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Category: Landscapes

Cost Effective Printing?

Brendan

One of the biggest costs to photographers aside from the initial purchase of your camera and associated equipment is printing costs. Should you purchase a large format printer? at what point does it become cost effective? How will it compare to commercial prints?

All these are very good questions, currently I own an Epson A3+ printer, as well as an A4. Both print fantastically. However the A3 does not use individual ink tanks, and subsequently costs me a lot of money to run. Should I upgrade to a new A3 printer at the cost of over a thousand dollars, or should I just take advantage of fairly cheap commercial printing?

In my quest to find out I decided to check commercial quality and price. The simplest solution seemed to be a quick trip into my local Harvey Norman (HN) store. HN were able to print quite a number of my shots at 12″x18″ with excellent results from their commercial printer for only $9.95 each. I also had an A2 print done on their Epson large format ink jet printer, again with excellent results for only $39.95 (I got a discount, only $30).

Results: sharp, accurate color, very high contract compared to my home printer, in fact some prints I had bumped the contrast up for home printing came out too contrasty. Cost effective? Taking into account the ink and initial printer costs I should have to print hundreds of prints at A3 or larger to get ahead. Until I’m printing very large quantities of A3+ prints it seems the best solution is local commercial printing.

Commercial printing also offers me other benifits as well, like A1 or A0 printing, A wide variety of papers and media, long life inks or traditional darkroom style prints, not to mention I don’t have to worry about ink or printing errors.

Tahune & The Huon

Brendan

Had a great day in the Huon Valley today, eating apples, bushwalking and photography. Took quite a number of shots (see my flickr link), this was one of the better ones I took on the way home just short of Huonville.

The Tahune Airwalk is about 30 Km’s out of Geeveston, run by Forestry Tasmania. There were lots of tracks, swinging bridges and of course the Airwalk. Personally I found the swinging bridges more interesting than the Airwalk. Overall it’s not a bad day out, and provided the weather is good, it’s great for photography.

I may be adding this picture to my store. Not sure at this stage……

Wellington in Winter

Brendan

I was suprised to find that there was quite a bit of snow still on the mountain, Mt Wellington is the schenic backdrop to Hobart in Tasmania. Mt Wellington recently had a good dumping of snow, and I thought it was about time to head up from some sunset shots.

The weather had only just cleared over the summit, and it was 50:50 if any good shots were to be had. This is one of the better usable shots I took.

I tooks some other good ones as well, but I have since found out after blowing them up that the Sigma 10-20mm lens and Cokin P series ND grads don’t mix 🙁 

I’ve added this shot to my shop should anyone like a print.

Just 2 Good.

Brendan

There is no doubt that Tasmania has some of the best scenery in Australia, Rain forests can be found 20 minites from anywhere in Tasmania.

Just a short drive from Hobart and you can be in Mt Field National Park, Wellington Park or any number of smaller reserves like Myrtle Forest.

This picture was taken about 4 months ago. I love the light filtering through the canopy.

This picture and other rain forest pictures are avaliable from the shop link.

Starie Starry Night

Brendan

I’ve been playing about with long exposures recently, although I haven’t had the time to go out and take some more “formal” shots, I took this one locally recently. It’s a 17 min exposure, f5.6. Unfortunately with the cold weather (winter) the sky was a little hazy, which washed the stars out a little.

As past of my experiments into long exposures it became quite obvious that I needed a few new toys, an external timer and shutter release, which I got cheaply on eBay, and an easy method for calculating the correct exposure length. Solution: I made my own handheld exposure “computer”. Details on this can be found in the Long Exposure Tutorial.