Printers - Kodak 8500 vs. Olympus P-400

[dave milbut]

not one of these, but I have the oly p330n (small format ~4x5). there's no comparison to the quality of the dye-sub vs. any ink jet i've seen. the dye sub looks like the pix came out of a photo lab. (note: i'm not a pro, just a hobbyist, and I know some of the pros do great things with printers like the epson 2200 etc., just not me!<g>) the only problem I've heard about the p400 is that it doesn't print a "true" 8x10. it's just shy.

[Cory McNutt]

I talked to a dealer and he said that he was told the new model would have a colored LCD screen...but I NEVER print directly from the CF card anyway so that doesn't bother me...possible a FULL 8X10 since so many complained about it. But it's so tempting at $369. That 8500 is still almost $900, but boy it looks like a great piece of equipment.

Cory

[dave milbut]

i'd say at that price you wouldn't be sorry. wanna buy a p330n for say 250? :)

[Cory McNutt]

Thanks Rags...I appreciate the report. My girl friend likes B&W so occasionally she shoots a role on my older EOS Elan, sends them off and also gets me a disk to play with...that's the only reason I asked. A couple forums I searched on were saying how the colors fade faster than inkjet and that the B&W's were actually "pinkish" cast and turned "purple" with a few days! Kodak says its the same ribbon and paper in their $25,000 mini labs so I couldn't imagine it actually happening. Thanks again!
Cory

[Eric Purkalitis]

I'm itching to get a dye-sub too. I'm looking at the Hi-Touch printer, only does 4x6, but its cheap (so are the prints). The sample they sent me looks great.

Search the forums on dpreview.com. There's lots of talk on the various models, by hobbyists and pros.

Also, Olympus had a model (think it was the P400) that was advertised as printing 8x10, but really didn't. Pissed off some people.

I'd base most of my opinion on consumable price. I know of a telecom office that, during the bubble, used a textronix to print the office e-mail. They paid something like a $6000/month - how frickin stupid. On a dye-sub, doesn't matter if its a dot on the page, it uses a page's worth of each color transfer.

[dave milbut]

On a dye-sub, doesn't matter if its a dot on the page, it uses a page's
worth of each color transfer.




THat's true. Consumables aren't cheap. And you ALWAYS use 1 full picture's worth of ink, no matter how much or little is on the page. For the p330n, you get 60 prints for (manufacturer's price) $60. That's a lot... but shopping around, the best price i've found is 39.99 at micro warehose for the 60 pack. I bought 2 last time. 66 cents each is a lot better than a buck.