 BetterPhoto Member |
Sony Camera + HP PhotoSmart Printer = Unclear Pics I use a Sony digital camera (uses floppy disks) and HP Photosmart 1000 printer. Pics look great on PC but when I print them out, they are not as clear as they should be. I am using high gloss Kodak paper. Would changing to HP high gloss paper make a difference? Also for taking pics of people, what settings should I be using on camera and on printer. Something is NOT RIGHT and I am wasting photo paper. Please help. (My husband bought this camera but wants ME to learn how to use it).
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doug Nelson |
You're caught up in a common problem caused by the manufacturers' failure to teach us how to use digital equipment. There's nothing wrong with your camera or your printer. Digital pics look great on screen. To get good prints, you should use the camera's highest quality and resolution settings. Look under JPEG compression and use the highest quality (the least compression) you can. Better still, if the camera captures in the TIF mode, use that. At these settings, you won't get as many images on a floppy. Just get more floppies. That's the price of having resolution sufficient for printing. Digital images should go to the printer by way of your imaging software. Here you can size your image. Do nothing here that changes the file size (total number of pixels) of your image. For your purpose here, adjust the image so that the resolution reads 150 pixels per inch (ppi). This may not be an 8 x 10, but will be a decent print size. You can also adjust the brightness/ contrast, and fix dust spots. Set your printer at a good quality setting. I doubt that a camera that stores images on floppies will give you a big enough file size to print at the full resolution capability of this printer. You want a printer setting that will give you a decent print with about a 150 PPI image file going INTO the printer. That setting may be about 600 dpi. I think you'll be surprised at the nice prints you can get from your set-up. Try these tips and come back to us if you have a problem. Now give your husband a hug. He knew you were smart enough to go to the right place for answers.
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Lisa Young |
When I tried to use Kodak paper for my HP 952c, the colors ran. I told someone about it and they told me that HP has some sort of chemical process in their inks that makes you use their photo paper because it works best with HP photo paper. I tried it and they were right, no more smears and made some great photos up to 8x10 on it with the dpi set at 300. I run out of temporary memory if I set it any higher. By the way I have a Sony MVC FD-95 with 2.1 mp and use memory sticks for my photos. Good luck!
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Valena Sturdivant |
I believe the two responses before mine are correct. I had the same problem and the first thing I had to fix was my printer settings. Make sure you set your printer to photoenhance or the like for your printer. But MAKE SURE you set it back when printing text material or you will use more ink than necessary on your text material. Second I have an Epson printer and tried HP Photo paper and Kodak paper and it just won't work. You are better off using the same kind of paper as your printer. Another hint is that Photo Paper is a higher grade than Photo Quality Paper. The glossy, matte, or semi-glossy doesn't matter but try to always use Photo Paper made by the same company as your printer. Good luck!
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BetterPhoto Member |
Lu, you didn't give us much information about your Sony camera. Having owned 5 diffrent Sony digitals, I have a bit of experience printing from them. If you have a camera with numbers from FD 71 through FD 91 even on the fine setting you will only get files around 150K. Not nearly enough to print 8x10. They do a good job on 3x5 and occasionally 5x7 The FD 95 averages about 350K and does a much better job. The FD 97 averages 850K and does a very respectable job on 8x10. The posts above about balancing your printer and paper are right on. I have had some success with Red River paper in both HP and Epson printers.
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BetterPhotoJim.com - Jim Miotke  Contact Jim Miotke Jim Miotke's Gallery |
These are all right answers, complete with a lot of great tips, but I wanted to second Doug's last response in particular. Many of the floppy disk Sony Mavica cameras just cannot hold a big enough image on that little bit of storage. They are convenient and work excellent for onscreen images (which can be a tiny fraction of the size required for print). What can you do? Try taking one picture at the highest possible resolution and quality. I say one because that is probably all that will fit on the floppy. Print it out and see how it looks. Before printing, try to make sure that the image resolution is no smaller than 150 ppi (and no bigger than 300 ppi). If it looks better, you're in business. To get more than one image at a time, you MIGHT be able to utilize the Super Floppy disks. I think 3M makes them and they hold 120MBs, if memory serves. Check to make sure your camera can use it but if it does, you will get a lot more use out of your current camera. Hope this helps.
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Lisa Young |
My Sony MVC FD-95 takes floppies and for the standard floppy at the highest image quality I can get four on it. So rather than constantly changing out floppies I bought the memory stick adaptor and a 64mb memory stick can hold 180 shots at the highest resolution for this camera. It takes 20 seconds between shots for downloads, but who knows how many seconds it would take to change out floppies. So that might also be an option for your Sony. Good luck!
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Robert Allen |
I use an Epson printer and print on Kodak paper with great results and only occasionaly adjust the printer settings. I am still learning as well.
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Richard A. Etts |
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