Why would you want to buy a full-service printer like this? A lot of people ask about making big prints. But there are lots of other things to ask about, purely whether you’ve got enough space or not, and these things are big.
Costs and Running Costs
How much does one of these things cost? These are very expensive. What about the economics of running it? It costs a few thousand to get started, and it comes with quite a reasonable amount of ink. Because of the size of the ink cartridges, the inks are effectively cheaper: you pay less per print, for ink costs than you would on smaller printers.
We Can Take Care Of All Of Your Printing Needs
There are 700 milliliters of ink in a cartridge, about a pint and a half of ink. That’s a lot of ink, and it will last a long while. You do have to remember to take them out, because the inks in printers like this, even if you use them quite a lot, stay around for a while.
You’re unlikely to get through inks like this very quickly. If you are, then you’ve got lots of prints, and you know why you’ve got a full-service printer.
Using the Printer Enough
Buy yourself a desktop printer, leave it for a few weeks because you don’t feel like printing, no problem at all. A full-service printer like this needs to be used every week for printing. These printers are designed for everyday use. Leave them for a few weeks unattended, and you won’t get problems from it, but it won’t contribute to the long-term reliability of the printer.
There’s a cleaning mode, and you can actually get in and clean all the parts of the printer, and there’s access to the print head at the back so you can clean the printhead as well. You can keep the insides clean, which makes a big difference for the reliability of your printer.
Buying a Used Printer and Repair Costs
Secondhand full-service printers like this are a similar matter to buying cheap second-hand cards. The benefit is that one of these, if it’s faulty, won’t drive you into a ditch. But these are expensive to repair: the parts are not cheap, the labor is not cheap, and if you can find someone to actually come out and repair it.
So be very wary about buying second-hand printers unless you can see it working and you trust the person you’re getting it from, and even then be careful, because it’s possible to see impending faults on printers like this which simply won’t show up on casual inspection, and that will be an expensive repair down the line.
And you don’t get warranties, that’s the important bit. If you’re buying a printer, take out the extended warranty. If your printer goes wrong after three years and you haven’t got it covered by the warranty, it’s going to cost you a lot. It’s quite possible for the repair costs to start approaching what you pay for a new printer.
Paper and Roll Paper
One of the benefits of these printers is that they properly support roll paper. They have a powered roller, so you don’t have to trim the paper yourself; there’s a cutter built in, so it’s a lot easier to use. You will end up generating lots of scraps of paper from a roll of paper.
If the expense of this and the waste concerns you, then perhaps think about getting a smaller printer and using sheets, because you don’t use roll paper to save paper; you use roll paper because you need the size, or you need certain other features that roll paper gives you over sheets. It is not the economy that some people think it is. Full-service printers like this are heavy; they’re built for solidity, with lots of metal in them.
Software and Color Management
The printer can be driven directly from Photoshop, or you can use the Epson print layout software, which works well for black and white and color. There are specialist software drivers, rips, available for printers like this; if you want to use a rip and spend this money on that software, know the reasons you’re going to get it.
You’ll also need, if you’re interested in quality, to look at profiling. That either means making your own ICC profiles or getting them made. Some paper suppliers do actually supply ICC profiles for the media that they supply, definitely worth looking at, because making your own profiles is not a trivial matter; it’s an expense you may not want.
The Economics and Who Wants Your Prints
There’s a high upfront cost, and eventually a cost in ink. The ink per unit area is lower, but there is still a cost. Are you going to use the printer enough to get a return on it, if you’re looking to sell prints? Large prints do need space, because they need handling with care; they’re easy to damage.
You’re looking at prints that you’re going to sell, you really don’t want dinged corners on them. You will generate waste with a full-service printer like this; it’s just part of the territory. The real big question most people ask is, where can you sell your prints? But the question is the wrong question.
It is not where you can sell your prints, but who wants your prints. That’s the key to marketing: finding out who actually wants your prints. Because if you don’t know who wants your prints, you are going to end up with an awful lot of paper around the place very quickly. You’ve got to have a reason for doing it.
Doing Prints for Other People
You may think, with a really high-quality printer, about starting to do prints for other people. It’s an interesting business, but in some areas, very much price-driven. If you go into a price-driven business and you’re not factoring in your time and all the other stuff about fulfillment, shipment, then you’re not going to have a profitable business, you’re going to have a paid hobby, and probably a hobby that actually costs you money.
You need to know what you’re going to do with all the stuff that comes out of a full-service printer like this, because it needs to be used regularly. Do some prints for people at photo clubs; how long do you think the people at your local photo club are going to need large prints before they start saying they’d like a big print but can’t afford it, or they haven’t got any more space on their walls to put the prints up?
You do have to consider your photography as well, because making big prints puts different requirements on every aspect of your photography workflow. You need much higher quality images, and higher quality to make a bigger print. If you are running a print service for other people, there is only so much printing of other people’s photography that you don’t care much for, that you’re happy to print. And if you do print for other people, you need to ship them: the cost of shipping, framing, and a whole area.
Is Full Service Worthwhile?
If that sounds like a bit of a downer on owning a full-service printer, then maybe it is. However, owning a full-service printer has made a significant contribution to the range and the quality of photography. There is so much to learn about different aspects of photography by printing large, or printing at all, that it is absolutely worthwhile.
Buy one, enjoy it, use it, except it’s expensive. If you look at the costs of one of these compared to even a not-so-great classic car, one of these suddenly doesn’t look quite so expensive.
So please do think about buying a full-service printer; they are absolutely great. But it comes down to what you’re going to do with the prints. Think it through properly.
