Comparison of Printers

In this blog I shall compare the printer I use at home to the printer at Burton College.

At home I have a Kodak ESP Series 3200 printer.

This printer will print, copy and scan. It's main purpose is to print home documents (letters etc...) easily and cheaply, and to scan images. This it does, but its quality is not brilliant. It would not be suitable to use to print quality photographic images, except to give a draft quality example of an image. It has 2 cartridges for ink - black and colour (containing cyan, magenta, yellow and black inks). It cannot be calibrated; it cost about £70

Burton College uses a HP Photosmart Pro B9180 Photo Printer. Details are given below. It is designed for one purpose alone -printing photos. It has 8 individual ink cartridges - cyan, magenta, yellow and black plus 4 others to give a wide variety of colour production. It can be calibrated to the monitor and costs about £500.

When I investigated 'Ptofessional Business Printers' on the internet the cost moved into the thousands of pounds, or even 'We will arrange to telephone you with a quote'. I assume that professional photographers must either have their own high quality printers, or have a contract with printers with precise quality contracts. The number of inks available increases with printer price, as I presume the quality control and monitoring of colour features do as well.

For myself, it seems unlikely that I will print my own photographs in the foreseeable future (if ever) - but will use on line printers initially recommended by trusted photographers.