Need help finding best price/performance printer

[nauticalsland]

I am totally lost finding a good printer for my home business.

I shoot everything, weddings, events, nature, sports, etc...

I usually have to give my clients around 20 prints per order, and around 80 prints printed per month.

I need the best quality that $650 can buy


What is the best printer I can get for that price...

I need to print only 8x10 at this point, but would like to print up to 11x14 if that is possible in this price range.

Also, any good outlets for printers in Canada?

Thanks a ton!

[Geoff Wittig]

There are numerous photo printers available that will do competent 8x10" prints. However, I presume since you're selling prints that archival longevity will be important to you. If you print exclusively in color, then the Epson 1800 is probably a decent choice; excellent image quality and color saturation, and prints up to 13x19" all for $(US)499.95 at B&H. If black & white is important to you, then you'd have to stretch to the Epson 2400 at $779. Canon's i9900 provides similar image quality to the 1800, but with fewer paper choices and less print longevity.

The fly in the ointment is that all of these printers use tiny little cartridges, and the ink costs will rapidly dwarf your original hardware outlay. If you can raid the piggy bank and spend the $2,000 or so for a Canon iPF5000 or Epson 4800, the large ink "tanks" will prove far cheaper per print over the long run.

Vistek is probably the closest Canadian equivalent to New York's B&H, and by all accounts provides excellent service.

Hope this helps.

[DarkPenguin]

The HP B9180 has much larger cartridges.  But is currently unproven and (still) unavailable.

However it is due real soon now and should be in about the same price range.

[Mark D Segal]

Vistek is probably the closest Canadian equivalent to New York's B&H, and by all accounts provides excellent service.

Hope this helps.
[a href=\"index.php?act=findpost&pid=74977\"][{POST_SNAPBACK}][/a]

Geoff this is completely OT, but I couldn't help it - Vistek is a nice classy and savvy shop with good staff and some decent seminars, but Vistek and B&H are simply on different planets in every conceivable respect. There is nothing like B&H anywhere in Canada - and I would hazard a guess nowhere else in the world either - not even in Tokyo or Hong Kong as far as I've been able to see.

[pobrien3]

... I usually have to give my clients around 20 prints per order, and around 80 prints printed per month.

I need the best quality that $650 can buy ...  ... What is the best printer I can get for that price...  ... I need to print only 8x10 at this point, but would like to print up to 11x14 if that is possible in this price range.[a href=\"index.php?act=findpost&pid=74943\"][{POST_SNAPBACK}][/a]

In my view, the recommendation depends on what type of prints you produce.  If you want colour glossies then the R1800 is a great choice, and I prefer it hugely over the competition for the price.  If you print lots of B&W and / or prefer matt, then other choices come into play - I'd look either at the upcoming HP mentioned above, or preferably the Epson 2400, though that's a bit beyond your budget.

Continuing the OT theme - retail models in Asia are very different from the North Americans so there is no equivalent of B&H either here (HK), Singapore or Tokyo, but I can buy all my gear cheaper here in the wee shops than from B&H!    (BTW, I'm not denegrating B&H - they're excellent)

[Mark D Segal]

but I can buy all my gear cheaper here in the wee shops than from B&H!    (BTW, I'm not denegrating B&H - they're excellent)
[a href=\"index.php?act=findpost&pid=75340\"][{POST_SNAPBACK}][/a]

On the OT - (BTW your printer recommendations make sense) one would hope so - all this stuff is manufactured over there, and some of those "wee" shops may be small in real-estate with less variety, but what they sell they probably sell in quantity.

[pobrien3]

Yes, you'd be amazed at the volume some of them shift; much of it abroad.  In the past it always surprised me just how expensive Japan was for electrical goods, despite most of them being made there, but that's market price elasticity of demand in action.

[Mark D Segal]

Yes, you'd be amazed at the volume some of them shift; much of it abroad.  In the past it always surprised me just how expensive Japan was for electrical goods, despite most of them being made there, but that's market price elasticity of demand in action.
[a href=\"index.php?act=findpost&pid=75522\"][{POST_SNAPBACK}][/a]

Peter not so much demand elasticity in the case of Japan. I think the issues are more on the supply side of retailing - competition policy, inefficiency of retailing business models, high rents, high wages, over-manning, high taxes, etc. Japan's service sector in general vacuums-up alot of the country's under-employment, which provides an abundance of service, but at very high cost.