Is your husband really deep into photography? If so, scrounge FB marketplace for a working used Canon Pro 100.
I bought one basically brand new in box with 2 sets of ink for around $200. One of the best things I could’ve purchased because seeing your work printed out is so nice in this digital era.
You can print small 4x6s with cheap photo paper or fine art prints up to 13x19.
Buy a used Canon pixma pro 100 or 9000. Yes they use cartridges but you can refill them relatively easily. More inconvenient than a new epson 6 color but Will fit your budget and have just as good if not better quality.
Quality is in the eye of the guy looking at prints. We have a Canon pro 10, pro 100 and pro 1000. We refill all the inks from Precision Colors and the results are (to me) great. I print for the scuba show exhibits and people like them. Red River metallic paper, proper ICC profiles and you should be fine. The pro 100 is a dye printer with rally nice colors but not great longevity in the sun (under glass in room light I have 5 year old prints that look new. The pro 10 I use for matte prints, the Pro 1000 for 16x20 prints.
I print on a Canon Pro 1000 and a Canon Pro 100 on glossy and metallic (red river) papers, never banding. Longevity on the 1000 is better than on the dye ink 100 but if you put them under glass both are good for 5+ years
Looks like that Pro-200 is contrasted wrong.
My Pro-100 is insane looking when printed on 300GSM Glossy Photo Paper. Everytime I grab my prints from the tray my draw drops because of the awesome quality.
I collect the real cards too, I would 100% agree I love my proxies look way more. They POP off the paper , they are insanely clean and the text is so crisp.
I would assume the Pro-200 would produce nicer then my 100. Haha.
I have four printers in my home printing lab.
Epson Sure Color P900 - this is my workhorse printer for black-and-white and some color, depending on the tonal range and the paper.
Canon Pixma Pro 100 - much cheaper ink, but I am less happy with the black-and-white results, though I think it does extremely well with images that are predominantly, red or green.
Epson XP7100 - my day to day home office printer that does extremely high-quality 4 x 6 glossy prints with minimal fuss.
Epson Stylus Pro 3880 - much more expensive to run on Epson inks than the P900, but much more flexible in terms of utilizing third-party in including a wide gamut set of dedicated gray scale ink.
I do my own exhibition printing and have access to a 48 inch wide format Eason roll printer.
I share all of us because this is doable, if you are serious about high-quality printing and want the precise control over what paper and output you achieve, but be prepared for a significant financial investment in ink and paper.
I also have the benefit of being taught digital printing by a highly accomplished photographer who, like me, was a skilled dark printer before moving to digital. He also just happens to have work in multiple famous museums and collections, so his printing skills are indisputable.
But even with that knowledge, sometimes it takes me two or three prints to completely dial in an image.
Top Photo Printers on Reddit
1
Canon
SELPHY CP1500
82% positive of 169 users
Simple, archival dye-sub prints; portability and costs divide users.
17thkahuna
