FOAK: Photo-printers

Seriously considering getting a dedicated photo printer, the sort that
does up to A6, has an LCD screen and takes media. First question: what
technology? Inkjets claim 1024 dpi or more these days, dye-sublimation
seems to stuck at 300 dpi. Which is more resilient/cheaper to run/better
quality photos at this size/more stable colours?. Is there a FOAK
recommended model?

Dunno about the FOAK, but I'm very impressed with the HP PhotoSmart
C5180 I bought earlier this year.

Dad has a C3210 all-in-one photosmart thing - printer/scanner/negative
scanner, reads from usb/all manner of flash cards, usb+network.

My only issue with it is that it seems to need a 100MB+ driver package
installed before you can do anything with it. I've tried installing the
lightweight(!) 50mb package, but that doesn't seem to work. His
computer's slowed down a fair bit since installing it, but it does seem
to be a good printer.

Quality is as good as I've ever seen - one test I did involved copying
a proper photo print and I honestly couldn't tell the difference
between the original and the copy, even with a magnifying glass. Both
the colour match (with 6 seperate ink cartridges) and pixellation were
indistinguishable.

Speed isn't that great for photos, but I rarely print more than a
couple in one go, so that's OK, and for normal text printing it's only
a few seconds/page. It has the screen you're looking for, and with it
the ability to edit/crop and print directly from various media cards,
as well as via ethernet and USB ports.

Pro printing is dye-sub. Our lot makes OEM printers for at least one of
the big photo companies.

You still got the cornwall pictures you took? If so can you send me the
one of me using the firestick, ta.

I nearly bought a dye-sub printer (Hi-Touch HiTi 640PS), but when they
sent sample images (including one of my own I emailed) I didn't like
the output - reminded me a bit of the wax printers I used to test).
Ended up with an Epson R1800 (A3 printer) and the output is superb.
I've printed A3 prints from a fairly average 5mp Sony DSC-T100 with
great results.

I don't doubt that dye-sub is best, but there seems to be some
difference between the model I got results from and what they use in
the machines - what do you think that is? Is 300/400dpi the same in
the bigger machines?

Yuss but the kit and the consumables are more. Top quality inkjet with the
right paper does for SoHo.

Do you mean A6 or in fact A3 poster size?

If it's smaller format, Epson R360
and can recommend this supplier

I really meant A6/6X4. My experience with ones that can do A4 is that
they don't feed smaller sizes very easily or cleanly. Loading is
one-at-a-time and fiddly. Besides, I wanted a small piece of kit. On the
rare occasions I want to do A4 I can swap cartridges on my Deskjet 5150
which does a very nice job.

I have the Epson R1800 and it has never failed to feed anything from
6x4 to A3 correctly. I just stuff a load of whatever paper I'm using
and off it goes - prints CD's nicely as well.

look at the Canon IP series printers - they tend to get good writeups in
the photo magazines

If it's larger format high quality, Epson R1800