The "IT" Printer

can I get a recommendation for a printer? I am interested in something that will pump out quality images for a reasonable price....but I just dont know where to start....Im a darkroom guy, but now that I have a DSLR, I would rather print at home than take it to Walmart..

thanks in advance

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Originally Posted by Dubbs5050

can I get a recommendation for a printer? I am interested in something that will pump out quality images for a reasonable price....but I just dont know where to start....Im a darkroom guy, but now that I have a DSLR, I would rather print at home than take it to Walmart..

thanks in advance

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How much can you spend, and what size would you be wanting to print?

I would recommend something with pigment inks so that you are not stuck with printing on the manufacturers limited offerings of papers. Dye based inks are not very long lasting unless you print on the manufacturers papers made for the inkset.

Another very important consideration. Being a Darkroom guy as you mentioned, I guess you might want to do quite a bit B&W printing? If so, you will want a printer with at the very minimum 2 shades of black inks (black and light black or gray) but prefferably three shades of black for optimum results. Most medium priced printers have one black ink cartridge and the gray tones in a b&w print are made by mixing various colors to achieve what the eye perceives to be gray. Works ok, but the issue with that is metamerism. This term is used to describe what happens to the color cast of a print when viewed under different light sources or angles. When colors are used to makes shades of grays, different colorcasts will appear in the print. . .sometimes a greenish cast but usually a pink or magenta cast under various lighting. Being a darkroom guy, I get the feeling you would not be too happy about this and would eventually want a printer that made much better b&w prints.
The Epson 2400 is an excellent printer and the one I have been using for a couple years now. There is an updated version of this , the 2880 which would most likely be the best choice .

If all you are interested in is making casual prints of family and perhaps vacation images etc, then anything from Canon or Epson would be fine, but look for something that has individual ink cartidges for the best efficiency of your ink usage.

Canons Pro9500 if you want wide format, that offers the best performance in the consumer/pro hybrid market. It has Red and Green, just the two perfect colors to reach the fine nuance tones of AdobeRGB. It also has a matte black and a light black, 3 ink process for BW so you have absolutely no mettamerism due to composite ink.

But personally, I think those wide format inkjets consume way too much ink, if you compare it to Canons mid-line ip4500 - the color accuracy and tonal gradations are virtually identical between the two, and the ip4500 can print over 2.5 times what the pro series can do per dollar. If you convert the print document to CMYK mode, it gives you a real fine print. If you know what youre doing, you can outdo a consumer photo lab every time. I will be getting a pro9000 before too long, but I will use it almost solely for wide format printing, and stick with my 4500 for everything else.

Let me add to the original question a bit -

I currently have an i9900 Canon which I like a lot - but I want pigment based inks so I'm looking at Pro9000 or 9500 on the Canon side (I'd really like the IPF 5100 but can't justify it or something larger at this point) or one of the comparable Epson printers. Any thoughts on which has "better" color rendition?