6D plus Selphy CP910 for event printing

[wsheldon]

Has anyone tried printing directly from a 6D to a Canon Selphy CP910 dye-sub printer over WiFi? I'm considering picking one up for an upcoming Halloween event at our local zoo, and I was wondering how smoothly these two work together for real-time printing. Particularly, 1) how long it takes to transmit JPEG photos to the printer, and 2) whether the camera is tied up during the entire 50-60sec printing process after transmission. I can't seem to find any of these details in the manuals or a Google search. They warn you not to interrupt the transfer or you will get corrupted images, but they don't describe timing or buffering.

For background, we set up a photo shoot for kids in costume last year, and sold 4x6 prints as part of a fund-raiser. I set up WiFi pairing between my 6D and a laptop running the WFT pairing utility, EOS Utility and Lightroom, so JPEGs were automatically sent to the computer over WiFi as I shot, and had an assistant printing to an older Selphy over USB. I'd love to drop out the computer piece and print directly from the camera if that is practical. BUT I don't want to stand around like a goof for 2 minutes after sending each print job either.

Experiences appreciated. It's cheap enough I may just try it, but thought I'd ask.

 

[Bennymiata]

How did you go with the Selphy?
Did it work OK?

 

[wsheldon]

How did you go with the Selphy?
Did it work OK?

It worked well and people were very happy with the results. The only significant issue was print speed, as expected. We got fairly far behind generating prints when things got busy about halfway into the event, and people were waiting 20min for prints by the end. Some even left without picking up prints which is a problem (we left them at the zoo venue for later pickup, but many probably just went to the web and abandoned the prints).

In terms of set-up, I had a volunteer assistant sitting at the laptop picking the best of 2-3 prints per group and running the printer, and I just kept shooting in the next room with my 6D wirelessly tethered to Lightroom on the laptop (via the Canon WFT driver and EOS Utility running in the background). JPegs showed up on the laptop within a few seconds, and that worked smoothly all night without me having to think about it.

In all, we printed 120 photos in just over 2 hours, so doing the math you can see the printer ran full out for the entire time. We're considering setting up 2 printers on the same laptop and queuing up 2-3 prints and then switching over in Lightroom for our next event (photos with Santa). I can see the utility of buying a bigger/faster printer if you did this all the time (or for print sales), but this works well enough at $80 a pop and $.30/print.