[TDvN57]

With Canon, the ink gets significantly cheaper for the 24" and larger printers, advantage given to professionals and semi-professionals. No sure about what the pricing is with Epson? I was close to buy a Pro 4000 because those beasts cost no more than a high-end digital camera and I found it doesn't make sense to have a high end camera and no means of printing to use the imaging potential of the camera. I decided to go with a few labs instead of getting the printer, because with lab I don't need to store print media and pay for the maintenance costs, but I don't get some of the print media I'd like to have, and hard proofing with distant labs is a very slow process and adds to costs. It's interesting how much marketing goes into selling cameras and how little marketing is done for printers. The printer section at DPReview is almost dead, however reviews for new camera models and smartphones are like constant rain downpour.

I've been lucky so far, the Epsons have been very reliable and I did not have to do any call-out maintenance yet. But I follow their recommendations and the Epson tech that helped to install/setup the first one told me to never shut down the printer. You put it in auto sleep with a periodic wake-up and auto clean (settings adjustable).

Only once did I have a few clogged nozzles after a period of abt 3 months of no use, touch wood so far :-) Between the P7000 and P9000 I must have done close to a 1,000 prints in the past three+ years. Clearing a clogged nozzle is quite easy and is a simple auto cleaning routine with a test print afterwards.

For ink prices you can check B&H. For the P7000 and P9000 (use the same cartridges) you can buy different size ink cartridges. I bought the 700ml which works out to be just over USD 1,000 for a full set. Thereafter it is less, because you only buy the colours you use most. Unfortunately here in HK we are under distributor restrictions and we pay about double the B&H prices.

The printer comes with a set of small ink cartridges, but you use those to prime the heads. After the priming there is very little ink left. I managed to do a deal with the supplier to include the initial startup set of ink plus a full set of 700ml ink. I still have some spare cartridges.

Gosh sounds as if I am running a marketing campaign for Epson!!

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Farming out the printing to a print house does make sense if you can get someone that you can work with, willing to do test prints and make adjustments until you are happy with the results.

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[DamienW]

Gosh sounds as if I am running a marketing campaign for Epson!!

Well...they do seem to be a good option.

I was looking at the ink costs on some of the lesser models earlier today, and it surprised me how cheap the bottled ink was. I had an upper-end consumer Canon about 20 years back, and the ink was crazy expensive for it.

[biz-engineer]

I was looking at the ink costs on some of the lesser models earlier today, and it surprised me how cheap the bottled ink was. I had an upper-end consumer Canon about 20 years back, and the ink was crazy expensive for it.

Ink cartridges have an electronic chip (likely a small memory with a unique serial number) that stores the amount of usage, it prevents refilling with non OEM bottled inks. There are workarounds such as replacing the chips (also sold by non-OEM ink company), but it's a mess to go that route. The printers are sold at reduced profit margin, the profits are made from selling ink tanks at gold prices. Unit cost of inkjet photo print tech generally is twice as much as silver print tech. But inkjet is plug & play, doesn't require much skills, anyone can buy an large format inkjet printer for $2000 to $8000, power it up and basically have a large format photo print lab at home ready to go. Such low entry cost and ease of use is unthinkable with chromogenic machines which cost > $100 000 just to start.

[DamienW]

Such low entry cost and ease of use is unthinkable with chromogenic machines which cost > $100 000 just to start.

Yeah...I might need a few more overtime shifts to get one of those.

[MFullana]

I have a 44 wide Canon Printer and I am often printing for clients and for my self. I print large canvas prints for our home and change them out frequently..