Some time ago I decided not only to look at my pictures on the TV, but to use selected pictures for prints on paper as an output medium. The primary objective is not to frame these pictures and hang them to the wall, but to have a portfolio in paper form. In addition, I lately always felt that something is missing in the process of photography. It is really different whether you have a photo which you like, in high-quality print in front of you or whether you look at the monitor or TV-screen. In addition the haptics of paper should not be underestimated.

Two options were considered:

  • Service provider for prints
  • Purchase a printer

As I did not want to have simple exposures in the format 10×15 or the like but high quality prints of certain images in diverse sizes like A4 / A3 or even A3 + / A2 I concentrated on these output variables.

In the first step I collected information about the currently available printers and providers. Fine Art prints should be the direction to go for and this to happen in the diverse sizes.

To do the research I did a step by step selection to be able to compare prices. Quality wasn’t compared but assumed that the diverse providers would be able to deliver high quality. This resulted in an Excel table which should help to the decision from a budget perspective. This was very pessimistic developed with regard to prices and ink cartridge lifetime. It quickly turned out that service providers can not compete with a personal printer at the price. In addition, the paper selection is also restricted to special service providers and only a bunch of selectable papers.

Therefore, only two printer models came into consideration:

Both printers should be regarded as almost equivalent according to youtube and internet reports. So, actually there is no better or worse.

In the end, I chose the Canon. With the Epson I would have the rollpaper feed option which is quite interesting, whereas the Canon is aspirating the paper which helps the printing process having plain paper while printing. The negative side of the Epson is the fact that the setup ink filling is only 64ml per cartridge (80ml are in the replacement cartridges). The Canon has already initial full tanks with 80ml. The Epson has to change the black ink when changing from glossy to matte paper. Since it is only one ink supply in the printer for black, at each change, the unused ink is first washed out. This does waste a lot of ink when changing regularly the paper. This is not the case with the Canon. In addition to the hardware, Canon also provides a very good software package. Besides the printer driver, this includes accounting software, media-management and a stand-alone printing software (which can also be integrated in PS or LR). Since my main focus is set on printing directly from Lightroom, the latter one is not important for me.

If one asks now why I did choose the Canon, I cannot clearly provide an answer.