Printer for my digital camera ???

[Jungle Boy]

I finaly broke down and bought a new camera a few weeks ago. It's a Olympus Stylus 400. I'm liking it a lot, but would rather print off my own photos than take the card in and get them done at a shop. I'm looking for a good type of printer that will give me good normal photo sized prints. Can anyone give this rookie a few hints on a model or what to look for when I venture out to buy one. Thanks ahead of time. :cool:

[GlastronGuy]

How many MP is the camera?
Epson makes some of the best photo printers.
If you want to print "edge to edge" on a piece of paper make sure you get one that does that.

[Cole Sanger]

Just make sure you don't get rid of the old printer. I have a Canon S30 camera and a Canon S900 photo printer. It prints great, just uses a ton of ink. It has 7 cartridges, and at 12+ dollars a pop, it is getting expensive. I go through black every couple of months. I was an idiot and gave my old printer to my mom so she would have a better printer. Wish I had the old one back so I could print black and white a whole lot cheaper. Good luck on the search.

[Jungle Boy]

It's a 4.0 MP camera. So the idea is to continue to use a B/W printer for every day stuff and the colour one for the photos only. I have a B/W HP laser printer already and my daughter has a colour one that she uses with an art program that she has. It's Espon something. I thought that I needed a special one for photos only. I'm I confused on this :confused: ??

[Sanger Pete]

I bought a HP 7150 a few months ago--about $100 for the "base" model. For another $50 you get a direct hookup for your hp camera--I have a kodak. For another $50 you get software and more buttons--but I got that with the camera. For another $50 you get the "delux" model--makes the coffee or something. It's not real fast--takes about a minute to print a 8X10 pic, but I have been more than satisfied with the quality. Family and friends didn't believe I printed the pictures.

[Dr. Eagle]

I have had a HP Photosmart 1215 for a little over a year. It is awesome quality and accepts all of the "smart media" cards. I have been pretty happy with it, even though I was never a huge HP fan because of their prices. I think this was like 150 or so...

[Tom Brown]

I like the Epson Stylus 925. You can buy roll paper for continuous printing of 4x6 pictures and it even has a cutter to cut them for you. It's like a mini production shop and it's cheap. I don't think it can take xD cards without an optional adapter, though.
I've found the quality of the Epson photo printers and the Canon photo printers to be comperable and excellent. I've never seriously looked at an HP.
I've never tried direct printing because I like to manipulate the pictures and use Genuine Fractals to smooth out the resolution scaling. It's a time consuming pain in the ass though, even with workflows set up to automate things. If you aren't too fussy, and at 4x6, direct printing is probably the way to go.
Any of these printers are prone to clogs if you don't use them once every couple of months.
http://www.epson.com/cgi-bin/Store/consumer/consDetail.jsp?BV_UseBVCookie=yes&infoType=Specs&oid=22708393&category=Products

[Rexone]

I have 2 HP's and like them very well. Always been partial to HP inkjets for quality. Recently bought a Canon though because they have seperate color cartridges making them cheaper (alot) to replace ink on. Seems excellent quality as well.
Most these printers are pretty cheap. They nail you on the ink though so the seperate color replacements becomes a big cost factor over time.

[mickeyfinn]

If you printing pictures here is the cheapest way to get high quality prints.
WallyWorld (https://www.walmart.com/photo/splash_notloggedin.gsp?dest=%2Fmanager%2Falbum_lis t.asp&edit_return_uri=%2Fagt%2Fbounce.gsp%3Fdest%3D%252F manager%252Falbum_list.asp)
Only .26/picture and no shipping if you pick them up at the store.

[GlastronGuy]

You don't need a special printer just to print pics. They come out better with a better printer. And some photo printers will print for edge to edge. You will want to use photo paper.
I use an HP 990CSE with my 3.1 MP camera and it works fine.

[HCS]

I need both. Good tips, sounds like edge to edge
with photo paper is the way to go.

[Jungle Boy]

Thanks for the advice. Hear I thought that I needed to spend a 1000 bucks for this fancy ass printer. I'll just get some fresh ink and good paper and try to do some printing on my daughters printer first and then if that don't give good results, I'll go to the next step and buy a 200/300 buck one. Thanks. :)

[mickeyfinn]

Couple of things to remember:
You can get a printer that will print very good quality pics for less than 150.00 bucks but those are the printers that usually have the most expensive ink cartridges. You will pay a LOT more for pictures in the long run if you buy a cheaper printer.
Even with a good quality printer just the cost per page of ink is ranging from .06 to .18 per page of color. This doesn't include the costs of paper and cheap photo paper costs .25 to 1.00 per 8.5 x 11 page. Laser printers can yield a lower cost/page but a photo quality laser printer is priced out of most consumers price range.
All printers except the color laser use an ink that will run if it gets wet and the affordable laser printers either do not do enough colors or a high enough resolution to make pictures.
The major choices in printers are HP, Canon, Lexmark. Lexmark is typically the budget printer. Makes excellent quality but ink is expensive per page but up-front capital cost is less. The HP typically doesn't do as many DPI as the Canon. It does however use a little different technology in printing photos. The HP will actually print a dot over a dot effectively mixing colors on the page so that you have a "True color". The canon and lexmarks and all the others I know of print extremely high DPI but generate colors by putting different colors so close together that the human eye sees it as a mixed color and generate colors this way.
Both ways work and seem to work well so spend some time looking and make sure you pay attention to the cost of replacement cartridges. Even then use the printer to print copies when you need something quick. Other than that it is usually cheaper and you get a better quality photo by emailing them to walmart or another photo shop and having them print them for you.