11-02-2010, 10:07 AM
On the cheap side, a dye-based Epson P50 might just be enough for a start, I guess it all depends on the purpose of the printer - for the occasional give-away and self-usage it works, as long as you are after colour-prints, for B&W there's indeed a need for a pro printer with 2-3 black/grey inks, where apparently HP, Canon and Epson have excellent printers.. After trying out the supplied profiles (for the makers own paper) you will know if you need profiling for the printer or not.. Since my own printing is not critical I found out that the Epson paper profiles are OK for me <img src='http://forum.photozone.de/public/style_emoticons/<#EMO_DIR#>/smile.gif' class='bbc_emoticon' alt='B)' /> and the quality of the prints is really good (A4 size on the Epson P50).
On the downside - with cheap printers there's a limit as to which paper you can use - becouse of compatibility with the ink type and also becouse some "artistic" papers will be too thick to go through the feeding mechanism.. What's even more important - they take small ink cartridges so the cost of consumables will be higher compared to the bigger PRO printers (see Epson R800 vs. Epson R3880). Then of course if you don't intend to print a lot, a heavy duty pro printer might be an overkill.
On the downside - with cheap printers there's a limit as to which paper you can use - becouse of compatibility with the ink type and also becouse some "artistic" papers will be too thick to go through the feeding mechanism.. What's even more important - they take small ink cartridges so the cost of consumables will be higher compared to the bigger PRO printers (see Epson R800 vs. Epson R3880). Then of course if you don't intend to print a lot, a heavy duty pro printer might be an overkill.