Photos with Santa

[captainpellew]

What is the setup needed for doing Santa photos with prints available on site? I have a digital Rebel XT, laptop, and lighting equipment, but I don't know what kind of printer can handle that kind of abuse, and I've never had the camera connected to the laptop as I was shooting, so I don't know what connection is needed (firewire, etc.) Also, is there software that puts the Christmas style framing on the photos as they're printed?

Jesse

[Paul79UF]

the Rebel XT has a USB 2.0 connection (read the manual :D )

maybe this kind of heavy duty printer would do for you, it only prints 4x6 though, but can put the artsy borders

http://www.steves-digicams.com/2002_reviews/hiti_640dl.html

[Colin T]

Hi captainpellew

I would look for a printer that does A3, A4 and what ever other sizes are smaller. Also get a printer with indiviual ink cartridges, usually cyan (blue), red, yellow and black. Some printers will have photo versions of these colours and they give slightly better coloured photographs. Use a good quality photographic paper and have plenty of sheets avaiable (different sizes too). Have spare ink tanks.

I don't know of any computer/ laptop that will take the pics directly from the camera. (Your camera store might know of something). You would probably be better off taking out the memory card and putting it in a card reader on the pc. Get someone to upload the images while you take more. Then crop them using any sort of graphics software that comes with the printer. You can ask the client how much they want cropped etc.

re: the fancy decorative designs around the edge. I would make a few different ones up before you start taking the pics. Photograph some different coloured tinsel hanging around windows and door frames and use that. Save them as jpeg files and then overlay them onto the Santa picture. Again any printer software should be able to work with layers and you simply add one pic on top of the other and merge them together. Then print away to your hearts content.

A note on printers. Generally the cheaper the printer, the more expensive they are to run. Cheap printers (including multifunction centres) have small expensive ink cartridges and usually carry 1 black and 1 colour cartridge. Better printers cost more to buy but their replacement ink tanks hold more ink and are cheaper. They generally have individual ink tanks too so if you run out of red you only have to replace the red.

Finally some of the information you find on printers include number of pages per ink cartridge. These results are normally for a page with 5% ink coverage, namely a word document. Photographs use 100% ink coverage so you have to divide the number of pages per ink tank by about 20 to come up with the actual number of colour photographs you get per tank.

eg: black ink: 220 x A4 pages per cartridge based on 5% coverage. You will get approximately 220 A4 sized pages or text from the black cartridge. Divide 220 by 20 and you get 11. You will get about 11 x A4 pages of photographs.

The number of pages is per ink cartridge so if half the page is red and the other half black you will get twice as many prints before you run out of ink.

Good luck Santa's Little Helper