PRINTERS

CANON SELPHY CP 750

Print it yourself
while ago when my nephews were in SA visiting and my wife was taking pictures of them, they would shout,see, see! after each shot. They wanted to see what the picture of them looked like. Being kids brought up in a digital world, they were more than happy with looking at digital representations of themselves. Their grandparents were also reasonably happy looking at pictures of the boys on their computer screen, but they certainly preferred having old-fashioned printed images that they could frame and look at any time of the day or night. For them, and many others, it is somewhat of a chore to have to turn on the computer, wait for it to boot up, and to try and remember which folder their favourite pics live in. Typically, most of us, particularly with the advent of digital photography and inexpensive storage media, take lots of pictures.We then download these to a computer and use some form of software to view a slide show of all the pictures. We may even select one in ten that we wouldnt mind having a hard copy of. What we do next, is to either copy our selected pictures to a disc, and take it to a photo lab for printing, or we print these images at home off our ink jet printer. Both of these options involve a number of compromises. Photo lab prints are usually of better quality, but we have to find the time to get to a mall, and unless youre using good photo quality paper at home, your prints look like they were printed on cheap paper. Canon has a simple solution, and this comes in the form of their Selphy compact Photo Printers. The Selphy CP750 looked at here has the capability to print a full colour, high resolution post card-sized image that will last 100 years.Whats more, the actual printing process is so quick and easy that anyone could do it. How easy you ask? All you need to do is to load Canon paper and ink into the Selphy (paper and ink are by the way supplied in packs of 36, 72 and 108), attach the supplied power adaptor to a plug point an optional battery pack is available for portable use and connect the Selphy to a PictBridge compliant camera via its built in, extendable USB cord with mini connector on the end.

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You can then view all the images stored on your camera on the 2.4-inch colour LCD, and even crop images, remove red eyes, or apply some colour effects to your pictures. Next you press the print button and in less than a minute your print is ready. Dont have a Pictbridge camera? Theres no problem here either, as the Selphy has three memory card slots that can accept pretty much most cards, although you may need an adaptor for some.There is also a full sized USB input and even a Bluetooth wireless adaptor is available. I felt that the 300 dpi quality of printed images was rather good, although my wife felt that it wasnt quite up to the standard that youd get from a dedicated and professional photo lab.They however dont offer oneminute turnaround time. I also felt that most prints looked the best without effects applied. Print method.Dye-sublimation thermal transfer printing system Print resolution.300 dpi LCD size..2.4-inch TFT colour LCD Inputs..3 memory cards, USB Print time.58 seconds (postcard) PRICE..RVERDICT The Canon Selphy CP750 compact photo printer is easy to use and delivers good quality prints in under a minute. Print costs do however mean that youre not going to print every picture you shoot. SUPPLIED BY Canon SA 011-265-4900 www.canon.co.za Lets now move onto the cost of each print, and this depends on the paper and ink packs that you buy. Naturally costs come down the bigger the pack you buy, but excluding the price of the printer you can expect to pay between R3.50 to R4.50 per print. Also bear in mind that cheaper versions of the printer are also available. What this means, is that youre not going to print every image on your camera, as doing so would be rather a costly exercise. The Selphy does however give you the ability to print your favourite pics when you want, and where you want. I know that my nephews grandparents would certainly love being able get actual prints of the boys that they could keep just moments after the pictures were taken.

Joel Kopping

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