Olympus P 400

While the Olympus P-400, dye sublimation printer makes one heck of a nice photo print with all the look and feel of prints you'd get straight from Kodak, it is one expensive peripheral. It's definitely not for everyone.

To give you some idea where I'm coming from in my comparison of this printer to inkjets, I have an Epson 1520 and an Epson 1270 as well as a Okidata laser. I've done actual photo file comparisons between several HP, ...
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Anyway, the Olympus printer uses a completely different technology that either traditional inkjet or laser printers, utilizing heat transfer of the color pigment from a ribbon. It does this in a 4 pass process (three color YRB and the final pass puts down a clear protective coat) It's a blast to watch it print.

Each full size print takes about 90 seconds (according to the manufacturer, I see it taking slightly longer ~120 ... more

While the Olympus P-400, dye sublimation printer makes one heck of a nice photo print with all the look and feel of prints you'd get straight from Kodak, it is one expensive peripheral. It's definitely not for everyone.

To give you some idea where I'm coming from in my comparison of this printer to inkjets, I have an Epson 1520 and an Epson 1270 as well as a Okidata laser. I've done actual photo file comparisons between several HP, Olympus and Epson inkjets for my Olympus C2500L photo chat list. I'm currently running another comparison challenge using a single photo file printed on several brands of photo printers.

Anyway, the Olympus printer uses a completely different technology that either traditional inkjet or laser printers, utilizing heat transfer of the color pigment from a ribbon. It does this in a 4 pass process (three color YRB and the final pass puts down a clear protective coat) It's a blast to watch it print.

Each full size print takes about 90 seconds (according to the manufacturer, I see it taking slightly longer ~120 seconds per print) The first drawback I see is that all of the paper and ribbons are proprietary and you must purchase them from Olympus. Now to be fair, most of the Epson and HP printers also recommend that you only use their brand paper, but there are several companies that make papers that work beautifully and cost much less than the proprietary papers. (eg Red River Paper Co. Lumijet etc.) With the Olympus you really are stuck buying Olympus consumables.

One nice feature, that is an off-shoot of the proprietary nature of the paper and ribbon, is that you can calculate exactly what your cost per print is. The ribbon prints exactly 50 full size prints. (Unfortunately their full size 8X10 is actually 7.64 X 10.146) The paper comes in packets of 25 (the difference is because the paper tray only holds 25 sheets at a time) With a fixed paper and ribbon cost you can easily calculate the cost per print if you plan to charge for your prints.

These printers are largely used in "portable" printing operations such as pictures with Santa in the malls, cruise photography, and on-the-spot sports photography where you can buy your prints at the event. All of these applications utilize the printers speed and portability relative to an actual photo-finishing lab's equipment. However, I would not consider this to be a portable piece of equipment. It's a heavy sucker!

The 7.64 X 10.146 maximum print area is problematic unless you mat your photographs, because the standard frame size is 8 x 10.

Olympus also designed the printer to be able to print pictures straight from Type II CF cards and Smartmedia cards, although I don't know of anyone who would do this. You get a supposed print preview in the LCD window on the front of the printer, but it's so dark (black and white too)as to be useless in telling you if the print will look good once printed. I download pictures to my PC, adjust as necessary in Photoshop and then print when I'm satisfied with the photo file.

The printer does an incredible job with continuous tone relative to inkjet printers. It's really noticeable in skin tones, skys and other large areas of relatively solid color. You don't get any visible dots of color as you sometimes see with inkjets.

My biggest complaint about the printer is the color output that I'm seeing with my prints is not as wide a gamut as I see from my Epson inkjets. The colors sometimes seem dull or muddy. (Although to be honest, people who have received the prints absolutely love them) I think that may be more due to the fact that they are astounded at the print coming out of a desk top printer instead of a photo lab and the cost of about $2.00 per 8 x 10.

I'm going to purchase an ICC profile specifically for this printer when I get a calibratable monitor, but I think with the current combination of my Olympus C2500L camera and the Olympus printer, I should be able to expect better print colors than I am getting right out of the box without having to buy a special ICC profile. I've had others who have this printer, print the same photo file and still see the colors being "off" so I don't think it is necessarily the profile that is the problem.

In conclusion, I will wait to see if the ICC profile corrects the color issue, if not then I'll sell it to a mall santa outfit and buy more photo quality paper from Red River for my Epson 1270 (that is doing an amazing job on my prints.)
 

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