I agree with P. Pilcher. My brother has been using a Canon Pixma for some years, albeit a fairly expensive one; regrettably I can't remember the model number right now. His printed pictures are always really good quality when printed on suitable photo paper. He also uses a rather good Canon digital camera. Having said that I also have a rather old Canon digital (EOS300D) which gives good results as well, despite its having less than 10 megapixels.
So there are several variables here. Your results probably depend on finding a combination of camera, printer, paper and ink which work well together.
I also once sent a few digital picture _files_ to a commercial digital printer over the Internet (you should check whether such services are still available nowadays, since this was perhaps as much as 10 years ago) and they were superb quality.