Lisa Furtney, planner extraordinaire of ScrapFest, came up the idea to have me snap photos of the ScrapFest attendees and Katharina arranged for Sony to sponsor us! They sent us this awesome little printer:
It's a digital frame and printer in one. For more info, you can read a review from the Photography Blog HERE.
Aside: my apologies to everyone at the ScrapFest show - In checking with the Sony Canada site, I see that the printer retails for $269.99, not approximately $200 as I first believed. As well, the colour print packs are $29.99 on the website, not under $20.00. I'm sorry for the confusion! I think we may have been sent product from the US, as it was pricemarked as we originally stated.
Having said that, this little printer packs a mighty punch! It was out of the box and functional, within 10 minutes - and that's with me having to review how to put the ink cartridges in!
Because we were doing a no-fuss, quick-and-dirty snapshot sort of booth, I didn't bother with any photo editing software. I think it has basic photo editing capabilities, but I didn't use them. I basically just cycled through two memory cards, one in the camera and one in the printer. Cards went from the camera directly to the printer and were printed in a one-touch process! It reads both SD and CF cards, and has a port to link to your camera or computer, in the event that you want to upload photos that way.
Now, you may or may not know, I am pretty particular about my image processing. I will only use Blacks' or Green Pixel Printing for personal photos and a professional lab for any professional photos. But considering that the photos were printed SOOC (straight out of the camera) and the lighting was less than desirable (fluorescent lights and *gasp* I used my flash!!), the photo quality was pretty good!
In fact, my daughter was Petit Prof (teacher's helper) on Wednesday this week and needed to bring in a photo of her family. Of course, being a digital photographer without a functional ink jet printer, we didn't have any on hand. So I popped open the box, quickly set up the printer and transferred an image from my hard drive to my memory card.
As an aside, did you know that you can SAVE TO your memory card from your computer?!?! I didn't know that!! LOL! I've only ever gone the other way! :)
Anyhow, I popped the card in and hit "Print".
The quality of the photo that came out was incredible, compared to those from the ScrapFest show. It had been edited in Photoshop, to lighten it a bit (I tend to like my photos a bit "hot") and cropped and sharpened very slightly, as I do with most of my photos, which I think helped clean up the printed image. The photo was only taken on our little Nikon Coolpix S560 so I'm anxious to try out some edited photos with my D70!
The only disadvantage of this printer is that it only prints 4"x6" prints (or wallets). But this is a lifesaver to a scrapper who scraps late at night (me) and who never has any printed photos on hand (also me) and who loves something that is quick and easy (yep - me, again).
It has the advantage of also working as a digital image screen so you can have it sitting on your shelf. Then let's say Grandma comes over and as the images cycle through, she exclaims, "Oh, I'd love one of those photos!" All you have to do is add the paper tray and click "Print"!
Like I said, quick and easy!
