[dalcwby]

New here, just downloaded the trial of DSLR Remote Pro to run a photobooth at a friends wedding and so far its a great program. I'm wondering if anyone has a recommendation for an inexpensive, compact photo printer to print the strips of pictures taken in the photobooth?

Right now I'm looking at the Epson Picturemate Charm which seems to get pretty good reviews. My concern is that it is a dye printer so I'm not really sure how many prints to expect out of a cartridge? I don't want to be managing this thing all night loading cartridges, more like set it and forget it (I ran one at my own wedding last year and didn't offer printing so it just ran by itself all night without management). Should I be looking at cheaper, larger Inkjet printers instead? I've already got a Canon iP4700 but that thing sucks up ink pretty quick.

For those of you who ran photobooths infrequently at first, what printers did you find worked the best? Any thoughts are welcome. Thanks.

[alexsiskahn]

the epson holds 20 sheets of paper you will be refilling it every half an hour.
At $150 for the printer and $150 for three sets of ink and paper you are up to $300

your cannon probably holds 40 sheets of paper and ink, so that will be refilling it every 1 hour.
you can double that capacity by printer pooling two of them together.

pretty much all inkjets are the same they require baby sitting.
Plus they are slow as a turtle going up hill.
and if you dont' use manufacture recommended ink and paper the strips will fade in a few years.

HP office jet pro 8500 will hold about 100 sheets of 4x6 and has large capacity ink tanks.
It costs as much as a dye sub new, but you can get them cheap off ebay.
You are better off spending $500 and getting a used dye sub printer

dont' be penny wise and pound foolish.

[apples]

Get a professional to do the booth - give it to your friends as a present - than you have NO worries . . . . . . share the cost with some other guests, you will probably save money.

We did a wedding paid for by 10 guests a few months ago - ended up doing 420 prints in 3hrs 20mins - minimal cost each!

[dalcwby]

Good advice on the Epson printer, for the cost and total prints it doesn't sound worth it.

Hard to justify that adding a printer to the same setup I ran previously would cost me more than hiring a professional photobooth company. Worst case I would use my Canon inkjet and keep a stack of paper next the printer. If the paper is low, guests can put more in.

I think now the best solution may be to use my existing printer, set it to fast print to save ink and time and check the ink level after an hour or so to see how its doing. These photos don't need to be gallery quality prints that last 25 years, most likely they will be discarded after some time anyway. All the photos will be saved digitally for reprint if a real nice photo is captured.

[alexsiskahn]

there isn't a nice way to put this.
you have no clue how much trouble those assumptions will get you into.
seriouly do a practice run first, guests putting paper in and being able to reset the dump canon print monitor utility? seriously? obviously you've never done this before.

Fast quality? yeah streaky prints?!?

I thought apples suggestion was dumb, but maybe not.......

If I'm a jerk for saying this, hope you don't take it that way, but more as a call to action:)

[CheekyPix]

How about a Canon SELPHY.

Media cost isnt too bad. Prints in around a minute. Easy to load. Reasonable quality. And you can sell it on eBay once you are done with it.

Certainly a better option than an inkjet.

[alexsiskahn]

selphy's only do about 20 prints before needed to be reloaded and are slow.
Better to just get two cheap inkjets and use the operating system sofgtware to printer pool them together so they print simultaneously, though that makes it more complicated to set up.

[chrisell]

Buying or renting an appropriate dye sub printer - at the least, something like a Sony CX-1 - is the most important and essential part of the project. For everything else you can find an alternative, but the right printer is essential.

[dalcwby]

Just to follow up on this - the wedding was this weekend and everything worked great. I understand the concerns raised in the previous posts and if this were something I planned on running a business on they may prove valid. For the application it was used in, the Canon printer worked flawlessly.

The canon print monitor utility is turned off with a click of the button, setting the quality to fast resulted in no streaking whatsoever and the since the prints were each so small the quality didn't suffer. For anyone considering using this software that may read this, I definitely recommend it and I would hesitate to use it at another friends wedding in the exact same way.

alexsiskahn - I appreciate you taking the time to respond in this thread but things like "obviously you've never done this before" and calling another user's ideas dumb do come off jerkish. If this is your business I hope you deal with prospective clients ideas with a better attitude than you do members on this forum.

[Chris Breeze]

Just to follow up on this - the wedding was this weekend and everything worked great. I understand the concerns raised in the previous posts and if this were something I planned on running a business on they may prove valid. For the application it was used in, the Canon printer worked flawlessly.

The canon print monitor utility is turned off with a click of the button, setting the quality to fast resulted in no streaking whatsoever and the since the prints were each so small the quality didn't suffer. For anyone considering using this software that may read this, I definitely recommend it and I would hesitate to use it at another friends wedding in the exact same way.

alexsiskahn - I appreciate you taking the time to respond in this thread but things like "obviously you've never done this before" and calling another user's ideas dumb do come off jerkish. If this is your business I hope you deal with prospective clients ideas with a better attitude than you do members on this forum.

I'm glad to hear your event went well. Just for the record alexsiskahn has no connection whatsoever with Breeze Systems. He is just a member of the forum like many of our customers. I'm not responsible for forum members' views or how they express them, but I can moderate the forum if necessary.

Chris Breeze
Owner of Breeze Systems

[alexsiskahn]

Canon printer worked flawlessly....setting the quality to fast resulted in no streaking whatsoever and the since the prints were each so small the quality didn't suffer. .

alexsiskahn - I appreciate you taking the time to respond in this thread but things like "obviously you've never done this before" and calling another user's ideas dumb do come off jerkish. If this is your business I hope you deal with prospective clients ideas with a better attitude than you do members on this forum.


Setting any inkjet printer to FAST quality will give you prints that don't look that good. Saying the quality did not suffer is totally wrong. Maybe the quality was good enough for you, but it definitely suffered. Anyone can make two prints side by side with the qualtity changed and see the difference.

As far as me coming across jerky, I think I already said that I know I was. I'm glad you got motivated to test the gear before the event and take my advice. Too many people don't figure it out till it is too late.