Photo Printer update

printer; printing; photography

It's been a while since we talked about this kind of thing, so it's about time I told you about the printer I've been using for my photo printing for the past couple of months. The HiTi 730PS uses dye-sub technology and will produce standard 6x4 inch prints, larger 5x7 prints, and frameable 8x6 prints.

So why this one? A few years ago, I turned my nose up at dye-sub printers, thought they'd had their day. The consumer models I saw were slow, and the final output bore no comparison to prints you could get from, say, an Epson Photo 6-colour inkjet printer.

Even recently, it appeared that inkjet was wiping the floor: manufacturers added additional colours to the mix (lighter blacks for better greys, red and blue, in addition to the standard cyan, magenta, yellow, and black). But it all came at a cost. Epson insist on putting chips in their ink cartridges which inform you that they're empty before they're empty (because the print head has to stay wet); and they were not cheap to buy, especially for those models with an all-in-one colour cartridge. Run out of yellow, and you had to fit a new cartridge, regardless of other ink levels.

Canon came along to address these issues, and for inkjet printers now, I'd recommend one of the Canon PIXMA range, which are both pretty and fairly cheap to run. I've got one of the cheaper models, just for every-day printing purposes.

But for photos, I wanted something special. My last Epson Photo model dried up and died (when you start to get banding in prints, you can run through the head cleaning cycle anything up to a dozen times to unblock the print-head), and I couldn't get it working properly. So I thought again about dye-sub.

Canon also make dye-sub models, which you'll have seen advertised on TV perhaps. But for the most part they're restricted to 6x4 postcard prints, and it's always nice to have the option of something bigger. I saw the Hi-Touch at the Focus on Imaging show last year, and got the company in for a demo.

(I should explain, if you don't know, how dye-sub works. Whereas an ink-jet squirts dots onto the page to build up tones, dye sub printers feature a waxed film which passes across heated rollers and transfers the ink to the paper in a continuous tone. So, even with a magnifying glass, there are no dots to see. It's impossible, therefore, to compare "dots per inch" figures with inkjet models.)

The nice thing about dye-sub printers is that the running costs are a known quantity up front. You buy ink and paper in one package. So a 60-print kit gives you exactly enough ink and paper for 60 prints, at 30p per print. While you might find lower print prices on the high street, you won't have the ability to completely optimise your prints, not the flexibility of different sizes and formats.

The 730PS is quick, and the output is superb, indistinguishable from a photographic print. For a quick 'n' easy job, you can just stick the memory card from your camera in the front and choose pictures from the handset - without the need to connect to a computer. And while the pictographic instructions for fitting the ink roll and paper are confusing, in practice this is quite easily done (if you need to swap sizes, you can store the unused media in a ziplok bag).

For 2005, you can also buy CD labels and sticky backed paper to print on (I imagine I'll decorate a few blank CDs at a time, if I use that), and new media sets for ultra-vivid photo prints - which will please the Flickr colour junkies.

The most amazing thing about this technology is that for standard prints, it uses just 3 colours: cyan, magenta, and yellow. And yet you wouldn't know it: blacks look thoroughly black, reds look red, greens look greens. I've even printed a full set of black and white prints, and they looked fantastic.

Finally, it's brilliant at producing ID photos and the like. So you can stick someone against a suitable background, snap a head and shoulders shot, and print out 8 perfectly proportioned ID photos on a single 6x4 sheet. On the whole, I'm delighted with it. The only downside is that you do need a regular printer for doing letters etc., but at around 45 quid for a PIXMA iP1500, that's not going to break the bank.