How happy am I with DIY photo printing?

[Bob Ross]

Hi Ian,
Well, I am the DIY guy, having been driven into the darkroom in the early 60s, by bad prints and have enjoyed both sides of photography, color and B&W (as well as some weird stuff). It would be interesting to compare costs between a home based color darkroom and todays inkjet printing. At least today we don't have the shelf life of chemicals and paper and the grief of discovering that something got contaminated and you didn't know it.
One thing that I seldom see mentioned is the making of several generations of prints to fine tune the final results. It seems like everyone wants the first print to be perfect out of the printer. It seldom was in the old damp days. Making that perfect print at home was done over several days, because of the dry down time and life processes getting in the way and if chemicals changed or temperatures drifted, it got more involve. A new pack of paper was recalibration time.
Something that I picked up from a Leica forum thread is that a 28" X 42" world class digital print by someone like David Adomson in the Wash DC area would cost around $400 to $450. That certainly changed my economic thinking about my hobby. My color enlarger, now unused cost twice what my photo printer cost, all about the price of one world class print.
Bob

[WILT]

My wife and I are primarily artists and I only really got into photography through purchasing a cheap 10MP camera for making prints of our art work. But as ever one thing led to another and I have developed an interest in photo-imagery and have recently printed a few of my photographs along with the art prints.
I use an old 1290 I got off ebay fitted with a CIS and filled with MIS Pro pigment ink.
It seems to do the job ,as far as colour prints go anyway and the setup didn't cost an arm and a leg. Ive sold enough prints to cover the cost of all the gear and supplies and am making a profit .So if your willing to take a chance and get stuck in it can pay.

[WILT]

To illustrate my previous post. It was suggested elsewhere that that picture of the Tortoiseshell on a dahlia would make a nice print. So I blew it up in elements
and printed it on A3+ @ 14.5" x 12.5" (my standard for a 16" x 20" with mount)
It now measures 12" across the wing tips 6X normal size and is sharp enough
for me.

http://dpnow.com/galleries/data/500/Tortyprt.JPG

[Horacio]

I do my printing at home. I use a canon i9900 and I get tremendous results, in color and b&w, similar or sometimes better than those given by commercial laboratories. I prefer to depend on my own judgements for calibrations and final ouput.
It is part of the joy and exitation, like when I had the classic and personal darkroom lab and the image was appearing under the red light Now it happens at the end of the printer tray As a hobby, I prefer to use part of my free time (which is limited as I still have to work!) covering all the steps of photography. It is a very enriching experience Horacio