Printers

Printers are generally grouped according to the technology they use to print. Inkjet printers are the most popular form of photo printers today. Available since 1980s, it was only in the 1990s that prices dropped enough to bring the technology to the high street. Canon claims to have invented what it terms 'bubble jet' technology in 1977, when a researcher accidentally touched an ink-filled syringe with a hot soldering iron. The heat forced a drop of ink out of the needle and so began the development of a new printing method.

The laser printer was introduced by Hewlett-Packard in 1984, based on technology developed by Canon. It works in a similar way to a photocopier, the difference being the light source. With a photocopier a page is scanned with a bright light, while with a laser printer the light source is, not surprisingly, a laser.

Laser printers quickly became popular due to the high quality of their type print, their speed and their relatively low running costs. Laser printers have a number of advantages over the rival inkjet technology. They produce much better quality black text documents than inkjets, and they tend to be designed more for the long haul - that is, they turn out more pages per month at a lower cost per page than inkjets but colour lasers are way behind inkjets in quality and are not useful for anything other than small illustrations on leaflets etc.

But nowadays inkjet printers are also better, faster and cheaper than those of even three or four years ago, with new features being introduced all the time most notably by Canon and Epson. After the Invention of colour printing using inkjets, the inkjet printer has become the dominant printing technology in the market.

For the purpose of taking printouts of photographs Inkjet printers virtually dominate the market. Combined with specialised photography paper they can yield really good results for the photographer and are fast emerging as an alternative to colour labs, especially when used in combination with a digital camera. With the advances in technology you can easily print poster size prints using printers such as the Epson Stylus Photo 2100, the Stylus Pro 4000 and the Stylus Pro 7600. Dye-sublimation and thermal printers produce photo-realistic results are virtually equal to lab prints but the technology is reletively expensive with the more affordable machines being limited to 4' X 6' prints but this is changing and inkjet manufactureres are starting to sit up and take notice.

Back