What does a hobbiest level black and white photo printer cost?

[Grandpa Ron]

I have been trying to get decent B&W printed from my HP photo smart printer. This is hobby not professional printing. Still, I do not get consistent results.

Just when I believed I have the contrast I wanted, I cleaned the print head and was back to a paler version of the print. May be just coincidence. Is it possible I need to make the photo darker to compensate for the printer?

I see lots of photo printers on amazon but they all show color prints. Since I am mostly interested in b&w I wondered what others use.

 

[Dean_Gretsch]

I think each printer might be different. I have to actually lighten my photos ( these are color ) quite a bit for my printer.

 

[snowbear]

I don't have many printed, so I just send mine out. I've been using Adorama - I like their product.

 

[Designer]

Is it possible I need to make the photo darker to compensate for the printer?

Does your printer have a black ink cartridge, or is the "black" composed of other colors?

Yes, you may have to compensate for your printer in the digital image.

The finished product can depend on what type of paper you use.

You're already at a disadvantage using a DLSR with a color array sensor. If you are serious and have the money, get your sensor stripped of its color sensors or purchase a dedicated B&W camera from those companies that do that. They are not cheap.

Then there is the lens to consider.

For most of us, putting up with multiple compromises is within our budget, and anything more would be too expensive.

 

[Overread]

Honestly I'd say if you're not spending serious money and doing a lot of printing then it might be a lot easier to get higher quality by sending your photos off to a printing firm to let them do the printing. Most home printers are not made to be high grade in terms of what they produce. They do a decent job, but they are not up to many photographers standards. The printers which are, are often high price with equally high prices on inks.

So most of the time its easier to use a firm who have high end gear and put out a consistent result. After a bit of tinkering with test shots you should be able to know how to prepare your photos and they'll print out well (and good printing firms will have help/support staff if you've issues

 

[Light Guru]

I just send mine out. I've been using Adorama - I like their product.

Same


Sent from my iPhone using Tapatalk

 

[Designer]

I have been trying to get decent B&W printed from my HP photo smart printer. This is hobby not professional printing. Still, I do not get consistent results.

Just when I believed I have the contrast I wanted, I cleaned the print head and was back to a paler version of the print. May be just coincidence. Is it possible I need to make the photo darker to compensate for the printer?

I see lots of photo printers on amazon but they all show color prints. Since I am mostly interested in b&w I wondered what others use.

@Grandpa Ron; I found some good discussion of this topic on these sites:

A Guide to Black & White Photo Printing at Home

True Black and White Prints From Digital Files - Silver Gelatin Photo Paper

https://creativepro.com/photography-how-to-printing-black-and-white-images/

How to Successfully Print Black and White Photos on Your Inkjet Printer - The Photo Argus

A couple of years ago I found a great deal on a Canon Pixma Pro 10, and bought one. That is one that has several values of gray ink as well as black.

As I recall, the price was $350 with a $250 Canon rebate. Shipping was over $65, this is one beast of a box.

Here's nearly the same deal now at B&H:

Canon Pixma Pro-10 | B&H Photo Video

 

[petrochemist]

IIRC it was 32p each for A4 professional prints last time I did some (colour or B&W) If only doing a few postage takes that up significantly, but as I printed 75 of them the £2 shipping wasn't much of a factor

 

[vagabondkidd]

Nice insights. I'll to cross-reference some of the suggested products.

 

[RowdyRay]

Does anyone have experience with the Canon Pixma Pro-100? There are several NIB, on Craigslist for a steal.

 

[Derrel]

Does anyone have experience with the Canon Pixma Pro-100? There are several NIB, on Craigslist.

Canon has used Pixma printers as sales incentives for years now. That's why there are so,so many NIB on CL and e-Bay...the printer has been "thrown in" as a sales incentive, and people sell the un-wanted or un-needed printer as a way to get some cash back!

BTW, I used to have an EPSON 1280, a wonderful printer for B&W images...it was $589 about 15 to 18 years back I guess..it did fantastic B&W, and I made some gorgeous 17-inch long enlargements from scans and digital files. STILL, however, I think sending images out to be printed is actually more-economical. Ink costs were pretty high.

I never really had issues with bad B&W. I used EPSON papers, although there were,and still are, other brands of papers. One thing to keep in mind is that when making B&W conversions from RGB color positive images, one does NOT want to "convert to grayscale", but use some type of channel-mixing in Photoshop, or use some of Lightroom's color filter effects, like the yellow filter, or the green filter, etc.,etc.. to get some good, obvious tonal differentiation. Grayscale images typically look pretty muddy when printed, in my experience.

 

[Designer]

Does anyone have experience with the Canon Pixma Pro-100? There are several NIB, on Craigslist for a steal.

You might want to ask about how much ink is remaining. When these are going for cheap, people buy them, use up the ink, and sell them. Effective purchase price (after rebate) is only $100 which is about what new ink cartridges will cost. Cheaper in the long run to sell the machine and buy another with full ink. (And some paper!)

 

[TCampbell]

I use a Canon PIXMA PRO-10. It looks identical to a PRO-100. the difference being the PRO-100 is a "dye" based inkjet. The PRO-10 is a "pigment" based inkjet.

Higher end professional quality inkjets generally only use pigment-based inks because they are strongly resistant to fading and better suited to archival-quality prints that hold color many decades after the print is produced (assuming you also use acid-free photo-papers).

If you want archival quality, you might go for a pigment-based inkjet. These do tend to cost a little more.


If you aren't sure if a printer is dye or pigment, check the ink type.

If Epson:
Epson "Claria" ink is dye.
Epson "UltraChrome" ink is pigment

If Canon:
Canon "ChromaLife" ink is dye.
Canon "Lucia" ink is pigment.

Both Canon and Epson claim their dye-based inks are designed to resist fading more than typical inkjet dye inks (these are professional photo-quality printers ... so they tend to use better ink than your average all-in-one multi-function printer). Epson claims "98+" years. Canon claims "100+" years (I'm wondering how they come up with those values and test them). There is typically a disclaimer like "if stored in an album"... but I think that's more to do with it being protected from UV light.

Pigment based inks are naturally fade-resistant ... that's the nature of pigments and it's one of the reasons why the highest end professional printers are all pigment based systems.



If a photo is displayed in a window (UV light), then all bets are off regardless of ink. UV is ionizing radiation. That means the wavelengths have a high-enough energy level to break molecular bonds, can knock electrons off atoms, and at high enough energy levels ... some forms of ionizing radiation and break alpha-particles out of atoms (you don't want to be around when that happens... this is not good for your health). Anyway... UV is the weakest of the radiations that are strong enough to ionize. This is why you don't fall over dead when exposed to sunlight (assuming you aren't a vampire) ... but too much UV can eventually result in skin cancer. (it's the weakest of the bad radiation types).

 

[johngpt]

Does anyone have experience with the Canon Pixma Pro-100? There are several NIB, on Craigslist for a steal.

I have a Pixma Pro 100 purchased last year, purchased through Amazon. It's the second one I purchased. The first had to be returned as it wasn't able to function. I got my refund from that seller. The second one works very well.
I haven't printed a lot with it as yet but intend to this coming year.
I have printed about 30 black and white and 30 color images. I might be under estimating the amount.
So far I'm really happy with the quality. I've printed more than the 30 images of each genre as I've had to experiment quite a bit. Most of my images were edited with online display on Flickr and here in mind.
For a physical print, more editing of almost every image had to be accomplished.
Nuances seen on a monitor often don't show up in print when one wants them, and nuances not noticed on a monitor can show up in print and not be wanted.
There has been a significant learning curve, but I've come down from needing 5 prints of an individual image for a keeper to be printed, to needing only 1 or 2.
I hope I don't need to go through all that again when I'm able to return to printing in the new year.
The Pro-100 has enough range in its black and grey inks to get some really decent black and white prints.

While the Pro-10 is higher quality, the Pro-100 was what I could afford.
And at least it's allowing me to get images off my hard drives, a new year's resolution from two new years ago!

 

[Grandpa Ron]

I do not have trouble getting really good B&W pictures on my monitor but they just do not print well.

I sent some b&w photos out to a place to do "True Back and White" and they were worse than my Walgreen photos, they had a light brown back ground. I sent them back and they did correct them but the latitude ranged from light gray to dark gray.

I have been able to get an acceptable print from my printer but nothing with the "pop" of the monitor and even with the same settings the next print is often lacking in contrast. I have ordered some bright white photo printing paper to see of that helps.