Although we get digital photos instantly, it generally takes a quite a bit longer â€" days, in fact â€" to send away for prints of your shots.
If you are a devotee of instant gratification, there is the new Canon Selphy CP900, a photo printer that is the company's first with built-in Wi-Fi. That means it can make prints from your computer, phone or tablet if they are connected to your Wi-Fi network.
The Selphy uses a dye-sublimation cartridge and glossy paper to make prints it says will last 100 years and won't run if dampened.
And it doesn't take up too much desk space at 7 by 5 by 2.4 inches. With the paper tray in, it spreads out to 7 by 12 by 2.4 inches.
But the Selphy has its lim its. It prints only on postcard-size 4- by 6-inch paper, although you can buy sticker paper that makes eight smaller prints at a time.
Set up is easy, provided that you remember your Wi-Fi passwords and that they are case sensitive. The Selphy can also get images from a camera attached by a USB cable, or slip a camera's memory card into the provided slot.
The Selphy has some built-in touchups, such as noise reduction, skin smoothing and contrast improvement.
The prints themselves are colorful and glossy, although the colors are not entirely accurate. Blues were exaggerated in my test shots, so a green car looked a bit turquoise, and a cat had some reflection on its white fur turn disconcertingly azure. But the tints paid off handsomely in a photo of a lighthouse with a bright blue sky behind it.
According to the specifications, prints are 300 by 300 dots per inch with 256 levels of color.
The Selphy, available in black or white, lists for $100, but the cost of using it ramps up quickly when you consider the cost of cartridges and paper. It costs $15 for enough paper and ink for 36 prints (that's 42 cents each) or $35 for 108 prints (32 cents each). By comparison, a 6- by 4-inch print from Apple is 12 cents, with $3 shipping. Even with the shipping, though, 10 prints from Apple would cost about the same as 10 from the smaller pack of Selphy paper. But then you wouldn't have it instantly.
