JCam Loc: MD Eastern Shore

In addition to print quality, the speed with which it prints may be important. You don't want a bunch of customers standing around clogging up your space waiting for their prints when you get busy.

cjc2 Loc: Hellertown PA

To print photos properly, one needs a printer designed for this purpose. In the reasonable price range, this leads to Epson and Canon printers. For mobile printing, most folks use dye sub printers that are specifically designed for this task. Check on B&H for what's available. Personally, I use an Epson P800 at home, but it was never designed to be used on the go. The P400 MIGHT be ok for that, but I have no personal knowledge. I also use a Sony Dye Sub (discontinued) for mobile work. It's not as good as a "real" photo printer, but it's lightning fast and good enough fro on site work. HiTi, and others, are still in the Dye Sub business and offer a variety of models. Best of luck.

gvarner Loc: Central Oregon Coast

Didn't see it mentioned in all the comments but be aware that top line photo printers require that you first calibrate your monitor with something like Color Monkey and then apply the color profile for your paper.

Tony.mustang

I don't own a printer yet but all the reviews I have read show the rosin sure color p600 is highly rated. A little costly but will meet your need.

bwana Loc: Bergen, Alberta, Canada

Same here!



bwa

jimmya Loc: Phoenix

I use and recommend Canon Pixma... pick a model.

Reinaldokool Loc: San Rafael, CA

My experience with HP is that they do not print photographs nearly as well as either Canon or Epson. I use an epson xp-860. Beautiful photo-prints. It purports to do all the other scanning things, but it's photos are excellent--not so good as a business machine, but that's not why I bought it. For >8.5x11, I send out to print shops. The xp860 is pretty light to lug around.

SharpShooter Loc: NorCal

You don't mention the size you want to print.
Most event type pro linters don't print very big but are very fast and very good but cost a bit more than a standard printer. Good luck
SS

Kuzano

Are you going to build a Photography Trailer that you can pull behind your car and has a bit of work space and supply storage for your inventory... inks, paper stock, various photo stuff. I've seen people with such conveniences at summer festivals, events, etc. Or are you going to slam everything in the trunk or back seat of your car and go for it?

What's your mobility plan?

Seriously, you mention events, photography, mobility, etc... whats the game plan for getting to the location for all that printing.

How about something like fabtrailer does:

http://fabtrailers.com/

some samples:

(Download)


(Download)

Kuzano

OK, so I asked how you get around, or will??

Now about the printer. I found a very good PIGMENT INK printer a few years ago. When I have a problem with it, I pick up a refurb if available from Epson. It's the R2200 ChromaInk 13x19 inch printer with 7 cartridges and 3 interchangeable black/grey cartridges for differing black intensities. The cartridges are about $11 to $12 each. I bought my first one used with the complete roll package. Prints 13 by any size up to 44 inches on roll paper, or any size cut sheet up to 13X19".

The pigment ink makes it quite Archival. I don't have a problem with it drying out, and have never replaced a print head. It's an incredible printer and as long as I can find them refurb or used and still find the inks, I have NO, NONE, NADA reason to buy all the other problems out there. It's a cheap acquisition, and even the inks are cheaper than most I see. The roll feature is phenomenal for Panoramas. Sure, it uses ink, but you price your product FIRST to cover expenses. I don't see any inexpensive printers out there for finished product when you factor in all the costs.

Epson R2200 Archival Pigment Ink Chromacolor, getting harder to find, but......I still see some on eBay!!!

I suspect a few with the R for the beginning letter model are good, but this is the only Pigment Ink printer I know of.

Something besides Epson..... I surely think not. Epson made the first pro quality color printers. I still think they are ahead of the competition... Oh Wait... what competition????????????

Peekayoh Loc: UK

The Epson R3000, now superseded but available second hand, is a pigment printer (Ultrachrome Inks). It's replacement is in the Surecolor series which use Ultrachrome HD pigment inks.

amfoto1 Loc: San Jose, Calif. USA

On-site event printing is challenging. You need much better speed and cost control than inkjets offer and better quality than is possible with typical laser jets.

Many event shooters who offer on-site printing use dye-sublimation printers. Those give you speed and quality, as well as reasonable and predictable cost of the consumables. Some dye subs print a 4x6 in 10 seconds or less or an 8x10 in about 30 seconds. When you buy paper for them, you also get ribbons with the "ink". The cost per print can be quite low (under 10 cents per 4x6 or about 75 cents per 8x10, for example).

The down side is that dye-sub printers are pretty expensive initially and most are quite limited in the size and types of prints they can make. Many are limited to 4x6, 5x7 or 6x8. Some more expensive ones can do 8x10 or 8x12. You might have choice of paper finishes (i.e., glossy, satin, matte) but you can't change sizes or finishes easily mid-stream, the way you can with an inkjet. So you may need multiple printers if you want to be able to offer a choice of sizes and/or finishes.

You're looking at $600 for a dye-sub that can do small sizes... or $1000 or more for larger sizes.

There are cheaper ones (such as Canon Selphy), but they can only do 4x6 and aren't much faster than inkjet. The consumables for those are more expensive, too (4x6 typically cost 25 cents per print, at best).

https://www.bhphotovideo.com/c/search?Ntt=dye+sublimation+printers&N=0&InitialSearch=yes&sts=ma&typedValue=&Top+Nav-Search=
http://www.adorama.com/als.mvc/nspc/revisedsearch?searchinfo=dye+sublimation+printer&category=3738

Forget about Amazon.... they don't appear to even know what dye sublimation is... a search for a dye sub printer there just brings back a bunch of inkjets.

Another big "issue" with on-site printing is finding and hiring help that knows how to use photo editing software well enough to meet your expectations and handle the print sales and printing, while you're shooting the photos.

Finally, setting up a work space can be a problem. Laptops are great for mobility, but difficult to calibrate very accurately... especially trying to set up under a variety of different conditions and where ambient lighting might constantly change during the course of the day. There are calibrations devices that measure ambient light continuously and make adjustments on the fly. But you still need to be careful about your work space. For example, we ran into problems with pop-up "tents" that were various colors, influencing the apparent colors of images on-screen and making it difficult to make prints that didn't have color shifts and tints. I no longer offer on-site printing. But when I did I was fortunate to be working with another photographer whose husband's "day job" was in a pro lab and he really helped with the image editing, optimization and printing... Unfortunately his people and sales skills were very close to zero. Oh well!

On-site printing is possible... But it ain't cheap or easy.