Paul, Certainly a tough question. Probably the biggest reason to have a good home printer is for quick prints. When you don't have time to wait for or deal with the lab. My lab uses the Agfa D-Lab units. As far as quality goes, they recently did some prints for Herb Chong so he could compare against what he could get out of his Epson 1270. Based on Herb's report, it sounded like they were pretty comparable. I saw the comparison prints myself and would concur. I can't speak directly for the Frontier or Noritsu systems, but would guess them to be quite similar. The Agfa D-Labs max out at 12 X 18 prints. When printing larger than that, my lab uses an Epson 7600.
As to pricing, normal price of 8X10's is US $6.50 with a lowest price of $2.88 depending on how much correction they must do. The 2.88 is a recent price change and seems to be based on straight thru printing by the lab with no manipulation/correction and may be a price for working professionals. I will have to verify that. 4X6 prices are .50 each. Bruce Thursday, February 20, 2003, 10:53:46 PM, you wrote: PE> Hi folks, PE> my question for today is how the various forms of "digital printing PE> on photo paper" compare. I'm finding it harder to justify buying a high end PE> consumer inkjet (i.e. Epson 1290/Canon 9000) because I really don't do that PE> much colour work. Last night I went out to buy a second hand enlarger lens PE> and the guy I was buying it from told me of a local Lab that would do 20" x PE> 32" Pegasus prints for AUD$33.00 (around US$21). By laying out multiple PE> prints in the one job he could do eight 8x10s on one sheet giving a very low PE> unit cost for each print. After doing a bit of hunting around I found PE> another lab that would do them for $35.00 so I've even got a choice of Labs. PE> I haven't been able to find the costs yet for Fuji Frontier, but the costs PE> for the Lightjet stuff is much greater. How much difference in quality is PE> there between the various systems? And how do they compare to a 1290 or even PE> a 2200? PE> Oh, and the guy I bought the lens from (a 100/5.6 Componon S) was a PE> commercial photographer (interiors, products etc) who uses a Hasselblad and PE> a 67II. He was most interested to hear the rumours of a new 67 model. PE> Paul Ewins PE> Melbourne, Australia
