Postcard sized photo printers

Long story short -
Im shooting a really wicked event and Il if I can organize a photo-booth styled area, It could bring in some nice cash !

If I can supply some Jumbo Prints at the stall, it would make a huge impact.

But I do not have a printer yet.

What would be a good option in terms of this ?

Do you think one could still charge for a digital only copy ? Or does anyone have any recommendations on which printer and the kind of costs for ink and so forth ?

Kyle, I bought an Epson Stylus P50 printertjie for just over a grand. Prints up to A4 sized, but smaller as well.

I use it at almost all my events - prints fast, prints photo-quality, and it paid for itself in the 1st event I did.

Costs about R1000 to replace the inks, and it prints about 100 postcards on an ink refill.

there you go - two cents.

(oh, it prints CDs too, and it always impresses the client when you give them a picture-CD!)

as for reliability - I did a golf-day last week where that printer printed continuously for about 6 hours! spat out over 200 prints without as much as blinking.

NICE. :)

R1000 on inks is pretty heavy though - is it not ? :)

Oh - and how many prints do you think you get out of a full set of ink ?
Bit hard to judge but roughly ?

Kyle - I got about 100, 120 postcards on an ink refill. Some colours went faster than others, I chewd through a lot of yellow, but surprisingly little black (also nice is separate ink cartridges, so you don't need to chuck the whole cartridge just coz one ink is done).

Its a bit expensive at then about R8.00 per print, bit it is a photo-printer - this thing prints good! you can probably get away fro cheaper, but then its not a photo printer. oh - its a 6-colour printer, not just the traditional 4, so you get really nice colours and saturation with it.

I charge my cleints a heck of a lot more than R8.00 per print though - as said, it paid for itself - plus the inks - on the 1st job, second job was pure profit!

is it not possible to rent something like a Sony Snap Lab in SA?

Gerry, what are your wait times per print?

I have no doubt that you getting good results but is using a consumer level printer good enough?

At very least I would use 2X what Gerry recommends.

Also try the Glam Cam URL a friend of mine makes them, I think they rent them out. Very cool for large events. Its a Prime Media product.

Matt

I've got a little HiTi Dye Sub printer and it works really well.
Quick and reliable. You won't get inks running out, simply change you paper and film cartridges at once.
It's tiny, has a simple user interface and can either plug directly into your cam or accepts SD, CF etc..
Picture quality is as good as your labs and prints on proper pre sized photo paper.

Pop past if you want to have a look at it.

PS, cost per print is in the region of R7-8 per jumbo. The bigger the printer (usually) the cheaper the consumables.

At very least I would use 2X what Gerry recommends.

Gerry reccommends you go buy him 2 cases of beer.

Similar to what Matt suggests is the Canon Selphy range of dye sublimation printers. About the size of a brick and you load paper and cartridges together. This can also run on battery if you are ever in a powerless situation due to location or Eskom.
http://www.bhphotovideo.com/c/product/731639-REG/Canon_4350B001_SELPHY_CP800_Compact_ Photo.html

Cost about R700 for the printer depending on where you buy, and paper/cartridge costs vary too so shop around.

Down side is you are limited to 6'x4' inch prints - it wont go bigger.

[quote=]Similar to what Matt suggests is the Canon Selphy range of dye sublimation printers. About the size of a brick and you load paper and cartridges together. This can also run on battery if you are ever in a powerless situation due to location or Eskom.
http://www.bhphotovideo.com/c/product/731639-REG/Canon_4350B001_SELPHY_CP800_Compact_ Photo.html
[/quote]

Great little printer but does not run on Mac osx 10.7. Canon have not released drivers for it, so you'll have to print straight off the media card. No cropping tweaking of images.

I have Kodak dyesub printers that spit them out every 8 seconds, but then again the printer cost 24k.......and per print only R2 something. IF you were in CT I could have rented you one

[quote=]Great little printer but does not run on Mac osx 10.7. Canon have not released drivers for it, so you'll have to print straight off the media card.[/quote]
Grrr...I have two Selphy printers which I've used when travelling to print up postcards to give to locals I've photographed. Annoying that they won't work with the latest Mac OSX. Luckily I've not upgraded my Mac Pro yet :)

I use the Canon IP range printers, cost per print is around R5.

Can do Picbridge, and print any size up to A4.
Postcard takes around 20sec and A4 40sec to print.

For small events, I use the Selphy printer, 60sec to print and works from a battery :)

Hmmm... That is very interesting.

If I could a printer like Gerry mentioned which can handle, Jumbo - A4, and CD's that would be brilliant.

But again, The main focus would be that I can make that money back with this event, and possibly print some A4's should a client want some of my other work.

@Matt, Ill pop around soon, as soon as this damned work calms down.

Selphys, Im kind of scared about something so small and cheap delivering good quality prints. My work has a lot of play in contrast, so if that screws out, the image almost dies, so it needs to be good. :D