Submitted by vas6289 t3_yvtz18 in BuyItForLife
Photo-Dude t1_iwk4uua wrote
I can't give a good recommendation, but I can share my experience with a BIFL photo printer. It may help you find a solution that works for you or reevaluate having a home photo printer.
I've gotten around a decade and counting out of my circa-2010 Canon Pixma Pro 100 with light to moderate use. Canon used to give them away better-than-free after rebate with the purchase of professional and pro-sumer DLSR cameras. I have one on my work table and an extra one sitting in my closet that I've never needed to open.
They support wide(ish) format printing up to 13"x19" and offer good quality, borderless printing from an inkjet. They also have a flat feeding mechanism for printing on rigid surfaces. HOWEVER....
The ink has always crazy expensive, even by inkjet standards. It comes in tiny individual cartridges by color, but in addition to the standard CMYK it has photo cyan, photo magenta, red, and green. Even if you don't use them, they seem to dry up fairly quickly. Individually, they are ~$15 per cartridge, or slightly more than $100 if you buy a set. You can buy aftermarket ink, but the color isn't going to be accurate or long lasting.
These are going to be the big drawbacks to a home inkjet photo printer: color accuracy and ink costs.
In your case, you say that it is going to get high volume use for things other than fine art printing, but you're still going to be paying for photo quality ink. This is likely going to push your costs high enough that it might be more economical to buy a low cost-per-page laser or inkjet, and keep the photo printer only for fine art photos. Alternatively, you can get a ton of lab-printed medium and large format prints for the cost of a $1000 photo printer plus ink and paper.
At this point, I shoot commercially so my work gets published by my clients, but I never make my own prints. Even with the printer at home, on the rare occasions I need a print for personal work I send it to a good lab. Maybe things have changed since I was printing more frequently, but this has been my experience. Good luck!
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