Keeping a Printer alive

I have been working on some photos from our cruise from LA to the Mexican Rivera. Its been both fun and exasperating. My epson 2200 is a great printer.. but.. it takes 8 cartridges and there is always one that seems to be going out.

The benifits of a very large format printer is that it makes more than usual sized prints. 13 inch by 19 inch are really "hang them on the wall" kind of prints. Dad as the lowest end of the size. He loves it because there are only two cartridges and they all seem to hold more ink. He gives up some of the delicate colors..but to him it really doesn't matter. There are some very nice photos that he has made with his printer. The real key is the eye of the photographer and the printer is mostly secondary. For most family portraits, the larger size is really not appropriate. It takes a lot of wall space to be firing big stuff to be hung. There are a few nice photos that should qualify for the "hang them on your wall" category. I think the corn lady is one of them. I like the photos of the PV cathedral and the carnival ship coming in.

Sometimes this photography stuff has to be looked upon similar to fly fishing. If you fish to eat, you are joking yourself about the relative cost. It would be a whole lot cheaper to buy your fish in the grocery store than to buy all the equipment needed to catch fish. Photogaphy is the same thing. To think that you can do it on the cheap.. you have got to be kidding yourself. Digital photography has accomplished a major milestone. We are pinned to our computers to do the dark room stuff rather than in a poorly heated isolated place than has to have running water and a drain. Many of my friends don't even print their photos anymore. Costco and Walgreens are their photo lab. That is okay as long as they can keep the subject in the frame. Some of my small photos they have chopped the back end off the ship as it was heading into harbor. Something that I would not accept if I was doing my own printing.

The 2200 has expensive cartridges.. and the newer one looks like they are going to charge even more for their cartridges. The new one has even a cartridge for orange. I neededa new cartridge for the light magenta color. Staples is the only place in town that carries this cartrige. The going rate is 18 dollars for each color. Their are 8 colors.. I have won some bids on Ebay for complete sets. I will be waiting for them to arrive in case another color goes down.

Hope you had a great weekend.

Love
Pat