Frank ess said:
A few years ago any suggestion of using color laser printers for
photographic copies was easily dismisssed: quality of output rendered
them unusable. Is that still the case?
It depends what you want. I have been using colour lasers for about six
years now, the vast majority of the output has been on plain paper, and
is more than adequate, all right it doesn't try and spoof a photo lab
print as inkjets will do with scarily expensive paper, but the laser
technique provides a clean crisp output (generally matt).
At the higher end of the scale I have an old (7/8 years) Canon CLC (950
essentially the same as a 700 from 1994, so 12 year old technology)
machine (about $20,000 new) and its output (apart from the fact it is
playing up) is still better than the current CLC 2620 (about $10,000?)
In the past week I have had samples for the CLC 2620 and the ir2570ci
(about $7,000) and there doesn't really seem to be any quality
difference between them. (The current equivalent to the CLC 950 would be
the 1180 which I think still weighs in around the $20,000 mark)
Uninterestingly enough, I wandered into Staples the other day and they
had (I think) a CLC2100 or 3200, as their commercial colour copier, the
previous model to the 2620.
At the lower end the first colour laser I had was a QMS 2200 (first one
to dip below the £1,000) and that was more than adequate. It preferred
most of its output to be on plain paper, but would accept about 10% on
glossy laser paper. Running costs were higher for this.
