A3 photo quality printer? And Paper...?

[Buffalo]

Now i'm getting the hang of my D80 I would like to print off some of the images for hanging/mounting. Out here in Aus i have found it difficult to find good quality print-shops and the films i have had developed (before i decided to cut my loses and buy a DSLR) have been disappointing considering the negatives.

I have thought about buying a decent spec home printer that is capable of printing photos up to A3 in size using the readily available photo-papers you can buy (even out here).

I had a flick through some UK mags that we can get here and there are evidently such printers available. My only experience with image-printers has been Epson about 8 years ago. I am assuming things have come a long way since those...

Where would you recommend i start looking?

Cheers ~PHIL

[drivin_me_nuts]

Depends on budget and the quality.

When choosing pay careful attention to the size of the ink cartridges - the bigger the better as these are expensive consumables and if used at all like they're meant to be they'll eat ink. Also, perhaps think about buying a printer that can print A3+/super not just A3 media....and print on a roll because that really brings the cost down. For example, in the UK I can buy a 100m roll of 24" high quality photo paper for less than £90 gbp. Compare that to the cut sheets and you soon realise that very quickly the extra costs of the printer are recovered.

I like the Epson printers. I run a Stylus Pro 9800 at home and it suits me fine. What I especially like is the ability to swap between the photo black and the matte black inks for different media to give really different finishes to work. I print predominantly on third party (not Epson) papers and the results can be stunning. Hannemule, Omnijet and others make pretty good photo papers - not just yer bog standard Epson, Canon etc. There's plenty of choice (even in sticksville I'm sure!)

[poah]

are you intereted in B&W printing, if so then you have a choice of three.

Canon 9500pro
HP B9160
Epson R2400

I have the epson and love it, can get cheap OEM ink too. the HP and canon are newer but still don't seem to have trumped the epson for B&W. what ever reviews you read they generally test it out the box rather than adjusting it for perfection.

if you are not interested in B&W then there are quite a few A3+ printers around.


my recomendation would be the epson but I'm biased lol

[Buffalo]

To be honest, at least at first i would be mostly colour printing; however with the wonders of modern technoology i have a few colour shots that i think would look good B&W and therefore would like to punch out both.

I guess therefore, predominantly after a colour printer.

Never knew you could feed rolls etc! That's useful, so thanks. I like Epson printers too - i've always used them for they have always been "there" for photo quality, so i have no problems with going to one again provided it will work on my mac?

Will do a bit of research on the Epson's quoted, cheers.

~PHIL