How to choose a printer for Event Photography

Event photography has evolved from being just another way to earn some money, into a whole contemporary subculture. Instant photo printing is the technology that has enabled modern event photography. The printers used in eventing today are a class of machine known as “Fast Event Printers”. A fast event printer is a dye-sub unit that takes a roll of media 6″ inches wide and produces its maximum-size print in less than 20 seconds. These machines are about as closely related to the small dye-sub photo printers used at home as main battle tanks are to the mini metro. This month I tested seven of them for New Photo Digest, giving some thought to how you might choose between them. This is what we found.