On Mon, Jul 04, 2005 at 06:34:41PM +0100, Wayne Stallwood wrote:
For light 6"x4" photo work I tend to use a small and inexpensive Dye-Sub printer. These I find produce better and more consistent results than an Inkjet. However Dye-Sub technology gets expensive once you scale up to A4 size (in terms of equipment and running costs). I also prefer the fixed costs of running a Dye-Sub (paper and "ink" is in a refill pack and the same amount of ink roll is used regardless of content)
How much is inexpensive? I paid 14p per print for 6x4" stuff. Also how much was that printer to purchase in the first place?
But that said, no matter what I do with my little Pentax Optio S digital camera I can't get anything like the photos I get when I use my Canon SLR....I guess it's an unfair test as really even a low end SLR should be compared to a prosumer Digital body but in terms of price the Pentax and the Canon cost about the same.
I'd wager that was down to the lens in the Pentax compared to whichever lens you are using on the digi-slr. The lens in my old powershot A40 seems very good, but the camera is "only" 2 megapixel compared to my digi-slrs 6 megapixel. The powershot can still produce pictures as good as the digi-slr as it has a fantastic lens, but of course isn't as flexible so you quite often find the camera is the limitation rather than your imagination.
Trouble with lots of consumer cameras is that many people get freaked out and think "more megapixel good" "less megapixels bad" when buying a camera which means bugger all if the lens in the 20 megapixel camera is the bottom of a milk bottle compared to the decent lens in the 2 megapixel camera. Of course you just can't enlarge a 2 megapixel print as much as a 6 megapixel print.
Oh, and the 100-300mm zoom lens that I have in Eos fit *really* sucks, 80% of pictures taken with it are crap, well to be honest 99% of them are as it manages to make everything look awful, just I got lucky a few times. I sometimes wish I had bought a compact digicam with a much bigger focal range rather than the digi-slr...
Adam