Large Size Prints Without a Large Price

Some call me “old school” but I’m not a big fan of showing pictures on the tiny screen of my cellphone.

Quite often I print some of my favorite shots onto photo paper. With my Epson ET-3750 Printer I’ve made hundreds of 4″x6″ prints and dozens of larger 8-1/2″x11″ enlargements. In the two years that I’ve had the ET-3750 printer I have never had to change an ink cartridge. The printer’s large EcoTanks are refillable making the cost of the prints very affordable.

Every so often I’ll take a picture that I’d like to show off – meaning print a bigger enlargement. Earlier this year I found out about the Epson ET-8550 EcoTank that handles paper up to 13″x19″ at an affordable $600 price.

Here’s a few short steps for setting up the printer for use.

 

The shipping carton is about 30″ x 20″ x 10″ and weighs about 20 lbs.	The bright blue tape secures the parts during shipment is easily removed.
The printer uses four inks: cyan, magenta, yellow and black. The shipment includes a second bottle of black ink.	Each ink bottle fills the respective reservoir. The bottles are “coded” to prevent inadvertent filling mistakes.
You can visually view the level of each ink reservoir. The ink supply will yield about 2400 4″x6″ prints for about 4 cents each.	The bottom tray holds smaller paper (e.g. 4″x6″) and larger (8-1/2″x11″). The rear paper feeder holds larger paper up to 13″x19″.
Here is a completed 13″x19″ print. You can see the rear paper feeder.	You can compare the print size next to the 12″ ruler. This print was on standard ink print paper.

As you can see I’ve been able to make a bunch of big enlargements – at a reasonable price.

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The ET-8550 has other features other than its large print capability.

Wireless connection to your Mac or Windows PC
Two-sided printing
High resolution document scanning and copying up to 8-1/2″ x 14″
Handles variety of papers including glossy, matte, texture, cardstock

For those of you who like to print big – this is an affordable and capable printer.

 
 

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I quickly get tired of using my computer monitor to show others a photo or two. Of course one way to “fix” this is to make prints of these pictures. But this brings up another problem – making a bunch of prints quickly drains my ink cartridges and puts a dent in my wallet too.

A few weeks ago, I saw an advertisement for a printer that uses large, refillable ink tanks. My only hesitation was about the quality of the prints from a relatively inexpensive printer. With a money-back guarantee, I decided to go for it.

Sitting on my computer’s desktop is a folder labeled “To Be Printed”. As I take snapshots or find an interesting image, I drop it into this folder. By the time the printer arrived, I had accumulated close to a hundred images.

Here’s my experience with the Epson Ecotank 2720

	The printer itself is quite compact but capable of printing onto 8-1/2″ x 11″ media. I purchased the printer primarily to make smaller prints. Here’s my stack of 4″ x 6″ glossy photo paper.
These are the first couple of prints that I made. Note the initial ink levels on the front of the printer.	During my first session with the new printer, I made about thirty 4″ x 6″ prints.
I found the print quality to be very good for both color and black and white images.	After printing my stack of 100 of so images, the ink levels dropped only slightly.
Epson claims that out of the box the printer includes enough ink for about two years of “normal” printing. My guess is that the ink will not last that long for the type of printing that I intend to do. Refills cost about $50 per set. To date, I’m happy with this printer which set me back $200. Compared to other ink jet printers this is more costly, but factoring in the significantly lower cost of ink and the sparing me the inconvenience of having to run to the office supply store to get a replacement cartridge, I feel that this was a good purchase. The printer is “attached” to my computer via wi-fi so there are no cables to worry about. It also doubles as a copier and has a built-in scanner too.	The printer ink is delivered in four containers – cyan, magenta, yellow and black with an additional black container.

Epson claims that they provide enough ink

I’ve taken an awful lot of photos over the years – some were for professional purposes, some as obligatory family responsibilities (wedding, birthdays, etc.) and some (many, many, many) for my own pleasure.   In this last category are a group that I consider fun photos. I’ve put a large number of them into my snapshot gallery.   I’m happy to share them with you so please click here and I’ll take you to see them.