Dye Sublimation Printers have always been relatively expensive, the high initial cost and fairly expensive media have normally meant that they've only really been of interest to 'serious' photographers, but they generally produce a quality of image which is far better than you'd get from a similarly priced inkjet, or economy priced laboratory printed photos.
'Don't you have enough printers?' was the Boss's immediate response when I announced that I'd bought a Sony DDP-FP30 (well, at any rate, that was the 'polite' translation!)
She was right to a point - We use a Samsung laser printer (which I've reviewed previously)on the main PC - mostly for printing reports, projects and general rubbish that doesn't need colour.
We've got an ancient Epson colour inkjet, which is attached
to the kid's PC, which aspires to photo quality, but really doesn't deliver the goods, and there's a couple of big 14" line printers in the attic which are connected to an absolute dinosaur of a minicomputer (size and weight of a couple of washing machines!)
So why invest in 'another toy which you'll get fed up with in a couple of weeks'?
- well - this one's different! (but I would say that!)
The DPP-FP30 is a compact dye sublimation printer which is designed to produce high quality colour photographs in what approximates to 'quarter plate' format (roughly 4"x6" - less margins).
The claimed resolution is 300 dpi (dots per inch) but that really doesn't bear any comparison with claimed inkjet performance - and I'll explain exactly how in a moment.
Your average inkjet printer 'spits' tiny droplets of water soluble ink at the paper through tiny nozzles - each droplet can be as small as 1/1200th of an inch across, more droplets per inch renders a darker image. This is roughly equivalent to the halftone process which you see in newspaper and magazine pictures, if you magnify them, you see the individual spots of colour.
'Photo' printers use up to seven inks (Cyan, Yellow and Magenta and Black, and a further set of Light Cyan, Light Yellow and Light Magenta) giving a more convincing range of colour tones. The downside is you're still limited by the size of the nozzle on the printhead.
Dyesub printers approach things differently.
Instead of operating at a 'droplet' level, they operate by evaporating dye at a molecular level, so there's no harsh droplets.
The resultant image is a series of diffuse cells, 300 per inch, with no harsh boundaries - your eye can't detect where one cell ends and the next one starts.
So much for the theory, what about the results?
The DDP-FP30 is a small silver 'brick' with an external power supply (more on this later) Special media is loaded in a caddy - this means it doesn't get contaminated by fingerprints.
The printer attaches to your computer via a standard USB socket, or can act without a PC using the industry standard 'pict-bridge' standard right off your camera.
A single postcard sized print takes approximately 45 seconds to complete - that's three passes for yellow, cyan and magenta, and a further 'sealing' pass which fixes the picture to the paper surface.
I'd defy anyone to distinguish the end result from a 'proper' photo print - except the quality would probably be better!
Were I to offer one criticism regarding the pictures produced, it would be that the blacks aren't quite as robust as the strength of the other colours, but for 99% of your pictures with a normal range of tones that wouldn't be evident - the one print which showed this up was a close up of an anemone flower, where the black centre was very slightly insipid - that might be resolved by adjusting the contrast in my photo editor.
I managed to pick up my printer for £49 out of Argos when they had it on promotion last month - this might suggest it's reaching 'end of life' from a sales perspective, but it's pretty good by any standards!
Media is around £12 for 40 sheets (30p a shot) or £19 for 80 (23p each) which compares favourably with lab prints.
There isn't a 'screen' on the printer - which seems to be obligatory on newer models, but I've never found this to be a problem.
Really the only design fault in the system is that it needs a 24v power supply - had it been 12v you could have used this 'in the field' by plugging it into a cigarette lighter on your car if it wasn't for that!
It's small, reasonably quick, gives spectacular results, and if you shop around, can be around half the cost of the competing models from Canon or Kodak.
In all, a remarkably good photo printer, which seems to be reasonably economical given the quality of image produced.
Highly recommended.
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