What Printer Should I Use?

Well, to be fair, I am not going to tell you what printer to use but I will go over some of our personal favorites in the industry and break them down by price and media costs.
In the photo booth world it’s important to know what kind of printer you need. Ink Jet printers are not very conducive to making instant dry prints available to your guests. You need a Dye-Sub Printer, which produce lightning fast prints without ink or wet prints. They also cut prints in various sizes like 4×6, 2×6 and 5×7. The printer might seem expensive, but you will save money on media cost throughout your venture in photo boothing.
So let’s take a look at a few printers…

• HiTi P510L: the P510L is a very inexpensive printer, and also has reasonably priced media. One roll of paper will make about 330 prints, and the design of this printer makes it very easy to change paper and film. It’s only 30 lbs and with a nice case it’s easy to transport around. It’s a little bulky and can possibly become incredibly jammed if you lose power mid-print, but overall a good workhorse printer.
  You can find it for $695 at Foto Club Inc. and $699 at Imaging Spectrum
  4×6 Media is about $0.15 a print.

• DNP RX-1 : this printer is one of the more inexpensive dye-sub printers you can get, and it also features very reasonably priced media. With the large paper rolls you’ll run out of paper less often as you can get about 700 prints before needing to change out. It is a solid workhorse printer that has survived a great deal of events. The only drawbacks to this printer is slightly longer print times (15 seconds) and its rather bulky, and may not fit inside of an enclosed booth depending on your booth’s design.
  You can find it for $735 at both Foto Club and Imaging Spectrum
  4×6 Media is about $0.15 a print.
• DNP DS-40 : this is one of my favorite printers if you need something compact and fast. It’s much smaller than most printers on the market, but it’s also one of the more expensive printers out there. It’s a little on the heavy side (33lbs) but spits out prints in about 7 seconds. It also has an optional drop down catch tray which is ideal for enclosed booth types. But beware you *MUST* empty all paper shards from the discard tray before moving it anywhere or you could have a big ole paper jam on your hands they next time you use it.
  You can find it on Foto Club  for $999 and Imaging Spectrum for $995
  4×6 Media is about $0.17 a print.

These are just a few of the printers on the market that we have used and loved. But the the people over are Foto Club have compiled a fabulous comparison of the majority of the dye-sub printers on the market.