An October 8 article by Damon Darlin in the NY Times discussed why printing photos at home is an uneconomical alternative when compared to getting it done at a retailer’s photo lab.

Prices of printers have dropped up to 30 percent in the last few months thanks to a savage price war. Is this then the time to buy a photo printer for your home?

After all, for about $200 you can get the Hewlett-Packard Photosmart 8250 that in just 14 seconds spits out a photo that equals the quality of those coming back from the photo finisher in an hour. For the same price, Canon’s iP6600D prints a borderless 4-by-6-inch photo in 46 seconds, but also prints on both sides of dual-side photo paper.

The catch is that after you make an initial investment, you are going to pay at least 28 cents a print, if you believe the manufacturers’ math. It could be closer to 50 cents a print if you trust the testing of product reviewers at Consumer Reports.

In the meantime, the price of printing a 4-by-6-inch snapshot at a retailer’s photo lab, like those inside a Sam’s Club, is as low as 13 cents. Snapfish.com, an online mail-order service, offers prints for a dime each if you prepay. At those prices, why bother printing at home? (…)

It should not take an advanced business degree (to understand) (…) how printer manufacturers like Hewlett-Packard and Canon make their money. They use the “razor blade” business model. It is named from the marketing innovation of King C. Gillette, who in the early years of the last century sold razors for a low price but made all his money on the high-margin disposable razor blades. Printer manufacturers also use this tied-product strategy.

Printers return relatively low profit margins. But the ink, ounce for ounce, is four times the cost of Krug Clos du Mesnil Champagne, which sells for around $425 a bottle. Ink is about the same price as Joy perfume, considered to be one of the more pricey fragrances, at $158 for a 2.5-ounce bottle.

They don’t just get you on the ink. Some photo printers force you to buy the cartridge and paper together in a “value pack.” The ink or printer ribbon can run out before you are through with half the paper, so you risk building an ever-increasing stack of unused photo paper. (…)

That’s not to say that home printers are always an uneconomical proposition. If you want an 8-by-10-inch photo, a home printer will do it for about a third of the $3 a copy Walgreens charges. But before you make the plunge on these specialized printers, you should ask yourself how often are you going to do that kind of printing. Dimitrios Delis, who tracks facts and figures for the Photo Marketing Association, says that 85 percent of all prints are the classic 4 by 6 inches.

Any time you print in volumes - like Christmas cards or the Little League team picture - you’ll be better off having the retailer handle it. “If they want to make many prints at home, it is not economical or convenient,” Mr. Delis said (…).

Read the full article…