Customer Reviews

Olympus Camedia P-400 Digital Color Photo Printer

5 star:		(23)
4 star:		(3)
3 star:		(0)
2 star:		(1)
1 star:		(4)

 

 

The technical detail:

a. The printer may be operated as a standalone product independant of a computer. It contains slots for both SmartMedia cards and compact flash PC card adaptors so you don't have to have a computer connected to the printer to use it. The printer has its own small LCD display which can be used in lieu of a computer interface to help you select pictures off your cards for printing and the printer also has a rather sophisticated built in capability to format the final product.

b. The printer has both a parallel port and a USB port for computer connection and is compatible with both PCs and MACs. Configuration software is included on CD for both types of machines. No computer cables are included and will cost you about $20 at your local computer store.

c. If connected to a computer, the printer is used to provide printed output for whatever photo editing software you already own. No computer photo editing software is included with the package.

d. Documentation is complete and voluminous. However, the technical document giving all the nitty gritty is provided as a computer PDF file readable by Adobe Acrobat software (supplied in multiple languages) and is not provided hardcopy. If you are buying this printer to use as a standalone device without a computer, this puts you at somewhat of a disadvantage.

e. The starter kit of paper and printer ribbon is adequate to print only five (5) 8x10" prints so you will want to purchase paper and ribbon with the printer.

f. Printing supplies (paper and ribbon) are expensive, costing almost $2 per 8x10" print.

The Subjective data:

The final print produced is 314x314 dots per inch and looks incredible. I have standard 8x10" Kodak prints produced from my digital photos that do not look nearly as good. Unless you are going to take your digital data to a custom printing specialist and stand over his shoulder, you will not be able to obtain a print better than this printer will give you. Recently, I was trying to restore an old 8x10" photo and scanned it into my computer at the highest resolution possible, edited it in Adobe Photoshop, and wound up with a wonderful restoration. By that time the digital image was up to 58MB size. I asked Kodak to print it, and they did. However, their system couldn't handle the large file size and compressed it to slightly over 2MB. Their final print was acceptable but a lot of the detail and my work was lost because of the compression. My computer fed the entire 58MB file to this printer and it produced a superb picture that made the Kodak image look like a childs effort in comparison. I don't know of any printer today that has comperable capability to the Olympus P400.

Finally, a dye sublimation photo printer that gives you prints larger than 4" x 6"! The colors are rich, and the pictures are very sharp. There is nothing on the market today that is in this printer's class. If anyone is interested in quality prints of digital images, this printer is an absolute must have. I would recommend printing images that were taken with at least a 2 megapixel digital camera. I have an HP Photosmart P1000 printer that does very well, but it cannot compete with the P400. You can't achieve the same quality print with an ink jet printer.

This is the best photo printer I have ever used. I bought the Epson 2000 and returned it because the color and quality wasn't good enough. There is not an ink jet printer on the market that can even come close to matching the quality of prints produced by this printer. I am using the Canon D30 and can produce incredible action shots instantly on this printer without even manipulating the picture. I use Adobe Photoshop 6.0 when I manipulate my pictures. Most of the time I copy the pictures back to a SmartMedia or Compact Flash card and print them from the card. This way I'm not tying up most of the computer's memory and can work on another photo project at the same time. The one thing that I have found is when I copy the picture to a card, the printer only recognizes jpeg files from the PC not the Mac.

Attention photographers and hobbyists alike! The P-400 will be the last printer you ever need to buy. For the longest time I used a high end HP pronter and photo paper to produce mediocre printed images. Since my purchase of the E-10 (arguably the best digital camera on the market) and the P-400, I've been able to spend more time taking and editing photos and producing better results. The print quality is phenominal. A side by side comparison with an 8x10" from the P-400 and from my local camera store was impossible to disern by family and friends. Most of my personal portfolio now is comprised of images taken with my E-10, edited in Photoshop 6.0 and printed on the P-400.

This printer is a wonderful tool for any photographer. The USB interface is really a must when working with large digital files as paralell port transfer can be slow. I've tested out the LCD screen and found it to be useful, but the P-400 works much better when you can edit images on your PC.

If you've invested lots of time and money into digital photography, you owe it to yourself to buy a printer that can produce images worthy of the work. The P-400 is the machine to do so!

This is an excellent personal photo printer but the P-400 cannot put out a black and white image without a color cast. The color cast is usually a faint green even when the monitor-printer have been fully profiled and the image sent contains only grayscale pixels. This is true when the image is sent as either RGB or CMYK file. The printer seems to lay down CMY layers with its K layer to generate neutral tones between black and white and this must be what gives the black and white images their color cast. Still, for photos I share with friends and family its photographic output can't be beat.

I have owned this printer for nearly two years. It has been trouble-free and has given me hundreds of beautiful pictures that have the look and feel of high-quality photo prints. I use Photoshop Elements to clean-up my images and to size them for printing. Photoshop elements allows me to place multiple images on a full sheet of paper. I recently showed some travel photos to a friend. He said, "I've seen digital pictures before but never any that looked this beautiful! What kind of a camera do you have?" I told him that it wasn't the camera, it was the printer. The printer, itself, is not hard to set up and use. At first , you must pay attention to how you load the ribbon, but if you look carefully at the instructions, you will be fine. A negative review mentions the micro lesions on the surface of the prints. It is true that there are a few extremely fine scratches on the plastic surface of each page . However, you will never notice them unless you take them to a window and tilt the picture around to catch the light just so. In normal viewing, you will never know they are there. And they are only on the clear, plastic coating that covers the pigments on the paper. (The paper makes four passes over the thermal head. Three passes put the color on, the fourth applies a protective coating of clear plastic.) The drawback to this printer is that it will not print larger than 8X10, and not quite a true 8X10 at that. Personally, that has never bothered me. I don't do a lot of 8X10's, and when I do, I put a border around the print, put it in a frame and it's fine. The quality of the pictures continually amazes everyone I show them to. I think this is a great photo printer.

From digital camera to print choose Olympus P-400. For the best print quality choose Olympus P-400. To save on the costs of having any developer make 8x10's choose Olympus P-400. For prints of exceptional quality direct from your digital camera Compact Flash or Smart media --- well you know.

Two minutes after I unpacked everything and assembled this printer I was watching the P-400 create the first print. The menu system and selections on the printer were simple to understand.

The quality was exceptional. Using a Compact Flash required a PCMCIA adapter but that didn't slow this printer down.

... And in about 90 seconds! Unless your Uncle works at Kodak or you do, you can't beat the price and speed of getting a truly remarkable print.

Go ahead and enhance your photos with your PC first. Whatever you do will show up in amazing color on the Olympus Camedia P-400.

My last printer for true photo quality prints!

I purchased this for myself as a Christmas present. The quality is better than ANY inkjet printer available. Several people who have seen the pictures want to know the name of the photo lab where I was able to get such high quality prints developed.

Positives: 1) Best picture available 2) quick results 3) able to make large pictures out of digital images 4) able to make multiple pictures on one page. I also use this in conjunction with an Epson Photo 1650 scanner to make duplicates of pictures. Excellent quality taking a 4x6 and making an 8x10 (scanner is important for that!)

Drawbacks: 1) Manual is poor 2) the "stamps" that are included to put on the picutures are ONLY available if you print from the memory card rather than print through a PC 3) Cost 4) NO paper other than glossy paper. Also, be prepared to use the 5 sheets of paper (plus a few more) to get used to this piece of equipment.

I have owned this for two months and have NO buyers remorse. Next year I plan to use this printer to make those loveable Christmas cards with the family picutre. (It is cheaper than the local store that makes them.)

If you have the money, you won't be disappointed.

Nestled upon my desk between a new Brother HP-1440 laser and a recently purchased Epson 960 CD printer, is a three year old Olympus P-400. Fast high quality text print-outs are routed to the laser printer, and the Epson is used for the specialty printing of card stock, CDs, and DVDs, but all photographs are created from the P-400, whether in color or black and white.

I originally purchased the P-400 for one simple reason; I wanted the highest quality prints possible of family members and for my wedding video service. The Olympus P-400 has never disappointed my highest expectations.

Most of us are familiar with how bubble-jet printers create dotted print-outs, which from a distance may look OK, but when viewed up-close the actual quality is not as good as hoped for. I have used a magnifying glass on print-outs from the P-400, and not only are there no dots, I actually do believe I prefer the P-400 print-outs over normal photographs. The P-400 print quality *is* that good. In my region of the world, film developing businesses on occasion ruin whole rolls of film, and so rather than my investing time and money into developing equipment to ensure quality photos, I can now get the prints I want, the size I want, and the quantity I want at any time I want.

The paper used in the P-400 is thick, very similar to normal photographs, and instead of the photographs having a brand name on the back side such as "Kodak", it reads "Olympus". The finished photograph also automatically receives a clear protective high gloss coating that does make the print feel and appear to be a developed photo. Unless a person has considerable experience with photography, they will not be able to tell the difference between a regular photo and one printed from the P-400. The actual cost per print-out is around $2.00 (paper and ribbon costs combined), which is not bad at all for an 8x10 or four 4x5 photographs. Advertised life of prints is about the same as regular photographs, around 50 years or more, which is far better than just a year or two with bubble-jet printers.

Changing the ribbon and paper is fast, clean, and very easy. Software installation is also quick and uncomplicated. The user friendly printer actually is a `plug and play'.

Though the P-400 has a normal printer parallel port, I highly recommend only using the USB port. The time required to transfer data from the computer to the printer usually only takes several seconds per photograph while using the USB, but it may take minutes through the LPT1 cable. With about two minutes from clicking "print" to receiving a finished 8x10 photograph, the speed is more than pleasing. The printer is fast enough and simple enough that I have not yet found a need to use the Smart Card slot nor even any of the other console controls. Through use of most any photo or graphics program, print-outs are as easy as `view and print'.

The only problem I have encountered was when the printer was new and the plastic ribbon roll rod would occasionally bind in the ribbon holder slot (caused by too tight of tolerances). I was able to trim off the holder's excess plastic to allow the ribbon to turn more freely, and after speaking to the Olympus technical support describing the problem and remedy (of which they were appreciative for the information), surely the new models will no longer have similar minor problems.

Three years ago I paid over one thousand dollars for the P-400 on sale, and I have never regretted the cost. Recently I was able to print-out numerous specially-formatted 8x10 copies of my daughter's college graduation, which if done through a photographer would have cost me more than the price of the printer. Today's prices are very reasonable, enough that my wife has begun saying she wants one for herself. In our high-tech low-cost society, not many items produce true quality results, but the Olympus P-400 is one product that actually does live up to our best expectations. Highly recommended, I know of no better desk-top photo printer than the Olympus P series.

This printer is an outstanding photo printer. I am clueless as to why Olympus does not tout the remarkable quality of the prints produced on this printer. I looked at all the photo printers available, extensively read tons of reviews on inkjet, laser and dye sublimitation. The inkjets have improved a lot over the years, but the quality is still inkjet. Lots of ink sprayed on various types of paper produces pixelation and a picture that cannot stand up to the slightest smudge or drop of water. The laser printers were the next best bet, but they didn't seem to have the kind of depth that was needed. With the dye sublimitation, you get a seemless picture that is covered with a protective layer at the end of the printing process.
However, there is a price for that kind of quality. It costs about twice as much as each page printed on any other type of printer, and at this time I think only Olympus makes the paper. Perhaps this is due to some sort of patent law. But, if you want a great picture every time, and are not interested in printing tee shirt transfers, or fridge magnets, this is the printer for you.
A little update, 6 months after purchase, still love this printer, people are always amazed at the quality of prints, you will not be able to tell the difference between the photo lab pics and the pics made from this printer. The PC card slot allows almost all media, but I never use it because a multimedia adapter is always quicker and I never print from just the printer, I always use the computer. Some of my relatives have printers with different slots, but they are so slow it just always seems easier to slide a card reader into a USB slot and just dump the photos. I wouldn't make this an issue though, because camera media will always be changing. Also, it is true that this printer cannot print a true 8x10, so I just leave a hair of white paper around the edge. Besides that though, the printer is still working out great. It would be nice if the price of consumables went down, but at least you know when you print the picture it is going to look like a professional job. Another warning though, this is not a general purpose printer, such as inkjets are, you cannot turn in your expense report on this printer, this is a specialized printer that uses the same dye process that printers costing $1000s use to turn out wonderful photos.