along comes digital and the recurring costs are negligible. The price of memory per byte continues to fall. Memory cards are getting larger and larger and hard drive space is pretty cheap. This shifts the problem to one of organization. If you shoot a lot of frames, then you have to categorize, rate, add keywords, etc. to each and every image in the hopes that one day you’ll be able to find them again.

Of late, I have gone back to being very frugal. When I first got my D2X some 18 months ago, I would go out and shoot 400 or 500 frames in an outing. This was fun, for sure, but it made for a lot of work. These days, I’m much more frugal and selective in my shot choice. For example, this morning during the 80 minutes or so that I spent photographing around the Yadkin River and the dam, I shot 170 frames. Of these 170, there were 2 bursts of about 12 shots each trying to capture a bird in flight. So, on average, this is about one every 30 seconds. Comparatively, before I’d end up with about 3x as many. When I go out at a different time of day, when the light is not changing so rapidly, I shoot even less and for that time period, say when shooting macros, I might come home with 70 or 80 shots.

I find that I’m shooting much less and enjoying the quality of the shots a lot more. Also, it’s a lot less work on the back end! Last, but not least, shooting a bit less actually gives me more time to enjoy the outing. Sometimes I like to just look, listen, and not interrupt the sound of the silence with even a shutter click.