Which Printer

[duncan22]

I Guess this is a wide open question but if you were purchasing a New A4 printer for photographs what would you get ? If possible I would like to avoid chipped cartridges. It it true that the greater number of colour cartridges the better the print ?

 

[ghwellsjr]

If you want a new Canon printer, it will have chipped cartridges. I assume you want to refill the cartridges yourself. I would go with a used iP4000. They are still available on eBay.

The four dye ink cartridges in the iP4000 will print very good photos. If you decide to go with a "photo" printer that has six or eight cartridges, you will be refilling a lot more often because the so-called "photo" inks are diluted versions of the standard inks and the printer gives preference to them. Since it takes many times more squirts of "photo" ink to produce the same intensity as standard ink, the photo cyan and photo magenta cartridges run out of ink many more times than the standard ones. The red and green inks in an eight cartridge printer are rarely used and not at all with some paper types so you won't be refilling them very often at all.

In my opinion, the only reason to go with a six or eight cartridge printer is because you want to print on paper larger than A4. The i9100 uses six cartridges and the i9900 uses eight cartridges but they are both hard to come by. However, in a side by side comparison, the prints from these two printer do look slightly better than from a printer like the iP4000.

 

[duncan22]

Thanks for your response, as you say there are a few on e-bay but it could be dodgy buying a second hand printer without seeing a sample print. Some of the descriptions include "not been used for a long time" or "printer belongs to my parents and was working ok" so by the time you add new cartridges plus p&P you are half way to a new printer. You could ask for a copy of a current print but sadly not everyone is honest so you couldn't be sure when the print was done.
Please don't think I am trying to be critical of your response, I asked a question and you answered it but I was thinking more along the lines of printers that are currently available & in use by members of this forum.

Thanks