The > Technology > Circuits > State of the Art: From Digital Camera to Print, No Computer Required

S the family's black sheep techno-nerd, I was the designated digital photographer at this summer's reunion in Vermont. Lakes, mountains, babies - man, I was in shutterbug heaven. By week's end I had turned the best shots into Web sites, screen savers, desktop pictures, e-mail attachments and an elaborately produced slide show on DVD.

I snuggled happily into bed, confident that I had lived up to my potential as a fully digital geek.

But then my mother called with a weird request. "Can you make some 4-by-6's of these?"

Um - as in prints? Does anybody do that anymore?

Well, of course they do. Hard though it may be for gadget lovers to understand, millions of people would rather clutch an envelope of glossy prints than some electronic gadget with a two-inch screen.

No wonder the big news in digital photography this season is the explosion of one-trick-pony printers designed exclusively for stunning 4-by-6 photos. These printers are no good for printing everyday documents, and their cartridges and photo paper (sold together in one box) aren't cheap. (Ink and paper are generally sold together in one box, for average per-print costs of 29 to 67 cents.) But the printers themselves are inexpensive, simple to use and bursting with clever ideas.

Best of all, these printers don't require a computer. They can print directly from a digital camera, which means that you can even take them on the road. (They can print from a computer, though. All but the Sonys work with both Mac OS X and Windows.)

This year several printers are vying for your megapixel business, including Canon's Selphy DS700 and CP330; the Olympus P-10; Sony's FP30 and EX50; Epson's PictureMate; and Hewlett-Packard's Photosmart 375.

As you shop, let this checklist of important features be your guide. As you'll see, no single printer offers every breakthrough feature of 2004, but three come deliciously close.

PICTBRIDGE All right, so no computer is necessary. So how, then, do the photos get from your camera to the printer?

If your camera is PictBridge-compatible (most cameras are these days, but check the box or the manual), then you can connect it directly to a PictBridge printer using a standard U.S.B. cable. All seven of today's contestants are PictBridge-compatible.

For you, this arrangement means that you can use the camera's familiar controls and bright screen for previewing each photo, rotating it, cropping it and so on. For the printer makers, it means omitting a screen from the printer, thus saving mucho dollars.

MEMORY-CARD SLOTS Another approach is to include memory-card slots right on the printer. You pop the card out of the camera, slide it into the printer, and boom: you're a walking Fotomat.

As a result, you don't run down the camera's battery while printing, as you do when using PictBridge. You get compatibility with almost any digital camera, even the PictBridge-incompatible. (The Epson, 2, accommodates every memory-card type, including the oddball XD format; the Sony EX50, 0, has only Memory Stick and Compact Flash slots.) And when the printer is connected to your Mac or PC, it doubles as a card reader that lets you copy photos to or from the computer (except, weirdly, not on the Sony EX50).

On the other hand, figuring out which photos you're about to print now becomes an issue. Only one of these printers, the HP Photosmart 375 (0), offers a color screen that lets you preview a photo before you print it. On the Epson, you must print out a contact sheet of the camera's contents and then print the photos by number. (Alternatively, you can flag the print-worthy photos on the camera before removing its card, if your camera offers this feature.)

The Canon Selphy (5) and Sony EX50 printers don't have screens, either, but they do offer an ingenious workaround; read on.

TV OUTPUT Sony and Canon had a wild thought: If a photo printer doesn't require a computer, then why park it on a desk? Doesn't it make more sense to put it in your TV room, where slide shows fit right in with TV shows and movies?

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