Inky Dinky Do
As much as I love photography, I love printing pictures almost as much. And it requires, surprisingly, almost as much practice and skill. Printing a really good picture can be incredibly frustrating, but also incredibly rewarding.
Sadly, my beloved Epson 3880 printer has given up the ghost. Sort of. It still prints, but not from my computer. I've tried everything, different USB cords, different computer, ethernet, all for naught. The printer sits there like a puppy wagging its tail saying 'Ready' and when I go to print from virtually any of my programs, it says 'Your computer is off line.' Epson thinks it's the USB connector, but that is intimately connected to the whole mother board control panel in the back of the computer.
It will only cost me about $350/hr to discover if it is fixable, with no guarantees and an unknown cost estimate of the fix. Sheesh.
It is a great printer, but, to be honest, it wasn't beloved. It had recurring problems feeding paper smoothly, printing consistent colours, and recognizing the non-Epson inks I often bought (sorry Epson). But when it was on its game, it was a wonderful thing.
So assuming I can't salvage it, I've started researching other printers. And I've come to realize something that I didn't four years ago when I bought the Epson - it's all about the ink. First of all, ink is expensive. Ridiculously so. When I go on one of my printing jags I might go through 30 sheets of 8 1/2 x 11 paper in a night. I like Epson Lustre paper, and the paper alone is $ .70/sheet (Hahnemuhle Photo Rag, sort of the Cuban cigar of the paper world, is $3.50/sheet - wow. I don't smoke Cuban cigars :)). The ink though makes Epson paper look cheap. It's not easy to calculate (but if I guess that I get maybe 300 8 1/2 x 11 prints from the set of 8 80ml inks that the Epson uses that cost about $70 each) then that's about $1.80/sheet for the ink alone. This explains why I often use non-Epson ink which is half the price and almost impossible to tell from the OEM stuff.
Could you get an 8 1/2 x 11 printed for that price? Actually, you could, or pretty close for sure, at maybe Staples. The difference? Quality of ink for one - the pigments on good ink jet printers are rated to not fade for over 200 years, while the silver nitrate prints from stores might last maybe a quarter of that. And the best inkjet printers turn out much better pictures - you also have the ability to perfectly fine tune your pics. There is the other option of high quality photo printing services; an 8 1/2 x 11 print, using pretty much the ink and paper I would use myself, is $5.00, or double the price. If you ask for the Hahnemuhle paper, it's $10.00, again, about double.
However, there is no doubt that Canon and Epson both rip us off with the cost of their inks. It's why they almost give their printers away. Epson's current printer to match the specs of my old one is the SureColor 800, a $1400 printer on sale right now for $995 or so. It comes with a 3/4 set of ink, 9 cartridges worth a mere $500. Doing the math, I'm paying $495 or so for the printer. Canon's new Prograf 1000 comes with a set of 12 80ml inks and is on sale for $1395 or so; the ink is worth $880 so the printer costs $515 or so. Put another way, assuming a normal life for the printer, it might cost about $ .13 per print, by far the cheapest part of the equation.
As I said, it all comes down to the ink. It is incredible to think that ink is 75% of the cost of a new large format printer. And while you might say get a smaller, cheaper printer, I say ha! They kill you with the, you guessed it, ink. On a mid-sized Canon, let's say the highly rated new Pro 10, it comes with 9 cartridges (this next part is important so it's in italics) but they are only 13 ml cartridges (instead of the 80 ml cartridges on the bigger printers) and these cartridges cost $20 each. The printer sells for $550, so I'm now still paying $370 for the printer, but the ink now costs 80% per ml more every time I print! I'm up to about $4.00 for an 8 1/2 x 11 print instead of $2.50. And if anything it actually gets worse as the printers get still smaller and cheaper. It takes all of about 4 packages of 50 sheets of paper for me to be in the hole with a $200 printer instead of a $1400 printer! And I lose all of the capabilities of large format printers to handle different print stock and large prints. Double sheesh!
Of course, all this only applies if you print a lot of pictures. But I do. Rock, meet hard place. I feel like Jimmy Durante - inky, dinky do or inky, dinky don't. Goodnight Mrs. Calabash, wherever you are.