Do you need to get a new photo printer? What is wrong with your old one?

hi my name is keith cooper and in this short video i'm going to try and answer a question i get asked quite often and that is do i need a new printer people quite often have had a printer for a while and they see a new printer come out they may see some example prints i've done on it or read the article the review that i've written or any other stuff like that and think um that looks nice my old printer's getting on a bit would that make better prints well i'm gonna have to say that if you have a perfectly good printer then and it works and you get good prints out of it then why bother because i can say that because i i don't sell printers or inks or paper i'm an architectural photographer and i happen to test these things and look at them out of interest as much as anything and also to get a chance to print some of my images which i might not otherwise get so if we've got a good printer why bother well if it's a few years old you may find that the inks are harder to get but it needs to be quite a few years old for that princess has supported for quite a while why get one well what about if it's got some annoying factors that you don't like now this is a canon pro 200 it's the successor to the canon pro 100 now i reviewed the canon pro 100 back in 2011. print quality was fine in fact because of the inks the printhead and various things i wouldn't expect print quality itself to be massively greater in the 200 than it was in the 100. now there will be some differences but probably not that much and always remember that if i've looked at a recent printer and got very good results from it then a new printer needs to be phenomenally better to be a clear advantage over an old one um printers are already pretty good so a new one has a tough job in being even better than pretty good um and this is something that's often lost because what a lot of what you read about printers is marketing and marketing is aimed at selling you a new printer now i mentioned you know if it's working if it's broken your printer then yep think about a new printer no reason not to however what about various annoyance factors of older printers um for example absence i never found it a particular problem but it was annoyance in having to swap black inks when i changed paper type from photo paper to matte paper i might want to change quite often but i was always going to lose a bit of ink and with smaller printers the amount of ink you lost was enough that it made a difference might not stop you from doing a print but it would make you less likely to just think oh i'll try that on mac paper i'll try that on photo or brighter paper or something different so there are lots of different ways you you might choose to do how it might affect your printing and the black ink swap was longer complaint well anyway that's gone now so the p700 p900 you no longer have the black ink swap so that's great what about canon well i mentioned i tried the pro 100 years ago print quality great it's major problem to me was its margin handling on art papers like this that's uh if you're somewhere in southern colorado i believe i remember rightly yes that's the great sand dunes national park in the distance there but that's printed on an arc paper because i like the way the colors come out on this particular paper now if i wanted to print this on the old pro 100 i would not have been able to get margins this small and i certainly wouldn't have been able to print borderless on paper like that now i don't necessarily want to print borderless but it's an annoyance and something you have to work around so it's a resistance to printing much like the black ink swap well 200 gets rid of that paper handling on this is excellent um see the reviews i've written and stuff about how to use it this and the 300 as well 300 had the limitations as well these printers for example now will print panoramic prints up to just shy of a meter long that's pretty 13 inch 39 inch it's quite a big size print that's also an improvement over the old ones so there are features that are definite improvements and if the old features caused you problems that's a reason to get a new printer this printer for example has a screen on it now the old pro 100 and 200 had just a couple of buttons on the front and that was it you didn't know what was going on in the printer i much prefer this and i find it easier to help people new to printing find out what they're doing and appreciate what's going on because a lot of the difficulties people face when they get into printing is about confidence and having a screen like this or even the touch screen that's really good on the p700 and p900 for absence is a good step forward it's not something necessarily to make you jump out and go and get a new printer but it's one of those things that after a while you will appreciate it and think how did i get by with this before i should say that the old p800 p600 did have screens they were nowhere near the quality of the screens on the 700 900 it's just part of that evolution you get but that's how how i would say the features change and how they might make a difference to what you're doing now remember too that if you're thinking of getting a new printer by all means have a look at the manufacturer's specifications and i always put the specifications into any reviews i write but take them with a pinch of salt because printer specifications are written as marketing documents they are specifications indeed but they're also to help market the printer and what i would say as a general rule any highest quality print settings that you see from a printer whether it's this canon whether it's nips and works anything any highest quality settings you see are there for marketing purposes and gain you no real benefit whatsoever now i'm sure i could come up with some test images and if i looked at them with a magnifying glass i might be able to see a difference but in the real world there is no difference apart from the prince generally takes longer to print um so that i would say is just be wary of the specifications um so have a look at the reviews i've got now people often say which is best this or that two printers now i've done a comparison between this and the 300 um and also the epson p700 p900 because they're very similar in some ways and there are clear reasons for looking between them but if you write to me and say which should i get karen or epson my answer is going to be it depends and it depends entirely on how much you want to spend what kind of printing you're going to do how much printing you're going to do all kinds of other things so basically don't ever expect me to answer the question which is best now i've actually got an article as to why that's been one of my working principles for reviews for 15 years or my written reviews before i did the videos but you know if you're if you want me to say which is best give me a list of specifications of what's important to you and i'll tell you which ones may matter but i won't recommend printers remember i don't sell printers i have no interest whether you buy a printer or whether you don't buy a printer or whether you get your prints printed elsewhere it's about getting the results from it but the other thing is when you get a new printer a new printer particularly if there's any significant change between the old one you had you should reevaluate re-evaluate your paper choices new printer new papers don't assume that your best papers for the old printer will automatically give best results on the new one it's worth trying obviously particularly if you've got boxes of paper but be prepared to find that a particular paper doesn't work as well on one printer as it does another certainly if you've been printing on this pro 200 with dye based printer and you found that you really like the depth of color that you could get from some art papers and then you printed on a pigment ink printer on a similar paper you might be disappointed equally well if you like glossy prints on this you may be disappointed with pigment inks however if you like nice heavy brighter style papers luster papers that look like old photo papers particularly for black and white and you've been printing on one of these then switch over to a pigment ink printer you may find your results are much better and noticeably better as well what i would say is that i only get printers for a limited period of time so i can't give long-term usage advice keep an eye on if you if printer's been out for a while keep an eye on uh various forums like dp review the printing forum there and that but do be wary of so-called forum wisdom um watch what's said but give it a skeptical eye because an awful lot of stuff that's said about printers and how to use them isn't even wrong um it's just yeah just people have an idea and they promulgate that idea so take it with care but yeah do keep an eye on it because it is where potential faults occur and with any new printer there can be down the line various changes and faults and i would say if you get a new printer always update the firmware if you see firmware result firmware updates appearing because there are all kinds of changes they often don't say what the changes cover but they will be there to address issues and bugs improvements and things in the printer so it is definitely worth having a look but above all don't think getting a new printer is suddenly going to revitalize the quality of your prints if you make rubbish photos and can't edit them properly doesn't matter how good the printer is you'll get rubbish prints so no matter what you do with printing go out take more photos look at that side of your photography as well by all means spend time perfecting your printing but remember to get a good print you need a good photo so anyway i hope that's of some interest um so leave a comment or a question if you've got some or contact me at normal flight if you've got any specific questions and thank you

Channel: Keith Cooper

Views: 1,712

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Id: uWhWJYgzG2g

Length: 11min 22sec (682 seconds)

Published: Fri Feb 05 2021