Mark Tomlinson wrote: > Many professional photographers use Epson > printers.
This should read: Many professional photographers use *good* Epson printers. I have heard from several photographers (including a couple of guys who run digital-capable labs) that the cheap Epsons are unreliable and prone to clogging. This is from their experience. In other words you get what you pay for. It is also a well-known fact that printer companies make a loss on the low-end hardware and slap big margins on the ink cartridges to make up for it. Just like MS is trying to do with the Xbox. I think my old Canon 4200 costs me about $5 a page to run as the ink dries out in the cartridge due to lack of use. Luckily the small black- only cartridge is only about $20. For photographic stuff I use an Agfa D-Lab 3 courtesy of Photo & Video. This is a very big box which uses lasers to print directly onto photographic paper at up to 400ppi[*], which it then processes internally. Going this way is not as convenient nor as cheap but I can't justify kitting myself out with a decent printer right now. [*]; Note that ppi is NOT the same as dpi. PPI is more representative of a continuous-tone process, dpi is used for halftoned images (eg inkjet printers). I'll stop here - I could double the size of my post with this rant ;) Cheers, - Dave http://www.digistar.com/~dmann/
