You can often take better pictures since you can fire off as many shots as you want and only keep the best of the best. However, there’s a good chance you’re not going to be completely satisfied with only viewing your photos on your computer screen or on the tiny LCD on the back of your camera. You want to hold your digital photos in your hand or put them in a physical album, just as you would with a traditional 35mm photo. What you’re looking for are digital photo prints. However, many digital photographers, thinking they’re saving all kinds of money by switching to digital and avoiding all of the additional costs of film, are surprised to find out how expensive it is to get a good set of digital photo prints. Most photo labs now give you the option of printing off your digital photos, often in personal kiosks where you can upload your photos, edit them with rudimentary photo editing software, then print them out. Most of these kiosks produce digital photo prints of moderate quality, but their fairly expensive, usually running around $.25 for a 4x6 print, with prices increasing considerably for 5x7 or 8x10 prints.
These costs can make it expensive to print out all of the photos from your three-week vacation, especially if you managed to fill up your camera’s memory card a few times. Another way to get quality digital photo prints is to buy a photo printer. These printers can either hook up to your personal computer or directly to your camera, allowing you to print out photos on photo-quality paper. Some of the smaller photo printers will only print 4x6 prints, while the more deluxe models will usually print up to 8x10, or even longer panoramas. Digital photo printers vary in quality, but they are often relatively expensive to run since the print cartridges and paper are both fairly expensive unless they’re purchased in bulk.
