Home Forums Gear Photography Printing your own?

Anybody that print's their own ever tried printing on canvas? I was at my brother's last weekend and his son was printing some enlargement's on canvas. He put them on a frame and made gallery wraps, they were super. He's got an Epson 7890 24" printer.Come to think of it, come to think of it, 1Minute was looking for a larger printer a month or so ago. My nephew will be selling his to get an even bigger one. If your interested let me know and I'll find out when and how much.

Anyway I got home and tried doing a couple on some really old canvas 8 1/2x11. If I could fold the corner's I could hang them the way they are. Couldn't so put a thin frame around one. This stuff is great! The nephew, Christopher, has a spray to spray on them and no glass is necessary, Frame it's on is smaller than the print so when folded over the frame, the frame is actually part of the photo. Going back over in April for mom's birthday, she'll be 90! Gonna have him make a few 20x24's for me of my dog's. This should be great.

That old canvas I used here I got at an office supply house. Not Staple's or Office Max. Maybee it was Office Max? One last thing, if any of you use the Canon 9000MKII printer, it doesn't tell you but you can actually print up to 14x26 by using the front feed. Front feed in a pain in the butt to figure out but I finally got it and it's not that bad. Anybody want's direction's for it let me know. Only way you can find out about it otherwise is to call Canon.

DonF:

I was toying with the purchase of a Canon printer, but Cookie did not want to spend the $$$ given that we're not in the business. It looked to be a fine printer, with several more shades of ink on board compared to the typical models. From memory I think it could go to something like 17 inches as well.

Reviews, suggested there was a bit of a learning/color tuning curve as well with a need to have ones display and printing colors synchronized. Another gripe was that a lot of ink was needed just to initially charge the system. Pro type folks seemed happy with the units, but hobby people were a bit challenged.

Don't recall the model but it was about $1K.

Presently Cookie does her prints via Costco's online system. There's a slight learning curve there with their site, and download times for *.tif files can be a bit slow from DSL connections. Before or after hours, however, we can use our office system and files go quickly. To date, she's been happy with all of their canvas work.

Got to rush off at the moment to cover for an ill hunter ed instructor this evening or I'd look up some more specifics.

Keep us up on your doings,

I printed this image, and a few others, on canvas.

Epson is the standard for photo printing (sorry canon)

If you cruse craigslist you can find large pro grade printers dirt cheap.
a quick look on zoomthelist will find you some.

I regularly see Epson 4800 (24 inch wide pro photo printers) 3800's, and even the large 7400 printers like new and a couple of years old for 10% of new.

Why? because a people buy these and use them to make good looking prints and banners. Then the ink runs out and the find it costs about $1200 to buy the 8+ commercial size ink cartridges. surprise.

On the larger ones (7800 up) these are commercial printers and built to be run. if you only print once a week or worse once a month the heads clog and you use a lot of ink to clear them. Churches seem to have these for sale a lot.

If you are serious you need a good monitor, and some kind of color calibration tool so that what you see on screen and what you print are close to the same thing.

If you are not going to print a LOT then hire it done. Most pro photographers do.
It is a lot of time, money and equipment tied up when you can just email your files and get prints in a couple of days.

I have been doing very well printing my photos with a Canon Pixma Pro9000 Mark II.

Hey Ray I got the same printer and love it. Just found out how to do the front feed, you can print 14 to 26 according to Canon using the front feed. I've had several Epson's, my first was an R300, that was a good printer but gave up the ghost because of a nickle paper roller. I tried three more after that and had no luck at all. Went to HP, had an 8 1/2 wide and a 13 wide that would print to 44", there's a couple Epson's that do also. But after my bad time's with Epson, I went to Canon, the Pro 9000 MKII, it's been great is an understatement. I also have a Canon iP100 that goes pretty much every where with me, make's great photo's ton 8 1/2x11. My nephew has an Epson 7890, 24" printer and it's been great for him. The cost of ink isn't so much outragious as it is you have to buy it in very big tanks. The replacement tank's cost him $150 each but, I'd bet the actual cost of ink is not much more that ink for the Pro 9000 MKII, just under a penny per sq inch. The big difference is you buy the smaller tank's for the smaller printer's but you buy them more often. I'm sure the cost would floor me when a 24" ran out of ink. I could not afford to run one problem being, I wouldn't think to set back x# $ after every print.

Yes, I have been very pleased with this printer. It's supposed to print on canvas, but I haven't tried that material so far. I will have to check at the Canon website to see what type of canvas they suggest.

It will tell you to front feed with canvas. Let me know if you do and don't know how to work the front feed. I have the direction's wrote down. Pain in the butt figuring it out but works well, I tried some 13x19 paper in it.

Thanks, Don.