Rangefinder Magazine
July 2006

Output Options by Ron Eggers
Mini Printers Can Come in Handy (Even for Professionals)

Canon Selphy CP710

At one time, most commercial photographers and many other types of professional photographers used Polaroids to check their lighting and composition. Even some photographers shooting with 35mm gear bought special backs so that they could pull Polaroid prints. The prints were small and the quality sometimes wasn’t that great, but they came in extremely handy to reassure nervous clients and get a quick file photo.

Digital imaging pretty much eliminated the need for Polaroid prints, at least for professional photographers. The ability to instantly see a captured image on a camera’s LCD, or better yet, on a laptop or computer screen, spelled big trouble for the company that built the instant photography market. But there are times when being able to generate a quick print in the field or on location can still be useful. That’s where the little consumer printers come in handy.

HP Photosmart 475

These mini printers, which are available both as inkjet and dye-sublimation models, have evolved to the point that their image quality and print stability are excellent, they have a wide range of functionality, and their price is right.

I looked at five different units, including the Canon Selphy CP710, the Hewlett Packard Photosmart 475, the Kodak EasyShare Printer Dock Plus Series 3, the Lexmark P450, and the Olympus P-11. They were actually all quite good, each having its own pros and cons.

Kodak EasyShare

Because these units are being considered here primarily for field work, and there really wasn’t room for an extensive review of each individual unit, I concentrated on the speed and quality involved in direct printing rather than what they can do when connected to a computer or laptop. The results, however, should be similar.

It is amazing just how much functionality manufacturers have added to some of these models. I tried to look at a unique feature or interesting capability for each unit, something that might set it apart from the competition. Most of these printers include removable media slots and a preview LCD, but some also have such features as camera docks and wireless printing capabilities. Most can eliminate red-eye, and some can optimize images, at least to a certain degree. They’re small and lightweight. The one limitation for most of the units is the need to plug in to a wall socket; only a select few of the models available have battery options. (Of the five printers covered here, only the Canon supports batteries.) But I found that utilizing DC/AC converters makes it possible to use them in a car, van or RV when on location.

Lexmark P450

Taking units in alphabetical order by manufacturer, Canon’s Selphy CP710 is a compact dye-sublimation printer that really was designed for use on the road. While shaped differently, the 710 is not all that much larger than a Polaroid camera. With its optional battery pack, it’s possible to generate 4x6-inch prints just about anywhere.

It looks like there’s only one memory card slot, but in actuality there are three incorporated into one opening. It can take CompactFlash, Secure Digital and Memory Sticks directly, as well as the other types of removable media with adapters. There’s a mini- USB cable on the front of the unit for printing from digital cameras. There are also USB and PictBridge ports, providing just about all the connectivity that anyone might need.

Olympus P-11

A small LCD on the top of the unit can be used for image preview and navigation. (Navigation buttons are also included.) The LCD is angled, but it can’t be tilted up. As such it can be a little difficult to see, but this is not a major shortcoming. It takes about one minute and 20 seconds per print, with a maximum resolution of 300 dpi. Images can be printed individually, in sets of multiple copies or multiple copies of a shot on one print. The new Canon printer has a street price of about $140.

Another dye-sublimation printer is the Eastman Kodak EasyShare Printer Dock Series 3, which has a built-in camera dock. Compatible digital cameras can be docked onto the port on top of the unit. When connected, the printer controls the camera. It lets you generate individual prints, multiple prints of the same picture as well as multiple copies of a picture on one print. Output is at 300 dpi, with a final trimmed print size of 4x6 inches. The company’s Perfect Touch technology is automatically applied to output for brighter pictures with less loss of detail in the shadow area.

Canon Selphy CP710— printed directly from CF card

Beside docked operations and direct Pict- Bridge printing, the Series 3 also has three different wireless transfer options. There’s Bluetooth transfer for printing shots from cell phones and other devices, infrared for line-of-site image transfer from PDAs and laptops with infrared ports, and something that wasn’t available with any of the other units tested—WiFi. When coupled with Kodak’s EasyShare One Zoom, the world’s first WiFi consumer digital camera, the Series 3 is turned into a WiFi communication systems.

Just like with laptops, with the EasyShare One camera, it’s possible to connect to hotspots, send e-mails and connect to the online EasyShare Gallery directly from the camera. With a WiFi card in the camera and one in the printer, images taken with the EasyShare can be sent to the Series 3 with a few taps of the stylus on the camera’s touch-screen. While it’s designed to be paired with the EasyShare One, the printer will work with any EasyShare camera that can physically be docked to it. For the direct printing part of the test, I tried it with Kodak’s EasyShare V570 dual lens ultra-wide camera. It coupled immediately and worked fine. The V570, which lists for $399.95, can be connected to a computer via a USB port, making it possible to transfer photos contained in the docked camera to the computer and printing from the computer, but it doesn’t have card slots for direct printing or image transfer. That may be a problem for photographers who like the idea of WiFi capabilities, but also need to generate prints from other digital cameras. The higher-end Kodak model with card slots is the EasyShare Photo Printer 500. It supports most memory cards and comes equipped with an extra large, 3.5-inch LCD screen.

HP Photosmart 475— printed directly from CF card

Another interesting mini printer is the HP Photosmart 475 thermal inkjet, which costs $159.99. Setup was very quick. The ink cartridge loads in the front and the paper in the rear. Even though it’s a consumer printer, it’s a complex piece of equipment. It not only has an LCD, but also 1.2GB of internal storage and a 64-MB memory buffer.

It lets you do such advanced things such as play and save slide shows and assign predefined key words to individual or groups of images. Besides its printing capabilities, with its internal storage and video-out port, it can actually be used as a presentation device. Stored slide shows can be shown on any video-compatible device, without having any camera attached or cards in the media slots.

Kodak EasyShare—printed directly from a Secure Digital card

With the 475, images can be printed directly from the memory card, from the internal hard drive, from a computer, and from a camera or cell phone with Bluetooth. Once the images are in the printer, it’s possible to remove red-eye from the shots, as well as optimize and crop them.

When first starting to print, there was a little bit of a problem with the paper feed. The first four or five prints were ejected with an “Unsupported Media Size” error message. The paper was skewed slightly. It’s important to set the paper in just right. Once that was corrected, the unit worked fine. Outputting at the maximum color resolution of up to 4800 dpi, it’s a little on the slow side. On average, it took slightly over 21/2 minutes per print. One thing that should be added to the take-up tray is an extension slider. As the unit spits out the print, it usually goes beyond the tray.

Lexmark P450—printed directly from a CompactFlash card

Unlike some of the other models, which look very different than larger printers from the same manufacturers, the Lexmark P450 inkjet looks like a miniature version of the company’s desktop units. It has a small, but very readable pop-up LCD and very simple controls.

Printing at a maximum resolution of 4800 dpi, it’s relatively slow, between 2 1/2 and 3 1/2 minutes per print. The maximum output size is 4x6 inches and the output quality is very good.

One thing the P450 has that none of the other models have is a CD tray. It’s possible to put a photo CD into the drive and print directly from that disk. It’s even possible to burn the images stored on the media cards onto the CD for image storage. Again, the process was slow, very slow. Writing 185 five-megapixel images from a 256MB Secure Digital card onto a CD took some 50 minutes. That makes it more of an option for getting a few photos onto a CD in the field, rather than as the primary method of moving images off of the memory cards onto CDs.

Olympus P-11— Printed from computer

Another output option for the Lexmark is direct PictBridge printing. It’s also possible to attach the printer to a TV or video monitor to show slide shows. But the memory card, CD or flash drive with the images on it has to be inserted to present a slide show.

It would be nice if the P450 could not only burn the CDs, but also print their covers. Unfortunately, the unit can’t do that. Lexmark is working with another company to develop a printer that can do that, but it might be quite some time before it’s available. Another thing the printer can’t do is connect to a computer or laptop, which limits its functionality when traveling with a laptop. One way to get around that is to transfer images that have been optimized on a computer onto a USB flash drive, and then plug the flash drive into the P450 PictBridge port. The Lexmark P450 has a suggested retail price of $199.

Olympus’s most recent mini printer is the P-11, a somewhat boxy-looking dye-sublimation model with a maximum print resolution of 310dpi. Options for the P-11 are more limited than for some competing printers. Most importantly, it does not have any card slots, which means that photos have to be generated directly from digital cameras or from connected computers. It also doesn’t have an LCD.

When connected directly to a PictBridge-compatible camera, it’s possible to control the printer from the tethered camera. The EasyPrint command that comes up on the camera’s screen lets you print the image that’s being displayed. There’s also a custom option that lets you select multiple images to print and their sizes. For maximum effectiveness, the unit works best when connected to a computer. The Olympus is fast. It only takes about 50 seconds to generate a print. It has a street price of $149.99.

These little printers might not be essential pieces of equipment for professional photographers, but they can serve a real purpose: getting a nice-looking picture to someone in a hurry.

Writer and editor Ron Eggers is a regular contributor to Rangefinder and a senior editor with Newswatch Feature Service.