Hello, I am considering buying this printer. I am an ocassional shooter. I send my rolls to Kodak for transfer to a Kodak Photo CD. Does anyone have any experience with this printer? Thanks in advance!

-- John Abela (jamriman@yahoo.com), June 06, 2002

Answers

BTW, thanks to all who helped me solve my M7 blinking light problem!

-- John Abela (jamriman@yahoo.com), June 06, 2002.

Personally I would pass on this printer. The major benefit of dye- sub printing, compared to inkjet has been print longevity, but with the new Epson materials this is of little consequence now (IMO). The downsides are three fold. Though it uses 8X10 in paper, the maximum print size is about 7.25X9 inches, leaving a large border that will leave a large sliver of white in most commercial 8X10 frames. The second thing is that, much like Henry Fords Model T you can have any print surface as long as it is semigloss. Olympus only makes one paper for this printer (whereas there must be hundreds for the Epson) and if you want a matte surface (for example) you'll have to spray the print or have it laminated. Thirdly is price. It is nearly twice the price of an Epson 1280 which will do prints to 13X19 inches.

-- Bob Todrick (bobtodrick@yahoo.com), June 06, 2002.

Bob

Interesting but I suspect John wants to know what is the quality of the prints. Is it better than an Epson 890/1290 for example?

-- Robin Smith (smith_robin@hotmail.com), June 06, 2002.

I'd say overall print quality is about equal. Look at it this way. I sell to pros and serious amateurs in my department. Last year I sold 18 Epson 1280's and 6 Epson 2000's. Against 4 Olympus P400. Two of the photographers who bought the Olympus traded them in within a couple of months on Epson printers.

-- Bob Todrick (bobtodrick@yahoo.com), June 06, 2002.

John, I have this printer. IMO it's great. I will make a print and mail it to you if you'll send me your favourite color corrected 314dpi 30MB TIF scan on CD. Contact me offlist for details. For my purposes, the limiting factor is in my scanner, not the printer. The print size is approx 7.6" x 10.1" on A4 paper (unless the specs are different for US models). In my town, the cost of consumables per picture is the same as a minilab 8x10 print. I've based machine amortization on 300 prints (price divided by cost of minilab print) so (for me) the total cost per print is twice the minilab print cost. YMMV.

Another benefit of the Oly P400 is that it also prints direct from both Type II PC card and Oly Smartmedia. Note that the cool built in functions like digital album prints with wallpaper, index prints, 9 on a sheet, and sepia etc are not available when the printer is hooked directly to a computer. It then works like a PC printer and you'd need image editing software to get the fun effects. The manufacturer's 90 second printing speed is a little optimistic. The paper is run in and out of the printer four times (three layers of color and the final protective cover).

Some links you might useful:
http://www.steves-digicams.com/
http://www.olympusamerica.com/cpg_section/cpg_product.asp?p=19&bc=23&product=632

-- Fred Sun (redsky3@yahoo.com), June 06, 2002.

John, I have an Epson 2000P and an Olympus P400 both sitting side-by-side on my desk top. I chose to print YOUR Kodak scanned image that I recently bought from you on the P400 ( if that tells you anything) . And the image area isn't 7.25 X 9 as posted elsewhere here. It will print a correctly cropped image to 7.7" X 10 " which fits every 8 X 10 mat I've ever used. Not to mention that the Kodak Photo CD scans you use will only go up about that big before starting to deteriorate. For color it is excellent, especially skin tones. It does not suffer from the green-cast light shifting problems of an ink jet. Nor does it show different levels of sheen where the ink jet does, (due to ink bulid up being greater in some areas of a print on semi gloss). But the P400 is much harder to make neutral B&Ws, and less desirable for B&W due to the glossy laminate. It's way faster than the 2000P and you can spool in a number of different images and walk away while it prints them. Something you can't do with the sheet fed Ink jet. There are a couple of things on the horizon: a full 8X10 image area and different laminates like a matt finish. Again, for the Kodak CDs you use, the P400 is a fine color printer. the vivid prints remind me of transpariencies. Including the excellent image I got from you. Good Luck...

-- Marc Williams (mwilliams111313MI@comcast.net), June 06, 2002.