Farewell, Photo Lab?
We examine the positives of no negatives--four of the latest portable photo printers that transform digital images into glossy works of art.by Lisa Cekan
With digital cameras getting better and cheaper, people are naturally using them to record more of their memories. But while digital photos have their advantages, until recently you couldn't readily give a friend or relative a print to stick into the family album. Instead, you had to download the photos to your PC and then either use an online printing service or print them with an ink jet printer, all of which took time.
Today you have another option: You can use one of the new breed of portable "snapshot" printers that produce prints quickly and simply. Most of them can read directly from the SmartMedia or CompactFlash memory cards that your digital cameras use, so you don't need a PC. And some can even crop and enhance pictures without a PC. But they do have limitations: None of the printers we tested can produce normal prints larger than 4 by 6 inches (although two can do panoramic shots), and we also discovered that image quality sometimes fell short of what you could expect to get from a good ink jet printer. Nonetheless, these printers provide a quick and easy way to make prints of digital photos.
We looked at four small snapshot printers from Acer, Canon, Polaroid, and Sony; the units' prices range from $99 to $449. The quality of their prints varies nearly as widely as their prices, and there is no correlation between the two. The $299 and $249 printers produced the most- and least-pleasing prints, respectively. Three of the four printers use dye-sublimation, a process that produces high-quality prints that should be more durable and better looking than the output most ink jets deliver. The fourth printer, from Polaroid, uses that company's Type 500 instant film pack.
To test each device, we printed digital photographs of a range of subjects and asked our panel to rate the quality of each print. For comparison, we also printed our test photos on a high-end ink jet unit, HP's $499 PhotoSmart 1218--one of the few ink jets that have ports for CompactFlash and SmartMedia cards, and one of the best we've tested for printing photos.
In many cases, we thought the PhotoSmart 1218 printed better-looking photos than our four snapshot printers; its colors especially were sometimes richer and more vivid. Still, ink jets continue to have problems with fading prints (see " Lost in the Ozone: Epson Photos Fade"). Independent research by Wilhelm Research has shown that while prints from every type of printer fade eventually, dye-sublimation prints remain vivid much longer than prints from ink jet printers. Plus, the printers we looked at cost less than the PhotoSmart.
Of the portable printers we review here, Sony's DPP-SV55 provides the best combination of print quality and low price, and it earns our Best Buy award. Though the Canon Digital Printer CD-300 produced prints that were very nearly as good, it costs $449--$150 more than the Sony and nearly as much as a good desktop photo printer.
How It Works
The printing process that dye-sublimation printers use differs from that of ink jets: Instead of spraying jets of ink onto a page as ink jet printers do, dye-sublimation printers apply a dye from a dry ribbon. Heat diffuses the dye onto specially treated paper. These printers use a three-pass system, layering cyan, magenta, and yellow dyes on top of one another; they then add a clear coat to protect the print against ultraviolet light. Done properly, this technique creates a smooth picture free of the dithering you see on ink jet prints (see " Dyes Don't Dither").
Dye-sublimation has one major shortcoming--production cost. Prints from the models we tested were between 80 and 90 cents each, compared with about 30 cents per print to develop standard film. But because you're printing digital shots, you can choose only the photos you want. Printers based on dye-sublimation technology are also expensive to manufacture, and the cost increases as the printing area gets bigger. All the dye-sublimation printers we reviewed are limited to 4-by-6-inch or smaller prints. If you move up to a dye-sublimation printer that can produce an 8 by 10, the price rises to the vicinity of $1000. But full-size units deliver stunning results, to judge from prints we created with Olympus's Camedia P-400 (see " No-Squint Printers").
DPOF Demystified
All the printers examined in this roundup--except the Acer--can print directly from digital camera memory cards and support Digital Print Order Format, which lets you select the pictures you want to print, quickly and directly. With DPOF, you preview the images and mark those you want to print before taking the media out of the camera. Then you put the memory card in the printer, and it picks the tagged shots and turns them into prints. Some small dye-sublimation printers let you use a TV screen to view and select shots to print. But if a TV set is not at hand and you're bypassing the computer, DPOF is the one remaining workable solution. The only other alternatives are impractical: to print everything in your camera or to try and remember which photos are which by number.
Lisa Cekan is a staff editor at PC World who regularly covers printers.
Photo printers: Features comparison (chart)
| Photo printer | Street price (2/5/01) | Print speed1 (minutes:seconds) | Print quality | Maximum print area (inches) | Cost per print2 | Storage media supported | Computer interface | Comments |
| Acer FotoPrisa 300P 888/723-2238 www.acercm.com | $99 | 2:11 | Good | 4.0 by 5.0 | 80 cents | None | Parallel | The least-expensive dye-sublimation printer we tested, the FotoPrisa lacks ports for memory cards, limiting it to printing from a PC. Photos looked smooth and sharp, though slightly orange, and the printer's price can't be beat. |
| Canon Digital Printer CD-300 800/652-2666 www.powershot.com | $449 | 3:14 | Very good | 3.9 by 9.8 | 83 cents | PC Card,3 CompactFlash | Parallel | The versatile CD-300 can connect to a TV, a PC, a camera, or a memory card. Its many features include a standard tray for panorama paper. The biggest drawback is price--the small unit costs almost as much as a standard-size photo printer. |
| Polaroid P-500 781/386-2000 instantphoto.polaroid.com | $249 | 0:32 | Satisfactory | 2.2 by 2.9 | 90 cents | CompactFlash, SmartMedia | None | The only true portable printer in the bunch, the P-500 includes a shoulder strap for easy transport. It prints photos on Polaroid film, but these small pictures don't capture detail well. |
| Best Buy Sony DPP-SV55 800/222-7669 www.sony.com | $299 | 1:46 | Very good | 4.0 by 6.0 | 80 cents | PC Card,3 Sony Memory Stick | USB | The Sony provides just as many ways to connect as the feature-rich Canon, for $150 less. It offers an optional panorama tray, and we loved the crisp, vivid print quality. |
Photo Printer Reviews
Acer FotoPrisa 300P
At just $99, the Acer FotoPrisa is the least-expensive snapshot printer we reviewed. With a sleek, black case, a weight of 7.1 pounds, and a small footprint, the FotoPrisa looks easy to tote around, but you won't want to: It prints photos only from a PC. The FotoPrisa attaches to a computer via the parallel port; it has no slots for digital camera media. Printing from a PC is not as quick and easy as printing from a memory card--a big limitation. But a second port to the back of the FotoPrisa's case simplifies the task of adding the unit to a standard peripheral--just plug your regular printer into the back of the FotoPrisa.
We had no trouble setting the Acer unit up, and its simple controls consist of ready and status lights. Within a few minutes, we were printing our first photo from a PC. The printer comes with Ulead's Photo Express image-editing software for touching up photos, creating an album, and making birthday cards and invitations from templates.
Printing a 4-by-5-inch photo with the FotoPrisa took a little more than 2 minutes, longer than with some other printers we tested, but acceptable. Photo quality was good, too: At its fixed resolution of 300 by 600 dpi, the FotoPrisa's prints showed fine detail and smooth transitions, but colors looked a bit too orange. Of the four printers reviewed here, only the Sony produces larger prints--4 by 6 inches--than the Acer's maximum 4 by 5 inches.
Bottom line: If you store photos on your PC anyway, you may not need the versatility of a dye-sublimation printer. The FotoPrisa's price is certainly right.
Canon Digital Printer CD-300
The Canon CD-300 can print images in several ways. It can connect to your PC via the parallel port, and it can pull images directly from a PC Card or from a CompactFlash card (SmartMedia requires an optional $35 adapter). On top of that, it's the only unit we tested that's able to print directly from a video camera, through the printer's video or S-Video port. The CD-300 is bundled with Canon's own Home Lab software for touching up photos and turning them into calendars or birthday cards; you can also edit images in the printer and preview the results on a TV without using a PC.
The CD-300 produced the second-best photo quality of the group, with beautiful colors, smooth transitions, subtle shading, and detail nearly as sharp as the Sony's. You can print 4-by-10-inch panoramic prints, and Canon includes paper and a cassette tray for panoramic pictures. You'll have to wait a while for your photos, however; the CD-300 took just over 3 minutes per 4-by-6-inch photo.
The Canon's heady assortment of features comes at a price: The $449 CD-300 is the most expensive printer in this group, just $50 short of an ink jet such as the HP PhotoSmart 1218 that produces photo-quality output. It's also one of the heaviest (at 5.9 pounds), and it can't operate off batteries.
Polaroid P-500
For true portability, the $249 Polaroid P-500 wins hands down. It measures just 2.2 by 7.3 by 2.4 inches, weighs about a pound, uses standard Polaroid Type 500 film, and includes a strap so you can toss it over your shoulder. The Polaroid prints from CompactFlash cards, and from SmartMedia cards with an included adapter; it doesn't work with a PC or a television.
Printing could not be easier--just load the film pack and go. The battery that powers the printer resides in the film pack. If the battery runs out, you can't use the rest of the prints in the pack, but fortunately, the printer shuts down automatically after a few seconds of inactivity. The P-500 creates the smallest prints of the group, at just under 2 by 3 inches. Moreover, at $8.99 per pack, Polaroid's film isn't cheap. Each shot costs about 90 cents--the most expensive here.
The P-500's biggest liability, however, is its print quality. The Polaroid's small prints look somewhat fuzzy and lack the three-dimensionality of the other snapshot printers. In our speed tests, prints popped out in just 32 seconds, but as with Polaroid instant cameras, you have to wait 90 seconds more for the photo to develop.
The P-500's portability makes this printer a fun device to add to your digital camera. Still, it is rather limited, and the price is a bit steep for what you get.
Sony DPP-SV55
Sony's $299 dye-sublimation printer appeals to our sense of nostalgia, with a brushed metal look and a wide, flat case that resembles a 1970s tape recorder. Like the Canon, the SV55 is versatile and has a lot of extra features. It connects via USB to a PC and includes slots for printing straight from a Sony Memory Stick or from a PC Card, though you'll need optional adapters to use SmartMedia or CompactFlash cards, which typically cost about $35 and $20, respectively.
Printing directly from a card is easy. You can use DPOF to mark the images in the camera or connect the printer to a TV. From there you simply preview photos and choose the one you want to print; you can also use the buttons on the SV55's control panel to zoom, crop, change contrast, and rotate images. In addition, the SV55 can create calendars and cards with messages on them using creative print functions built into the printer. At 4.6 pounds, the SV55 isn't terribly heavy to carry, but it can't run off batteries.
Printing at 403-by-403-dpi resolution, the SV55 produced the best prints of the four units we tested (though the Canon CD-300 wasn't far behind), with realistic colors and fine detail. The Sony's speed was reasonably good--under 2 minutes for a 4-by-6-inch print--and the paper that comes with it has perforated edges just inside the print area for edge-to-edge printing. And with a price $150 lower than the Canon's, the Sony is a better deal.
Photo Prints Compared
Dyes Don't Dither
Dye-sublimation printers work by mixing dyes, a process that creates solid colors and smooth transitions between colors. With ink jet printers, you'll typically see the individual dots of different colors that the printer uses to create transitions between colors, a technique called dithering. In the output samples above, you can see the dither pattern in the ink jet print; in contrast, the dye-sublimation print looks smoother.
No-Squint Printers
In addition to these four portable printers, two dye-sublimation printers from Olympus are worth mentioning. The Camedia P-400, a full-size dye-sublimation printer, has a hefty price tag--$999--but produces near-letter-size 7.64-by-10-inch prints with rich colors and fantastic detail (see our review). Olympus also makes a $449 snapshot printer, the Camedia P-200 (see our review).