Finally - true cost of printing A4 photos!
- Thread starter Neo
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Neo said:
Hey!
Please get a life!
You are trying to tell us how much it cost to print an image. I am interested to know too!
But at the end, the only cost you factored in are the inks and the paper.
Is this the way you calculate cost? I had kindly taken the time to point out your error and you call this heckling?
You do not think my contribution here is positive?
In an earlier post, ( #15 ) I had repplied to another that his calculation did not factor in printer cost etc. You had either ignored that or you did not read that.
Since I wrote that post, I assume you read it. And when you gave the calculations on how you arrived at your estimate, I notice you did not include the cost of printer.
Since you obviousy need a printer to print, and since you did not factor in the cost of the printer, I can only assume that your printer comes free - or you have free access to a printer.
You used the illustration of a fuel consumption. Is that a proper illustration/comparison/analogy?
Your title is "True cost of printing A4 photos".
Your title is NOT the "True cost of consumables in printing A4 photos" ot "Running cost". So the appropriate and relevant analogy of using a car should NOT be "Fuel Consumption" but the cost of "Using a car per mile".
I take your response here as being very non-positive and I shall report immediately to the moderators for your aggressive behaviour.
Cheesecake
Senior Member
printing at labs is still the cheapest way to go.
basically risk-free, printing-banding free, ink-clogging free, 'running out of ink' free... etc.etc.
insists on FujiFilm Crystal Archive Paper Supreme.:thumbsup:
basically risk-free, printing-banding free, ink-clogging free, 'running out of ink' free... etc.etc.
insists on FujiFilm Crystal Archive Paper Supreme.:thumbsup:
Dear Student,
I'll leave it to the CSers to make their own judgement about the value of your post. Meanwhile, since you have decided to report to the moderators abour my "aggressive" behaviour, I guess I have no options but to wait for them to mete out my deserved punishment.
I'll take your well-intended advice to get a life... so I'm going out for dinner and a movie. I'll check on my sentence when I'm back. Thanks.
I'll leave it to the CSers to make their own judgement about the value of your post. Meanwhile, since you have decided to report to the moderators abour my "aggressive" behaviour, I guess I have no options but to wait for them to mete out my deserved punishment.
I'll take your well-intended advice to get a life... so I'm going out for dinner and a movie. I'll check on my sentence when I'm back. Thanks.
Back to the topic here, by the way Neo: thanks for sharing the info, one thing I dont like about the Canon printer (or Epson or any of those multi-ink printers I can think of) is that the print head is built into the machine.
I print once in a long long time (once a week or less?), so I made the "mistake" of choosing my previous printer based on the cost of consumables alone. Just last month the print head of the Canon I had for 4 years decided to clog up, and after checking the price of replacing the head only, I realised its cheaper to get a whole new printer. Now I'm using a HP and made sure its the one where the head is with the ink catridge, so that you change it when you replace the ink. The running costs are more expensive, but I guess I should have less of a technical problem with the print head if I continue with my rate of use.
But I agree, if I had to print as much as you, I'd invest in a nice printer knowing that I will be able to spread the costs. I'm sure to you, your printer has already paid itself over already.
I print once in a long long time (once a week or less?), so I made the "mistake" of choosing my previous printer based on the cost of consumables alone. Just last month the print head of the Canon I had for 4 years decided to clog up, and after checking the price of replacing the head only, I realised its cheaper to get a whole new printer. Now I'm using a HP and made sure its the one where the head is with the ink catridge, so that you change it when you replace the ink. The running costs are more expensive, but I guess I should have less of a technical problem with the print head if I continue with my rate of use.
But I agree, if I had to print as much as you, I'd invest in a nice printer knowing that I will be able to spread the costs. I'm sure to you, your printer has already paid itself over already.
Thanks Neo for being so helpful and forth-coming in sharing. I'm curious about the looks of the coffeetable albums, can you take some pictures of it, esp at the borders, the spine, when the book is closed/open wide etc...and post them here. It'll help in the visualising much better!
brian said:
Hi Brian,
Good to hear your experience about the various brands. The Epson printers have a fixed print head which is not user replaceable, so you have to lug the whole printer to the showroom for them to change it. The Canon print heads are meant to be user-replaceable, so you can replace them by yourselves (they're not available for sale from the dealers, so you have to buy them from the service centre and replace it. It's easy to change, just lift the lever and replace the whole unit). The HP system has its pros and cons as you mentioned, but I found the new PIXMA print heads pretty durable, so I never felt a need to change.
The cost and durability of a print head is definitely an important factor to consider when choosing a printer, along side with the running cost of the printer. Most of the factors like the price of printer and cost of replacing the print heads are easy to find out, which is why I thought my recent printing project is a good time to do the calculations and share with the rest on the forum.
This question actually is a little complex, but I'll try to explain without getting flamed for being too general... 
Basic 4-colour printing: CYMK
Basically, all printers operate on the same principle of 4-colour printing to create the entire spectrum of colours. These colours are cyan, yellow, magenta and black. These printers are basic, but nowadays even these basic printers produce excellent photos which you'd be hard pressed to tell from photo lab prints. Given a calibrated workflow, I'd have no qualms or misgivings to use even a 4-ink photo printer. They are that good nowadays...
5-color:
The so-called 5-colour printers are actually more like 5 ink printers, because they are actually 4-ink printers with additional (larger) pigment black cartridge that is used for printing black text. So you get sharper black text with the extra pigment black. In terms of photo printing, they're using the same 4 colours, so there's no difference in the quality.
6-colour:
The basic 4-colour printers can produce a wide range of colour, but there's the issue of the in-between colours. When a image requires a shade of cyan that is 50% the intensity of the regular cyan ink, how can the printer produce such a shade? It cannot add water to dilute the intensity :bsmilie: , so the only way is to dither the pattern so that the paper base shows through slightly to reduce the intensity to fool the eye. This also means that the 4-ink printers cannot produce some shades and gradation smoothly. So the manufacturers added 2 additional inks - the photo inks. The photo cyan and photo magenta are lighter versions of the basic cyan and magenta inks, of say 1/8th the density of the regular inks. So when a particlar shade of say 1/2th density of the regular cyan ink is required, the printers will spray the photo cyan inks 4 times to build the density to the required 1/2th density of the regular ink. Hope I didn't lose you... it's pretty simple really. This is also why the photo inks will be used up the most quickly amongst all the inks, and why the individual ink tanks system is really good in this aspect because you can replace only the ink that runs out.
7,8,9,10 inks etc
Any ink more than 6-ink actually serves to expand the colour gamut. The 4-ink and 6-ink system does not really cover some of the areas, so manufacturers added red, blue and green ink etc to help to push the areas of colour reproduction even further. If you compare a print made with such a printer against a 4 or 6 ink printer side-by-side, you will be able to find some discrete differences in certain areas, but for most consumers the differences are not that apparant.
The other reason is that the colours added such as blue, green and red are difficult to reproduce, since they require the printer to mix the colours. Pure chroma red, green, blue don't exist in CYMK technology, and the resulting colours may have a slight dirty hue instead of a pure hue (eg. green is made by mixing yellow and blue). So having pure chroma inks such as additional red, green and blue helps to provide pure colours and expand the colour gamut .
Finally, some of the extra colours are shades of grey. These come in very useful to expand the grayscale printing capability of printers, giving you very good monochrome printing. Else the printers usually mix minute amounts of colour ink with black to achieve smoother tones in monochrome printing, but at the expense of colour cast. So having multiple black/grey inks actually help you achieve truer monochrome prints.
Phew! :sweat: :sweat: :sweat:
Basic 4-colour printing: CYMK
Basically, all printers operate on the same principle of 4-colour printing to create the entire spectrum of colours. These colours are cyan, yellow, magenta and black. These printers are basic, but nowadays even these basic printers produce excellent photos which you'd be hard pressed to tell from photo lab prints. Given a calibrated workflow, I'd have no qualms or misgivings to use even a 4-ink photo printer. They are that good nowadays...
5-color:
The so-called 5-colour printers are actually more like 5 ink printers, because they are actually 4-ink printers with additional (larger) pigment black cartridge that is used for printing black text. So you get sharper black text with the extra pigment black. In terms of photo printing, they're using the same 4 colours, so there's no difference in the quality.
6-colour:
The basic 4-colour printers can produce a wide range of colour, but there's the issue of the in-between colours. When a image requires a shade of cyan that is 50% the intensity of the regular cyan ink, how can the printer produce such a shade? It cannot add water to dilute the intensity :bsmilie: , so the only way is to dither the pattern so that the paper base shows through slightly to reduce the intensity to fool the eye. This also means that the 4-ink printers cannot produce some shades and gradation smoothly. So the manufacturers added 2 additional inks - the photo inks. The photo cyan and photo magenta are lighter versions of the basic cyan and magenta inks, of say 1/8th the density of the regular inks. So when a particlar shade of say 1/2th density of the regular cyan ink is required, the printers will spray the photo cyan inks 4 times to build the density to the required 1/2th density of the regular ink. Hope I didn't lose you... it's pretty simple really. This is also why the photo inks will be used up the most quickly amongst all the inks, and why the individual ink tanks system is really good in this aspect because you can replace only the ink that runs out.
7,8,9,10 inks etc
Any ink more than 6-ink actually serves to expand the colour gamut. The 4-ink and 6-ink system does not really cover some of the areas, so manufacturers added red, blue and green ink etc to help to push the areas of colour reproduction even further. If you compare a print made with such a printer against a 4 or 6 ink printer side-by-side, you will be able to find some discrete differences in certain areas, but for most consumers the differences are not that apparant.
The other reason is that the colours added such as blue, green and red are difficult to reproduce, since they require the printer to mix the colours. Pure chroma red, green, blue don't exist in CYMK technology, and the resulting colours may have a slight dirty hue instead of a pure hue (eg. green is made by mixing yellow and blue). So having pure chroma inks such as additional red, green and blue helps to provide pure colours and expand the colour gamut .
Finally, some of the extra colours are shades of grey. These come in very useful to expand the grayscale printing capability of printers, giving you very good monochrome printing. Else the printers usually mix minute amounts of colour ink with black to achieve smoother tones in monochrome printing, but at the expense of colour cast. So having multiple black/grey inks actually help you achieve truer monochrome prints.
Phew! :sweat: :sweat: :sweat:
Neo, amazing project you have there!
Considering that you are using:
PP-101 paper
iP5200 (Ok basically same ink as mine)
and your print cost is only $2.07 per A4 print, I think it's just time for me to mass print some pics.
I am using the matte paper MP-101. That makes it even cheaper!
Two Thumbs for sharing with us your project, and views! :thumbsup: :thumbsup:
Considering that you are using:
PP-101 paper
iP5200 (Ok basically same ink as mine)
and your print cost is only $2.07 per A4 print, I think it's just time for me to mass print some pics.
I am using the matte paper MP-101. That makes it even cheaper!
Two Thumbs for sharing with us your project, and views! :thumbsup: :thumbsup:
rinaldi86 said:
Hi Rinaldi86,
Thanks for the thumbs up! The matte paper MP-101 is a really affordable and classy way to print matte photos. I like to use it for printing monochrome photos, with a nice generous white border around and a black trim around my images. It does tend to curl slightly after prolonged exposure to air if not flattened, so I use it mainly for framed images. The Ikea frames are nice, especially the frameless square ones when coupled with the MP-101. I like to give such personalized stuff to friends etc (cost less than $10 for frame, paper and ink), and it makes a great addition to their walls. Do give it a try!
Thanks Neo! Blew me away with your project, especially when I looked at the spent ink cartridges! Really itching now to get a good Canon printer.
Btw, how's the black and white quality? I read a review quite some time back that Epson seems to produce it better bcos it even has a separate black ink for more tonal gradations?! :bigeyes: But I'd still go for Canon if I were to get a printer cos me tinks it has many other benefits.
Oh and also, when you do double sided printing and bind them into a book, won't the face-to-face prints get stuck after some time?
Btw, how's the black and white quality? I read a review quite some time back that Epson seems to produce it better bcos it even has a separate black ink for more tonal gradations?! :bigeyes: But I'd still go for Canon if I were to get a printer cos me tinks it has many other benefits.
Oh and also, when you do double sided printing and bind them into a book, won't the face-to-face prints get stuck after some time?
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