Dec 02 2008
Wedding Photography Business type of Printers Used?
Gman asked:
Im looking to start a photography business and wanted to know if it would be cheaper to send my dgital photos to a lab to get them printed out or buy a professional printer myself to print them out. If buying a printer would be cheaper what brand and model would be the best to use or which printers do the actual labs use to print their pictures?
We want to know what you think!
Im looking to start a photography business and wanted to know if it would be cheaper to send my dgital photos to a lab to get them printed out or buy a professional printer myself to print them out. If buying a printer would be cheaper what brand and model would be the best to use or which printers do the actual labs use to print their pictures?
We want to know what you think!
4 Responses to “Wedding Photography Business type of Printers Used?”
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Not entirely sure about what wedding photographers buy for printers, most of them were sending their work when I had my own photo labs.
I bought a Fujix Pictrography 300 when they were new ($16-18k at the time) and then upgraded to a Fujix 4000 (20k) which would produce larger prints.
the Fujix wrote to a silver halide material by three colored lasers and printed onto photographic stock (not photo-like or photo weight, it was actually photo stock) so the prints were exceptional. This was a few years ago and I haven’t kept up with a lot of the technology lately. But I’d buy another one. (In fact I did, I just have to go pick it up) the ‘new’ printer is a used Fujix 4000 and it was $1,100.
When introduced, this printer was often bought by professional photographers to do their proofing for magazines. Once the prices came down, they started showing up in all sorts of places.. mostly in those photo kiosks. (They’re hidden in those particle board cabinets with the flatbed scanners and memory card slots.. there’s a great printer in there! )
Labs use many different types of printers, but most of them are digital now. (few optical printers being made anymore) The ones that give the best results still seem to be the ones that write with laser.
getting a professional printer is not cheap. the photo lab that I’m currently using, 70% of their business is actually in weddings.
unless you are a proficient printer well versed in photo printing which I gather from your question you are not you will quickly find by the time you buy the equipment materials and invest the time you would have come out money ahead to have a pro lab print your photos. On top of that while you are learning to print you might hurt your rep. Of course I am thinking of c41 ep2 and ra4 while it is true digital printing is far easier shooting and printing is a big chunk to bite off at once think about it twice
Send it out….