When I first started out as a total beginner in photography in 2013 I didn’t own a printer. Good A3 printers were expensive and I could see no justification for shelling out hundreds of pounds on a hobby I was, at the time, useless at even if I’d had the cash………and I didn’t have the cash. However, I’d spend ages getting my images just right on my laptop, send them off to a cheap online photo lab for printing, then couldn’t understand why they came back looking totally different to how they’d looked on my screen. As I progressed in my photography the whole printing thing became immensely frustrating.

Eventually, a friend at my camera club took pity on me and donated me his 7 year old A3 printer after his Wife bought him a new one for Christmas. I bought some cheap 7 x 5″ photo paper and could finally do test prints and re-edit my photos to at least resemble my screen images before printing off my final picture onto A3 paper. That, along with buying a Spyder calibrator so that my laptop was rendering colour as accurately as my printer, and learning about ICC profiles (ie software to match the exact paper and printer you’re using downloaded from the paper manufacturer’s website) was life changing photographically speaking. I later bought my own printer, a Canon Pixma Pro 100-S, though this is now considered dated!

Printing, however, remains an expensive hobby. When you’re producing A3 or A3+ prints, with several test pictures, you go through ink at a rate of knots. It costs about £120 for one set of inks (don’t use compatibles, you won’t get the same print quality) then another £16 for the test paper and £30 for some standard A3 lustre photo paper. If you want to start dabbling in fine art or texture papers you’re looking at circa £80 a box 😲

Then there is mounting your print. My Logan Elite 350 compact mount cutter cost £150, then you have to figure in replacement blades, a pack of ice white 50 x 40cm mount board (the required size for camera club competitions) costs £23 (inc p&p) for 10 sheets, backing board costs another tenner then there is spray mount or double sided tape to add to the equation.

A3 printers are quite large and take up a lot of space and you also need somewhere to store your large mount cutter, A3 size guillotine, spare ink and somewhere flat to store both your photo paper and mount board. I bought a huge cupboard second hand off Facebook marketplace for £80 but am lucky in that I have an entire office room to put all of this stuff in and can do the actual mounting in my photography ‘studio’.

None of the above, of course, takes into account the hours of time it takes to get a print right, then to actually print it off and mount it. It won’t surprise anyone to know that I don’t enter the print competitions at my camera club!

That said, I’ve been asked by the committee to provide some mounted prints for the upcoming Photographic Alliance of Great Britain print championships, which is a print competition between the most successful Camera Clubs from each federation area across the UK. Keswick PS are representing the Northern Counties Photographic Federation, which is home to the 40+ clubs right across the north of England.

One of my entries is my new Centaur picture, which I knew would look best on a matt fine art paper. But my laptop/monitor/printer set up is geared towards my usual Canon semi-gloss photo paper and when I printed the matt image off all the highlights were a bit blown 🙄 It’s taken about 3 hours and 4 prints to get it to look right and has re-enforced why I don’t enter print competitions! After all that effort and expense, if it bombs I will be pissed I can’t lie 😂