Since the early years when my interest in photography was peaking, I always wanted to take great photos and be able to produce a hardcopy very quickly to display my work, without having to go through a time-consuming process. I have been looking at photo printers for a very long time, but I never seemed to find one that was cost effective with a small footprint, that produced pictures that were very close to being 100% true to color. While I still have not found the complete solution, I did find a great little Photo printer that is compact and very versatile, reliable, and very cost effective. I purchased the Canon SELPHY CP1300 Compact Photo printer, and I have been pleasantly surprised at its ability, and efficiency. It was also very easy to setup.
This little gem of a printer prints photos from 2.1” x 2.1” to 4” x 6”. In addition to the standard 4” x 6”, it prints those passport and application photos that most of us usually go running to a photo store or drug store to print. It connects via USB 2.0 and Wi-Fi and can even go with you on the road because it can be battery powered. It has a very nice 3.2” tilting LCD screen and uses Apple AirPrint or the Canon Print Mobile App for printing. Since its printing technology is dye Sublimation and thermal transfer, I have never had the ink dry out over time. It is capable of borderless printing, brightness correction, color adjustment, photo cropping, image optimization, red-eye correction and several other tasks. It comes with a sample pack of photo paper and ink, and if you purchase a replacement combination pack of 108 4”x 6” sheets of photo paper and ink, the entire set is available for under $30 at B&H Photo Video.
If you would like to give the Canon SELPHY CP1300 Compact Photo Printer a try, you can purchase one at B&H Photo Video and Amazon for $109.97.
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That looks like a great deal compared to my recently purchased Kodak Photo Dock especially if it has a big screen and can print different size paper.
>Since its printing technology is dye Sublimation and thermal transfer, I have never had the ink dry out over time
Dye sublimation shouldn’t have any ink. All the dye sub printers I’ve ever used have plastic ribbons which are heated and the dots of dye transferred to the photo paper. So there’s nothing to dry out. I looked at the Amazon page and indeed the boxes and descriptions say ink but it is really just dye impregnated plastic ribbon.
Reading more on the Canon website it uses the standard 3 processor color and clear coating that the Kodak uses. The paper runs through in multiple passes, first Yellow, then Cyan, Magenta and then a clear coat. I’m sure the images are just as good as with the Kodak – if you’ve never seen dye sub printing you’re missing out. It’s very vibrant and detailed.
The printer also has an SD card reader as well as USB connection and you can also print from PC and Macs as well as Canon provides OS drivers on top of the WiFi printing using AirPrint.
Very nice – makes me sad I purchased the Kodak right now as this seems like a better printer. It has more flexible printing options and a nice screen (which the Kodak doesn’t). Hopefully the iOS software is better than the Kodak software which isn’t very good and currently AirPrint from my iPhone X isn’t working (so I’m forced to use the software).
It has one big flaw which is reflected in the Amazon reviews. Evidently every time you turn on the printer it wastes the ink ribbon for a whole print. So it doesn’t take long to get out of snyc with paper and ink – very wasteful. According to the posts Canon recommends not turning it off. Bahaha. Sheesh.
Hi Alan,
That is exactly what I meant by it does not waste ink. Basically since it is not using ink. It uses 4×6 photo paper but prints from 2.1×2.1 and up to 4×6 on the paper.
Not sure about the reviews on Amazon or what is says on the Canon website. I turn mine off after every use, and it does not waste a print when I turn it on, nor does it go out of sync in any way.