Printing wildlife (and other) photographs

'Oneputt'   I use a Canon D70 with a 100-400 EF lens.  I would like a bigger one but the prices are stupid money.  I would never have paid what I did for this one, but looking round WEX, my wife said 'go on get it..you keep saying how your lens is not getting you close enough'.

400 still has limitations, but the quality of the glass means I can cut off a lot of sky and still have a sharp image.

The owl in the previous post actually won the public vote in our local camera club exhibition.  As people were going round they were asked to tick off their fave pic and that one got it.

You mentioned calendars, my wife has nagged me for years to make up a calendar from the pictures I take during the year, to save her buying one.  This year I made one up and had it printed up on line, NOT DSCL, just a site that was offering a cut price.  Quality was fine, but the cut price was £7.99 plus postage, not cheap.  I then had friends who saw it and said could they have one.  I then approached the local printer in our high st and he said he could do it for a £5 each.  Quality was top notch.

I finished up having 30 printed, friends were giving them as presents...I hasten to add I did not make a penny...just the cost of printing.

I would add that we do save up pictures for printing to make it cost effective.

I went out this morning more in hope that anything else...the kingfisher stayed just round the corner, out of camera sight and now it is chucking it down.

Have used HP printers for many years although we now have a Samsung as well.

HP always seem to be a little below Canon for images but better for print......as already mentioned.

We do a lot of printing, both A4 images and normal print, although we use a Mono Laser for normal print nowadays. I class our printing as semi-pro and acceptable up to A4.

Two points... We always use HP inks (have tried cheapies a few times) and normal HP gloss photo paper....although have found that Kodak gloss 3 star photo paper is excellent.

Apart from those two points and running a test print I can't suggest any other useful advice.

Within reason we can't see any difference in similar printers from different manufacturers and always go by professional reviews to include the cost of printing.

Reviews of your printer...it's an 'All in One' I assume, do tend to have one or two bad comments which may or not be the users! All in Ones are a compromise but are generally super for the price.

Good luck

The benefit of printing at home is you have full control of the image Photoshop is the editing software you need, not cheap but the best. Yes you can have them printed in your local Tesco or Asda or any other companies but you don't have the control. 

I use a HP deskjet 3630 for printing my images when making greeting cards.

In the past I used and Epson S21. I find the HP much better for photos although on high quality the Epson was pretty good. I use both glossy photo card and matt photo card with good results. The Epson would also print on Velum and Transparencies haven't tried them on the HP yet.

Epson ran quite nicely on cheap cartridges, while the HP has genuine ones in at the moment as they came with it when I bought it new recently. The only reason I bought a new one is that I needed a scanner. 

Hi Valda.

We do a lot of printing at home and are mostly very pleased with results. A3 exibition quality prints. Most home printers now produce excellent results. Yours certainly should. It is very important though that the settings to print are correct . Ideally to get the best from your printer use the manufacturers ink and paper. This should result in good prints with correct colours. The settings when you go to print must match the media you are using ie. Gloss, lustre, matt etc. Using the incorrect one will cause problems. If the media or profile is set for matt paper for instance it will flood glossy paper as the ink sits on top and does not soak in. Matt paper, being absorbent needs a lot more ink. So, if you can, when you send photo to print have a look at the settings and media type. If you are to use others papers it is often necessary to get a profile for your printer usually free of charge from the papers manufaturer. These can often be downloaded from the internet.  I hope this is of help. 

Kindest regards.

Thanks everyone for your help - very much appreciated!  Sorry I haven't looked in on this thread.  I'll take a mix of suggestions!

We always do use HP inks, but will buy some best quality HP paper and try again - and if the results aren't what we expect will go to one of the on line printers recommended in this thread.  We have about fifty photographs to print in a variety of sizes, which is why it's nice to try them at home.

I remember our first 'photo-printer' years and years ago, and how astounding it was to see your own photographs coming out of the printer.  We printed some amazing shots of Sete in southern France, during a festival, and the quality and colour is still good lots and lots of years later.  In the meantime we've tended not to do much photo printing so this has all been a bit experimental.

Thanks again.

Fabulous pic GL

Have you considered using a 1.4 converter. This would still allow auto focus and only loose one stop. Is the lens Mk1 or 2? Stick to the canon version.

Mine is a Mk2 and a 2x converter does not allow auto focus neither did my previous Mk1.

I'm going to try printing some on a better quality and much larger printer, where I used to work, and will let you know what the results are like.

PS - my OH has confessed that he bought the wrong type of paper - which obviously wouldn't help!!!

I once bought a 2X converter and made the mistake of thinking the AF would work....wrong.  Only ever got one photo of a MH coming up out of reeds, in the end I part ex for the lens I now have.

I guess I have the MK1, I have had for around 4 years, quality is top notch...I never have to sharpen the pic's...if they are not sharp enough they get thrown away.  Usually it is me that is not sharp enough.  I like to see the fibres of each feather if I can.

The only thing about the lens is....brighter the day, the better the pictures.

I took these pic's last year...it was the find of the year.  A Kestrels nest beside a footpath......full story to follow if interested. 

The first pic is its very first flight.