New Printer

I don't generally print my own work. Its expensive, time consuming, and how could my ink-jet printer produce better results than the $100 000 plus machines that places have. Even Big W here in Canberra, and all over Australia produced excellent prints, and they can do canvas printing, posters and so forth also.

That being said, I am amazed at the quality of home printers today. Using ink, and tiny drops that you cant see them, the quality they produce is amazing, and a lot of photographers use them for albums etc, as some of the newer inks and pigments have got excellent longevity.

Commercial photo printers, on real photographic paper however, cannot print decent black and white prints. They always come with a colour cast, so can look decent if thats what you are looking for. The best black and white is on fibre bases paper, but printing digitally can be tedious like that.

Inkjets with one black ink can do a decent job, but sometimes there is a lack of detail in shadows, as the printer only used one colour to print with. You can get printers that use black and multiple grey cartridges to produce STUNNING b&w prints, and there are third party 6 colour ink systems available, using 6 different shades of grey. Here though, you need a dedicated printer, and can be expensive. I alway prefer sending prints out, but I like making prints at home for proofs, quick display and so forth.

Anyway, I bought a new printer today, and it has a black and a grey ink cartridges. I made a quick black and white print, and was blown away at the quality. I think I will definitely print more small black and white prints at home, and make a little album for a future project.

Its a Canon MP980, and its a very sleek little unit. Its wireless, prints, prints on CDs and DVDs, and scans, and most impressively, you can scan 35mm film with it too! I scanned in an old slide from the 1950s, of my mother with her mother (my grandma), when she was 9 months old, produced a 6 megapixel image, and printed it out. The quality of the scanner is amazing, and is suitable for 99% of applications I can think of.

There is no adapter to scan 120 film, but I cant see why one wouldn't be able to, just dont use the 35mm film adapter. Ill have to get some processed and see.

In the meantime, I look forward to shooting some b&w film, getting it processed, then scanning and printing at home!

Saad