Help with Printing Wildlife Photos

[bugley]

Hi

I wonder if anyone can offer me any advice. I purchased an FZ18 last week to take pictures of wildlife. After reading various forums and looking at various websites I decided this would probably the best camera for me to start with.

I took some lovely pictures and they looked great when viewing them on my PC. As my printer has just about had it I took the memory card to Asda to have the photos printed and the quality was oeoeoeoe to say the least.

I think I need to buy a printer of my own and I was after some advice if possible on what is the best printer to use.

Any info would be very much appreciated

[big bill]

Hello bugley and welcome to the site,everybody has their own favourite printers my prefered maker is Epson I have the Stylus Photo R200 and it delivers great print outs,if you are going to be printing alot of photos you are better getting a printer that is also used for photos for the quality but no doubt someone may say Hewett Packard or an other maker it is all about preferance anbd what you want from the printer

[RichBrew]

Bugley:

Asda are not renowned for their photographic services (cheap is not always cheerful). You made a poor choice by going there, and by using them (or similar), you are very unlikely to get a realistic evaluation of what your camera is capable of. Unless you are going to be printing a lot of photographs on a regular basis, owning your own printer is not a wise economic decision. Running costs are high (forget about third party paper and inks), so it is far more economic to either take your memory card/CD/DVD to an outlet like Jessops, or upload your files to an on-line company who specialise in such services.

If you are sure Asda have not done a reasonable job with your work, go back and ask for a re-print. You don't have to put up with shoddy service.

One point to remember, is that a print will not look the same as an image on a computer display. One is back-lit: the other relies on reflected light. However, you can get reasonably close.

RichBrew

[zan]

I agree with RichBrew. I would try out other (e.g. online) print shops before you buy your own printer (which would require proper calibrating, expensive inks etc). If you PM me, I can recommend a couple of companies that I use and you can see what you think yourself.

Zan

[bugley]

Thanks very much for all of your advice.

I have only ever used a cheap and cheerful digital camera for holiday snaps. I know I have probably jumped in at the deep end buying the FZ18 as I know very little at all about photography.

Maybe it isnt Asda who have made a hash of the pictures, it could be how I have used the camera, although most of it appears to be straight forward.

I will take your advice and try Jessops or somewhere similar and see how they print out with them before I purchase a new printer.

It may be that I need more practice using the camera.

Thanks again bugley

[Words]

One thing to remember is that a flat screen may be set to quite a high brightness level which means prints may look duller/darker than you expect. As a minimum try and set the gamma on your screen. They are quite often too bright which means the electronic file is actually darker than you think. If you google "monitor calibration" (without the quotes) you'll get some useful links. There's more you could do but a few basic adjustments will help.

[RichBrew]

Bugley,

Can you post a couple of images here for us to evaluate? The camera you have is capable of good results, as others here will testify. It has been a common mistake in the past for newcomers to photography to lay the blame for poor prints at their own door, when in fact it's the mini-lab that's responsible. In the days of film, the first thing you checked was the negative: if it had detail, then it was printable. This is why I ask you to post a sample image from your memory card. That way, it is easier for us to assess the quality of the original, and give a more informed reply.

RichBrew

[bugley]

Hi- Thanks for your advice.

RichBrew as I am new to the site as well can you advise how I post a couple of images. Do I use my image library?? Can you view via that??

Bugley

[BillyPilgrim]

Unless you are going to be printing a lot of photographs on a regular basis, owning your own printer is not a wise economic decision. Running costs are high (forget about third party paper and inks)

RichBrew

I'd agree about the paper but I'm not so sure about the inks. I own an Epson R220. When the Epson ink was nearly out I bought some cheap replacement cartridges (about £1 each) and printed the same photo with both sets. I couldn't tell any difference. Maybe the Epson inks will last longer though?

Then I got the photo printed at the local supermarket and compared all three. The quality of the supermarket photo was very poor compared to the others.

I'm not suggesting that it is better to buy a printer than use one of the better places (Jessops etc) but if you own an Epson already I'd certainly give the non-branded inks a try.

[Geoff F]

If you are thinking about printing reasonable numbers of A4 or bigger images then getting your own decent quality printer is worth thinking about. It was those 'enhanced' prints from local developers that originally persuaded me to go digital. Now I am in total control of my printing.

I had been using an A4 Epson R800, quality not too bad but can suffer from ink clogs although easy to clean. But when that finally went to 'silicon heaven' I wanted to go upto A3 so I bought a Canon 9000. But we are up to the price of an average camera now! Yes, I couldn't afford or justify the cost, but finally thought 'I'm not getting any younger, so why not splash out on this instead of a holiday'.

If you do go down the home printing road, remember to only use top quality paper. I have tried 3rd party ink but found that it didn't give quite so accurate colours, although it worked fine for average printing. But that is probably a discussion for another day.