Printer advice needed

eimalibu

Really want to buy my sister a photo printer/scanner for her birthday that will allow her to process old negatives and save them onto her computer or print them out. Anyone know where I can get one and what exactly to look for because I am clueless when it comes to this stuff. Also if anyone knows how much they cost that would be great?

elven

If you're looking for a scanner to scan negatives rather than prints, i'm not sure if any of the scan/fax/print thingies would be up to the job. You get quite a lot of scanners that will handle negatives, i use an epson v4900 which is a bit old now but does the job very well indeed.

Depending on how much you want to print, tbh half the time prints from photobox will work out the same price when you have to fork out for ink for those thirsty printers.

Heebie

I would not advice getting a combination printer/scanner..they tend to be pretty crappy. The scanners don't tend to be able to do much in the way of correcting an image, and the printers tend to use non-archival inks that are not suited for printing photos.

I tend to recommend Epson for both scanners and printers, and have an Epson Perfection V500 Photo for scanning, and and Epson R800 for printing.

The scanner has 48-bit color depth, so you can really pull detail out of underexposed negatives and faded prints, as well as having good dust removal and Digital Ice, as well as an "instant restore" function for faded photos that actually works quite acceptably.

For the printer, I recommend anything that uses one of their Ultrachrome ink series. On good paper, the results are fantastic, and the result is archival. (expected lifespan 200+ years on a really good paper.) The average printer, or printers using "replacement" ink from third parties only have expected print lifetimes of 3-8 years. (print lifetime is how long the print is expected to look good. before it fades into looking lousy.. or in many cases nearly disappears off the paper with cheap inks.)

stcstc

flatbed scanners can do an ok job of larger film formats, as long as you dont want to print them too large

as for printers, epsons with K3 inks if you can get it.


hebbie, where do you get the figure of 200 years from, the best i have seen is 100

on whilhelm research i havent seen anything longer

Heebie

200-year figure was for Epson Ultrachrome inks on Crane Museo paper (cotton rag based) The source was probably sales materials from Epson and/or Crane. (and this was back in 2005-6 there could be more complete evaluations of such inks since then... but even so.. the 50-100 years of Epson's papers in their printers [varying by paper type] is still a lot better than 3-8.)

Crane Museo is very nice paper, but you have to use matte blacks and you absolutely must build your own customer printer profiles to use it... and it's excruciatingly expensive.)

If you have a good flatbad scanner, with decent film carriers that will actually hold it good and flat, you can still get good scans. The difficulty using being unusual moire patterns in the scan. (very hard to compensate for if you get them.)

I'm guessing the K3 inks are the successor to Ultrachrome?

stcstc wrote: »

flatbed scanners can do an ok job of larger film formats, as long as you dont want to print them too large

as for printers, epsons with K3 inks if you can get it.


hebbie, where do you get the figure of 200 years from, the best i have seen is 100

on whilhelm research i havent seen anything longer

PhotoSci

You'll probably have to look at a separate scanner if you want to do a top notch job with negatives. For prints, many All-In-Ones (printer/scanner, etc. ) can do a good job. For an AiO that is very easy to use plus will save considerable money on consumables, take a look at the Kodak ESP printers. The software is made for casual users and interfaces well with the company's own printing/storeage website. The ink cartridges cost a fraction of those from other manufacturers and use pigmented inks (along with a protective overcoat "ink") to give excellent image permanence. I gave one to my 85-year-old mother-in-law who is using it to produce a family genealogy, and she loves it. Plus since all the Kodak printers use the same two cartridge set, they are easy to find at the store and convenient to stock spares.