A friend runs exclusively Epson printers in his TV/Video studio, so I had a word with him. In turn, he recommended I spoke to the guy at a local business machines shop, who is a very keen digital photographer. This I did.

He had the R800 on the shelf, but said that, although he also used one at home, he would rather not sell me one now, as the technology was getting a bit dated. He pointed me to another model, then showed me a couple of A4 borderless prints from it - amazing! The model was the Epson R265, a six-colour printer using Claria inks. It was less than £70, which made me uneasy.

He said that I could try it and if I didn't like it I could come back for the R800. How could I lose? I tried it - I will NOT be taking it back, it's absolutely unbelievable! I wish I could show you the results, but I can't. All I can say is WOW!

Given that I was thinking of spending R1800 amounts of cash, how refreshing that the input from the shop manager was based on knowledge of the product rather than "most cash in the till."

I'd no doubt have been delighted if I'd bought an R800, but I've now got a considerable amount of change to spend on ink and papers. Result!

Ray.

OK - looks like I'd better take a look at the Stylus Photo R800 if you like it that much.

Would it be worth the extra to consider the Epson R1800 or the Canon ( yes, OK, but it's not a camera!) PIXMA Pro 9500, or are they just over the top?

I know I didn't mention A3 printers initially and I didn't seriously consider them, but I've always liked kit that I could "grow into" rather than have to upgrade.

Thanks for the comments so far - much appreciated.

Ray.

I'm in the market for a new printer, my HP DeskJet 990 Cxi is (justifiably) very tired now. My requirements are for the very best quality photographs, but with swift text printing too.

It would be nice to be able to print on card (and CD/DVDs) but not essential.

I don't think the resolution of colour lasers puts them in contention (although I could be wrong), so what printer(s) would you recommend unreservedly, either from owning or seeing the results?

TIA!

Ray.

Gwyn - The words "PHOTO GALLERY" are underlined with an orange line. The words "LOADING INTERFACE" may just be visible (they're in a very dark shade of grey).

If you wait a bit (quite a bit - around 45 seconds ), the orange underline should "re-start" as a progress bar when the Flash objects load. Then you should get the gallery in full, at least, that has been my experience using Opera.

Ray.

Sorry, so you were!

Ray.

Gwyn - the site works perfectly well in Opera, once the Adobe Flash Player is installed.

Quote from the site: "This website is requires the Adobe Flash player version 8 or higher, and Javascript must be enabled."

George - given that Adobe Flash and JavaScript are, by now, both well-established Web technology, I don't think that's a good example of "incompetent coders (who) can't be bothered to write correct html."

Ray.

MXV Photographic in Uckfield ( www.mxv.co.uk ) also have one for around £75. HTH

Ray.

Have a look at the twelfth post in this thread - might help - hope so.

Ray.

The SilkyPix site has now made version 3.0.6.4 available - it opens PEFs, Pete, I've checked!

The reason I asked about PEF / DNG preferences was because of the strategy adopted by Bruce Fraser in his excellent book "Camera Raw with Adobe Photoshop CS2" (ISBN 0-321-33409-4) as recommended in another thread.

I've got a couple of SanDisk Extreme III 1Gb cards and I've shot in DNG since reading Bruce's recommendations. I haven't been caught out by the increased size yet (60 x DNG on a 1Gb card), so as I already had CS2 it made sense to try it. Now that the latest Adobe Camera RAW plug-in supports the K10D PEFs as well, I'm spoilt for choice!

Ray.

We know that you meant download, George, but the SilkyPix site currently displays this message:

Ver3.0.6 is being corrected to solve a problem at present. Please wait a moment.

You can still get version 3.0.5.4 - worth a try - it's stable and PEF-friendly on my setup at least (XP Pro).

Is there a specific reason you're shooting PEFs, Pete, rather than DNGs?

Ray.