Displaying your favorite images from a hike before the internet "happened" was by printing your film negatives and putting them in a photo album to pass around. (That's an historical footnote for our younger forum members.) Or you had them printed and enlarged and framed. Most of that's been replaced by displaying images on facebook, forums or other sites.

And that's why Kodak is going under.

But what if you have a really good landscape or wildlife shot from a hike and want a print for the den wall or to display where you work?

You can still take your SD card up to a photo shop and get an enlargement. But it's costly, you have little control over the finished product, and it's a pain.

So you do it at home. Dedicated photo printers aren't new. But they are getting better and cheaper. I've got an Epson Stylus Photo 1400 that will print a "Super B" print, which is 13"x19" and big enough for anything I'd want to do.
(20 sheets of Super B is about $25, or $1.25 a sheet.)

My problem has been the cost of the ink. The printer uses 6 cartridges (some printers use even more), and those cartridges cost a whopping $22-24 each. That's $132-144 a set, and if you print 10 (or less) Super B prints, you're replacing them.

The problem of ink cost was solved with refillable ink cartridges. I found them at inkowl out of Canada.

For $79, I received six refillable cartridges plus 6 bottles of ink to refill each cartridge twelve times. That’s the equivalent of $1,584-worth of permanent photo-ink cartridges for $79! And no garbage bin full of empty cartridges to dispose of!

I did a photo display of images taken on 2011 hikes recently in the "gallery" at where I work and put up 36 prints, most on Super B paper and in 20"x24" frames. The colors of my refillable-ink prints are fantastic -- as vibrant as the Claria ink I used before, but at a fraction of the price. (I am using their slightly higher-priced permanent Claria-replacement ink -- all purchased with the cartridges for $79.)

I put them in recycled frames bought at Goodwill and the Salvation Army here in Denver. Most of the used frames I spray-painted gloss black. Average cost for the used 20x22 frames was about $4 each, and I matted them at home with inexpensive Logan mat-cutting tools. I've got way under $10 in each framed photo.

Not only are the refillable-ink cartridges so much less expensive, but they're super green. Those original cartridges have a computer chip in each one (the reason for the cost), and the refillable ones do, too. When the cartridge gets low, it resets itself automatically to full, which is your indication to open the printer cover, remove the rubber stopper on the cartridge and fill with ink with a syringe provided. There's no need to even take the cartridge out of the printer; in fact they prefer that you don't.

What a better way to go.