When I looked at this stuff a few years back I thought the (then
tektronix) phaser printers looked pretty interesting. I didn't get to
the point of testing them with my own files, but the quality seemed
pretty good, though probably not as good as inkjet, even at the time.
I was looking at reproducing art, which in practice is probably a
little easier than coming up to the standards photographers would
expect. Most of the players at that point have been bought out, but
whoever became Konica-Minolta (QMS?) seemed to have an edge in terms
of quality. I'm surprised that a $400 dollar laser printer would be
better than een a lowly inkjet, unless what you really needed was
speed. I should take another look at this stuff.
At 10:39 PM -0400 8/3/05, Igor Roshchin wrote:
I would second that.
I've printed some photos on HP 2550n on a letter size, and
it looks much better then home-quality el-cheapo inkjet printers.
The print quality is not as good as professional inkjet printers
or sublimation printers (Phaser).
But it is very good, at least for bright colorful photos,
especially when printed on a good, high-density paper.
At work, we gave up buying inexpensive (even so-called "photo" inkjets),
as they don't last long, - either the head gets clogged or the paper
does not advance.
HP 2550L (letter/A4 size)
can be purchased for $370-450 (in the US), so it becomes more
affordable..
2550n (with the ethernet interface) is about $50-100 on top of that)
Igor
Leon Altoff wrote on Wed, 03 Aug 2005 14:05:35 -0700
Hi John,
I use a HP colour laserjet 2550L (A4) and have access to a 5500
(A3) and the quality is quite good. Not as good as a photo quality
inkjet, but beter than other inkjets. It helps if you use the Photo
quality paper that HP sells to go with the laser printer. Epson
have also apparently brought out a photo quality laser, but I
haven't played with it.
I gave up on ink jets because the jets kept clogging and I would
spend 5 times as long getting it ready to print as actually
printing and at least 5 times as much ink. The Laser warms up and
prints with no problems.
Leon
--
Alan P. Hayes
Meaning and Form: Writing, Editing and Document Design
Pittsfield, Massachusetts
Photographs at
http://www.ahayesphoto.com/americandead/index.htm
http://del.icio.us/ahayes
