Why Do-It-Yourself Photo Printing Doesn't Add Up

Ant writes "CNET News.com and The New Yorks Times (no registration required) report that even though the prices of printers have dropped up to 30 percent in the last few months thanks to a savage price war, buyers are going to pay at least 28 cents a print. This is if you believe the manufacturers' math. It could be closer to 50 cents a print if you trust the testing of product reviewers at Consumer Reports. In the meantime, the price of printing a 4-by-6-inch snapshot at a retailer's photo lab, like those inside a Sam's Club, is as low as 13 cents. Snapfish.com, an online mail-order service, offers prints for a dime each if you prepay. At those prices, why bother printing at home? Consumers seem to be saying just that. For the 12 months ended in July, home printing accounted for just 48 percent of the 7.7 billion digital prints made, down sharply from 64 percent in the previous 12 months, according to the Photo Marketing Association International, a trade group for retailers and camera makers. The number of photos spewing out of home printers is up quite handsomely, however, because of the overall growth of digital photo printing--up about 68 percent from the year-earlier period - but retail labs clearly have the advantage..."

Comments

There's a reason to print at home and on-line.

[yagu]

This is a near and dear issue for me. I've eagerly slurped up all the new generations of printer technology each time more amazed than ever at the quality of prints, finally achieving indistinguishable quality from lab prints.

But, a disturbing parallel trend came with each new generation of printer. The printers became:

• better quality
• faster
• cheaper

but at the same time:

• less reliable (like, in a major major way)
• more expensive per print
• and inconvenient as hell

I still jump in every generation or so of new photo printer technology but not with rose-colored glasses anymore. I still need to on occasion get a quick print for home or some guest, but that's mostly it. For my serious stuff, I send it out to be done:

• it's just so much easier
• if they make a mistake, they eat the costs
• the majority of the prints I want to make are for other people, and the majority of the time those people are geographically far away. I can get a high quality print to them much more easily and in half the time than if I do it myself.
• I still am having trouble getting a ceramic cup to print properly on any of my photo printers.

I think the costs for high quality prints from services will remain competitive as there are plenty of competent "players" out there. Just read the reviews, sample a few prints yourself before you commit big time to any of them. Also, maintain your storage of prints yourself, lots of services offer storage, but I'd highly recommend if you value your pictures, you keep archives of your own. (Aside from reliability issues, what happens if any of them go out of business? Where do your pictures go?)

ink is overpriced

[jay2003]

Printer manufacturers charge ridiculous amounts of money for ink. I'm glad consumers are wising up and having pictures lab printed. Perhaps these numbers will convince Epson, HP & Canon, they can not gouge us on ink forever and they will lower prices.

If not, consumers are getter better longevity with lab prints since they are done on photographic paper. I know all the statistics about 100 year estimated print life on newer inkjets. There's always the little asterisk about not exposing the prints to air unless this they are inkjet pigment printers. Epson has some but pigment ink cartridges are usually even more expensive. Not to mention clogged heads, smeared prints and all the other problems you get trying to print at home.

Simple rule

[syousef]

Here are my rules:
1) If it's standard 4x6, print at a lab. You won't be able to beat the price
2) If it's larger - up to A4, print at home on modest priced photo printer that lets you refill individual tanks, and using cheap photo paper (Where I live Kodak's the cheapest and the quality is good enough for my needs - and I consider myself a serious amateur photographer).
3) If you're likely to be printing A3 or A3+ often it's worth buying an A3 or A3+ photo printer. Since they're considerably more expensive (or were last time I looked), you have to be printing A3 at least an item a month to make it worthwhile. (ie one poster a month). Otherwise find a cheap lab.
4) If you're printing larger than A3 the photos get ridiculously priced. A lab is going to be cheaper but not cheap (unless you are a specialised printing firm). Avoid these.

You don't have to drive twice or wait

[ThatAdamGuy]

You and other posters here have lamented the inconvenience of driving to the store to drop off your photo-data-cards and then waiting an hour or driving back a second time.

I think you're overlooking two key options:

1) Upload photos to a site, then pick up. For instance, you can upload your photos via Yahoo and then pick them up in as little as an hour from Target (http://pg.photos.yahoo.com/ph/thatadamguy/print_s plash). I seem to recall that other stores also let you upload-'n'-pick-up, too. With the aforementioned Yahoo/Target option, it's 20 cents per print, first 20 free.

2) Or, if you don't mind waiting a week or so, order photos online via Fotki, Shutterfly, etc.

As for privacy... I suppose there could be some issues, but particularly with mega-printers like Ofoto and Snapfish and such, I just don't imagine that the photos are being seen by many human eyes (perhaps not even by one).

I've realized for years this very story

[saskboy]

It's simple math to determine how much it will cost per page for your ink, and paper.

Buy 30 sheets of photo paper at $20, and your sheet cost per large photo is 20/30 = $0.66.

Then with the HP Laser Jet 2550 colour printer, you get about 4000 sheets and ink is about $100 for black, and $100 for each of the three colours, and there's an imaging drum to replace too, so it's at a minium $400/4000sheets, so $0.10/page of ink expenses.

In this example, it's nearly 80 cents per 8"/10" photo page, and that's with the traditionally MORE economical laser printer. A crappy buble jet that HP makes these days, gives you 15mL of ink for your 3 colours, and 13mL for the black, and that costs $35 and might last, well I'm guessing since I'm not rich enough to buy and use one, 25 pages at 8"/10". So with the photo paper that means you'd get about 35/20 for ink + $0.66 for the paper = $2.06 for my example. Compare that to Walmart, and I'm sure that box store is going to kick the pants off of the price for printing at home.

I can think of only two reasons...

[mwvdlee]

I can think of only two reasons why you'd want to print at home.

1) You need the best possible quality but have no access to a print shop which can deliver it. Reality is that most cheap print shops will not deliver accurate color even if you jump through all the hoops. More expensive print shops can (provided your image meets some criteria) but these can be harder to find. If you're living in Alaska; your may be off a little bit cheaper buying your own printer if you need high quality prints.

2) You print material isn't supposed to be seen by anybody else. Print shops have access to the images and will usually check prints. So if you have, say, private (intimate?) pictures or other material which may be damaging or not intended for public viewing (secret?), a personal printer is essential. This is basically akin to one of the major reasons digicams became so huge; they allowed you to make pictures without any third party ever being able to watch them.

Re:Simple fact: Longevity

[Mordaximus]

Which has the potential to produce the better print? Hands down, the mini lab printer.

Which _will_ produce the better print?

The important question is, where is the printer, and who is operating it? You wager on the mini-lab printer in Wal-Mart, run by a minimum wage employee who transfered over from sporting good last week?

I'd wager, speaking from experience, that a photographer that does more than snap family photos, understands all aspects of photography from exposure to print, envisions his end result and adjust his equipment accordingly and uses a decent quality photo printer will get far, far better results.

Cheaper is not always better.