...Alan is very correct in his statements about building these costs into overhead. If you cannot afford the costs of ownership you shouldn't be purchasing these printers in the first place...
...I don't buy all this starving artist crap. I'd be willing to bet a good many of the complainers (not all), don't even have a business license and are doing this thinking they can make a few bucks on the side. Set up a website online, and bingo your a professional photographer, taking business away from legitimate businesses and pros.
David
I am an enthusiast. An amateur photographer. A starving artist if you will. This past October I finally decided to get some of my photos printed. I went to the greatest lab I could find here in the Bay Area. Amazing place, incredible samples. It was there that I fell in love with the idea of printing every dam photo I have ever taken. In the end I could only afford to print twenty. It cost me fifteen hundred dollars.
I loved the idea of hanging my photos on my walls. I loved the look of them as well. But the closer and more frequently I looked at them, I noticed more and more that they just weren't what I created. "A little too dark, they clipped the whites, maybe not canvas for that one, I wish I made this one bigger" etc. etc. But the cost I faced for printing more, larger, and on different mediums was quite a daunting expense for something I was simply passionate about. Something NOT for business. So I started reading here, on Luminous Landscape, in the printers papers and inks section. That's how I learned about printing. That's how I learned about Epson's great Stylus Pro 7900. And that's how I found Dan Berg, selling his 7900 for $1,700, which he raved about - stating among other things that it had very little use, which it did.
So this "starving artist" read and read and read about the Epson Stylus Pro 7900. And the more I read the better it sounded. No more clogs, no more heaps of wasted ink, easily change from matte black to photo black, incredible resolution, depth and color in prints seeming almost to lift your images off the paper, etc. etc. etc...
I looked at what I paid to get much smaller versions of my photos printed - $1,500 - and I wasn't entirely happy with the results. I imagined possessing the freedom myself to experiment with tonal changes, color shifts, different mediums, larger sizes, and so on. I read, I learned, and I decided to buy Dan's 7900 for $1,700. I figured one year's worth of printing alone would pay for this printer easily - compared to what I would be paying Bay Photo Lab to print my photos for me.
To me it seemed like a no-brainer. So I made a mistake I guess, I decided to become a photographer taking business away from legitimate businesses and pros, by printing my own photos myself. And that's where things went nuclear on me and my genius buddy Steve. But it's not as bad as you might think..
You see I didn't really pay $1,700 for this 7900. Steve and I split it. In fact we have split every expense related to this 7900 so far. So neither of us are quite a bad off as it seems here. Plus our Epson clog-spending spree is over now. If the printheaddoctor (Vladimir) comes through, and our original head prints clog-free, great. We will all know that our clogs are actually clogs, and maybe I'll buy Vladimir's machine and start a small business offering X900 printhead-saving-solutions for other Epson owners who get cornered by concrete clogs on one end, and ridiculous repair bills on the other - which render their great X900 printers useless piles of junk. Then also Steve and I can finally start printing like the starving artists we will forever strive to be, but never afford to be.
But if Vladimir's ultrasonic head cleaning work proves the alternate point - that our clogs are not clogs at all, and our problems are actually piezoelectical, then we will lick our wounds and install this new printhead which we have waiting in the background. And if this new head installation gets this 7900 printing again, great, we will begin again our endless pursuit of chasing our dreams.
...However if this printer STILL does not work? Come on I know you want to know our alternate, alternate plan.. That's right, we're going hollywood. I'm gonna buy three sticks of dynamite, fire up a video camera, and we're gonna launch this exploding fireball of an Epson 7900 off the tallest cliff we can find. End of hopeless starving artist printing career.
