Customer Reviews

Olympus Camedia P-10 Digital Photo Printer

5 star:		(8)
4 star:		(5)
3 star:		(2)
2 star:		(2)
1 star:		(1)

 

 

Purchased this printer versus a Sony due to name brand issues.

WORKS like a champ! We are printing:

On average: 90 prints a day for a 9 hour day * 9 days = 810 prints so far.

It has never jammed.

I have had fairly good luck buying the printer cartridge/paper (40 sheets or 100 sheet / pack) in NYC. Prices for the 40 print pack: $17.00 at J and R to as much as $25.00 at Compusa Midtown. Amazon sells the 100 print pack are $30.00 (through Adorama).

Print cartridge is easy to change (takes seconds).

Highly recommended.

Today I got to play with an Olympus P-10 printer I just received. It comes with a starter pack of ribbon and paper good for 5 4x6 pictures.

The printer uses Dye-Sublimation technology. It prints Cyan, Magenta, Yellow, and a special overcoat layer that makes prints fade resistant. You can connect the printer to your PC with a USB cable, or, if your camera supports PictBridge technology, you can connect the camera to the printer directly, and print without PC.

There are two paper sizes supported by the printer 4" x 6" and 3.5" x 5". You have to buy special paper, which comes with ribbon. What I like the most about this printer, is that it produces borderless pictures without the need to tear off perforation or anything like that. When it spits out a picture it's just like from your local drug store - glossy, and ready to use. Or, if you prefer, you can specify to print the images with white border.

The printer is very easy to use, fast, and looks superb. I welcome the fact that it doesn't require any nozzle cleaning, head adjusting, or much preparation at all.

But now is the most important question. How good can it print? I run through the supplied pack very quickly, printing 5 pictures from my collection. Two of the pictures I printed before, using Epson Stylus Photo 820 Printer, Epson Inks, and Epson Premium Glossy Photo Paper. The ink-jet clearly had an advantage rendering light tones, seeing as it was a 6-color printer. The Olympus, unfortunately, really struggles with rendering light blue. The lighter shades of sky don't look all well to me. Another area where I wouldn't mind to see improvement is shadow detail. Perhaps we are ready for 6 or 7 color Dye-Sub printers, 3 colors may be not adequate.

Off course just 5 pictures is not enough to get familiar with the printer, I am sure, as I gain experience with it and learn to play with settings, I should be able to foresee difficult to print areas of images, and perhaps correct them in order to get better prints.

Overall the printer produces very nice results. And I can see that it will be much easier to maintain and use than an ink-jet.

I bought this for my wife to supplement our P-400 (8x10). We went digital almost 3 years ago with the Olympus C4040 and P-400 and I was looking for something to do 4x6s w/o having to cut 8x10s down all the time. I've always been partial to Olympus, having worked extensively with the OM-1 as a photographer in the early 90s. We were very happy with the results we received from the P-400 and I have to say the prints from the P-10 are stunning, if not better. The cost per print is about 39¢, which is a bit more than taking it to some of the local pharmacies (though we live in the middle of nowhere, we'd more than make up for it in time and gas). Plus there's something to be said for the convenience of printing at home. Print time is reasonable, what you'd expect from a dye sub. The greatest benefit to me is that you don't get the diffusion dot patterns you find with the ink-jet "photo" printers. If you want "photos", dye sub is the only way to go -- and the bottom line is the P-10 gives the quality I want at a reasonable price.

One of the previous reviewers states that this was not Mac OS compatible. It is compatible with OS 10.3. I tried it with several computers using OS 10.2.8 and it did not work. Even called customer support. No dice. I think that they tried writing another driver for 10.2.8 but it still did not work. I upgraded to 10.3 and it works great.

There have been many comments about the colors being off. I have used this with 3 Macs and the colors are right on. There may be a slight problem with the brightness but otherwise the colors are well approximated. I noticed that those who complained were using Windows. Color management may be a little trickier on a Wintel than a Mac. I would consider calling customer support of either the computer maker or that of Olympus.

Ctein of Photo Techniques reviewed the P400 about 2 years ago. He had only praises for the prints. But the best part about the print is it's archival quality. Dye Sublimation with an overcoat apparently has a track record for good archival quality. Meaning it will not fade and will maintain it's image quality given certain parameters of humidity, heat, and light exposure. This is a same process that Kodak uses. I do not see the point of printing something only for it to fade on you a few years later. There a lot of claims of archival quality among other printer makers but personally, I do not know how true they are and if they have been proven.

Image quality is great. I really looks like a regular print from a photo processing shop. Colors are crisp and they are continous tone. No pixilation or lines to speak of at all. I have only been using it for snapshots printed from iphoto. I have not used adobe photoshop yet. I can't wait. Have not used it with pictbridge.

Basically, the lost star was for initially stating Olympus would not support the Mac OS then turn around and make a non-working driver for 10.2

The P-10 is an adequate printer. If you base all that on the cost per picture, ease of use, and general quality. The down sides are more technical, but add up in the end.

First there is not XP digital signature; that cause my system to hang a couple of time when installing the driver.

IT DOES NOT PRINT WHAT COLORS ARE ON THE SCREEN. I am not just talking adjustment of contrast, brightness, or such. We are talking significant color shifts. If you are using an aim and shoot camera, it will probably be ok. If you use any program to adjust the picture, just be ready for some frustration.

In the end, when I was done, tweaking the pictures and the printer to get a print that was pleasing to the eye, the cost went up. I would print an average of four prints just to get the one I wanted.

In all honesty, I probably should have started with a higher end to begin with. This is adequate if you are not that meticulous about your photos. The colors are deep and vibrant; a very nice sharp and detail finish. It will not do well with Black and White. You end up with a sepia tint.

If cost is not that much of an issue, start with the Canon CP-330.

I've had this printer for a couple months now and would recommend it highly for anyone with occasional, low volume printing needs. The prints are indistinguishable from lab prints when printing high resolution shots and have a high quality gloss finish. Because it's a dye-sub printer, there's no pixelation as with many dot-matrix printers. Set-up and use is easy. In fact, I keep mine disconnected and stowed most of the time. It only takes 1 minute to plug it in and connect it. My only complaints are that there's no integrated imaging software to simplify printing (I use Powerpoint with good results) and the paper and dye-sub pack are a bit expensive (equates to 65 cents per print if you order the 4x6 kit for 100 prints). But if you only need a few good prints on an occasional basis, this printer is tops.

I searched around and found the least expensive place to purchase cartridges for my Olympus P10. I bought enough for 200 4x6 prints.The price per 4x6 turned out to be app. 42 cents per print. I can go down to my local Walgeens and get prints for 29 cents. I'm not certain about quality yet, but at 42 cents, one has to be careful, or the whole thing can cease being fun.

I bought a P-10 from a non-Amazon online seller. I was sold by the glowing reviews, including those on Amazon and in Consumer Reports. I was willing to put up with the very high per print cost for great color and for the durable coating offered by the dye-sub technology.

The first picture I printed was a landscape with an eggshell blue sky that was rendered in a deep violent turquoise. Nothing I could do on my PC fixed this, and the only advice I could get from Olympus customer service was to send the printer back (at my own expense). Some investigation revealed that other users shared these experiences.

Subsequently I went to Best Buy and tried out about a dozen photo printers by Cannon, Epson, HP, and Sony. Compared to those, the Olympus P-10 was far and away the least faithful in its color reproduction.

I finally settled on the Cannon IP6600D. The colors are beautiful, if a hair anemic, and the per print price is on the low end of photo printers. I would give it four or five stars. Then I took the P-10 to Goodwill and left it there.

I am happy with the quality of the pictures, but found that the cost of the Print Packs are high. Compared to Epson and Canon photo printers, the Olympus print packs cost a lot more.
I would characterize the quality of the prints as being very good, but not quite photo lab quality.
Althought the printer is small, I wouldn't say that it is conveniently portable. It only runs on AC (cannot run on batteries). Cannot read memory cards, except from a camera (through PictBridge) Overall, I like the printer, but wish that Olympus could keep the price of the consumables down.

I have been delighted with the P10. As an Apple user I have had no problems getting the color balance correct between the printer my G4 desktop and the 3 powerbooks we have in our family. The printer is attached to an Airport Express base station so everyone has access to it. The quality is amazing, the supplies reasonably priced, and installation is a snap. I downloaded the latest Mac drivers from Olympus's site and it worked immediately after plugging it in.

My advice? BUY IT!