Has anyone ever broken down the cost/benefit of producing your own prints vs. using a lab? Does the recurring cost of ink and paper, plus the initial cost of the pritner outweigh the lab costs?
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Yes, definitely. MarkDS has written some articles on this site about computing the costs (over the long term) of inkjet prints, FYI.
In my case, I used a fairly simple model that nonetheless answered the question for me. My favorite lab is WHCC (
www.whcc.com). An 8x10 from WHCC costs $2. This is the "sweet spot" in price for WHCC. Going above or below an 8x10 means that the cost/unit area goes up.
I considered getting an Epson 2200 ($700 at the time). I guesstimated that it would cost about $0.60 to print an 8.5x11 on Ilford Smooth Pearl, based on stats that I had gathered on ink costs for a friend's 2200, plus the cost of the paper itself.
So I wanted to know how many prints P I would have to make in order to make the Epson worthwhile (from purely a cost point of view). So I wrote
700 + 0.60 * P < 2 * P
700 < 1.4 * P
P > 500
So if I make more than ~500 prints of size roughly 8x10, the Epson will be cheaper. Since I often print bigger than 8x10, even fewer than 500 prints were needed to make the Epson more attractive from a cost point of view.
So I got my own printer.
Eric