School of Photography Newsletters

What is the definition of confusion? Shopping for a printer. They come in all shapes, sizes and formats and trying to choose the right one can be mind boggling. However here we will come to the rescue, at least be of some help to hopefully point you in the right direction.

Printers can be loosely divided into a few categories.

Firstly there is the enprint sized photo printer. These print photos of a similar size (approximately 6″x4″) to what you would get from your photo processor when developing film. They often can be acquired bundled with a camera and nearly all can be used without a computer. The camera or memory card can be plugged straight into them and out pops your printed photo with a minimum of fuss.

The advantage of these printers is they are simple to use and you can get your images printed in an instant. The disadvantages though are; they can only be used for printing small prints and the ink and paper is expensive. In fact more expensive then having your digital images printed by your local processor who has digital printing facilities.

Then there is the standard computer inkjet printer which has evolved drastically over the recent past. Most inkjet printers boast photo quality printing with various degrees of quality depending on the ink, paper and settings used. A good quality inkjet printer will print up to A4 size and borderless. Some are now even capable of printing directly from a memory card without the need of using a computer. Some will even have an editing screen built into the printer for previewing and sorting through the images on the memory card.

There are a few advantages to an inkjet printer. One is the printer can be used for general purposes, not just photographic images. Another is you can vary the size of your prints. And thirdly, though printing using these types of printers is still expensive, there is more scope for shopping around for the best deals on paper and inks.

Finally there is the combination printer/scanner/copier. These all round machines are very versatile and can achieve some good results. However some sacrifices are bound to be made in comparison to the dedicated printer in order to facilitate the other options in the machines. 

There is a lot of technical aspects regarding printers, as is the case with all digital appliances. However when comparing printers look at these few capabilities:

1. Resolution - The higher the resolution capabilities the better. Sharpness and colour saturation is better with high resolution printers, even if you don’t print your images at the highest available resolution on the printer.

2. Inks - In theory, the more colour inks that are used, the better the colour quality that can be produced. Printers usually have between four and six colours, including black. Some may have all the colours included in one cartridge while others will have each colour in individual cartridges. Which is better really is splitting hairs but economically in the long run, fewer colours in separate cartridges probably works out cheaper.

3. Speed - Not the most important aspect where printing photos is concerned. Some printers are faster at printing than others and the makers tend to put a lot of stock in this. However for most general purposes, speed is the least concern as long as the finished product is of good quality. Speed is more important when printing documents, in particular when large quantities is concerned.

Want to know more about digital printing?  Learn all about it in our Digital Photography Course. See full details at http://www.schoolofphotography.com/digital_photography_course.html

 

When you are shopping for a digital camera what is the most important feature you look for? Is it how many exposure functions the camera has? The type of memory card it uses? Is it compact or are you looking for a SLR camera? Whatever the answer to these three questions, the first question you may ask or more notably the first detail you will be told, either through advertising or the salesperson, is how many megapixels the camera is capable of producing. However is this the most important consideration for most amateur photographers?

Just a few years ago this was a very important consideration as digital cameras generally had a very low resolution. Every extra pixel available counted toward the ability to produce reasonably sized images and fine detail rendition. Now even the most basic of compact cameras that have recently hit the camera market has at least 4 megapixels of optical resolution. This is more than enough to produce a decent quality image of up to A4 (11″x8″ approx.) in size.

There are many compact digital cameras now using image sensors that can produce 5, 6 and 7 megapixel images. But is this really necessary, particularly for the occasional snapper who may only blow the dust off their camera at certain times of year? Not really, but there is an advantage to all these pixels for certain uses.

Even though cameras now seem to have more pixels than is needed, there still is the factor of choice in the size a person chooses to enlarge an image or how finely recorded their subject must be. For the serious enthusiast and for professional purposes, the more megapixels the better as this makes the image more versatile, though not necessarily of any better image quality.

So one fact has now changed regarding the image quality of a digital camera. No longer is the pixel resolution the main factor that it was when choosing a digital camera, as they nearly all have adequate resolution to produce a good quality image for most purposes.

We as consumers can now start looking at the other features in a digital camera and give them more consideration when buying. Most digital cameras are now packed with real photographic features that seemed to have been considered added bonuses rather than important features in the camera. Now that megapixels is no longer of too much significance, we can look past the usual advertising indicators and see what these cameras are really made of.