Printing professional quality A3 images

[Justin]

What sort of printer should I be looking at if I want to be able to produce professional quality photographs? Probably only need A3+

8 or 10 colour ?

Having a quick look around I see Epsons & Canons as expected, around the £500+ mark. I guess running costs, inks and paper would be a big thing to consider. Is this realistic or would I need to be spending more?

Appreciate any advice on this

[TjCanvas]

Hi Justin
We have both 8 and 12 ink wide format, the 12 ink HP Z3100 has a Gloss enhancer cartridge in which in comparison with the 8 ink printer you really can tell a difference in finish.

Running costs on the printer are quite reasonable, we only use genuine inks which we pick up from our local independent HP engineer at 4 130 ml carts for £120 or full sets for around £250, the only ink we can't get from him due to high demand is light gray however we can usually get these at around £40. The printer also has a built in photospectrometer so you can easily calibrate each type of media used. Costs of printheads is also quite reasonable at around £40 (each print head does two colours)

We bought ours new at a premium but they can be found on ebay for around £800-1200 on ebay for a reasonable used 24" unit (I have seen them go as little as £600), personally what ever printer you go for ask as many questions about the printer as you can think of, including what errors and dates of errors are registered in the print log. One error to be concerned about on all HP printers is 79:04. If this is a resent or regular error on a printer walk away as it can be either just a simple firmware update needed or it can be something as serious as the Formater board needs replacing.

All in all it goes without saying research each printer that catches your eye but I would recommend the Z3100 for photo prints.

[pisquee]

A3 landscape prints from a 24" roll feed printer work well remember, so don't just stick to A3 printers as options.

[JMugs]

I have an Epson 7600, very happy clients. Can't comment on any other printers as I don't know. My clients are published professional photographers.
Janners.

[Justin]

Cheers folks, wasn't sure if wide format would be a good option or not, footprint is always a consideration.Can't find a Z3100 for under £1300 at the moment.

[pisquee]

We use an Epson 7600 (24" 7 colour) for our artwork printing (with InkTec pigment inks) - onto matt papers as reproducing painting type artwork mainly, rather than photographic/glossy.

My only frustration with the 7600/9600 we have is the print speed being slow when printing on maximum quality, especially if printing A1 size images - best to just queue them up and leave it running. This is the only reason we may want to upgrade is to gain print speed (or we may just buy another printer and use both to effectively double our print speed.)

[smo]

The Canon 8 and 12 ink wide format machines such as the IPF-6300 (A1) produce excellent results. The 12 colour machines are so good you cant see the difference between that and a photo print from a chemical process. The 8 colours are superb too but are built for speed over out and out quality.