Your Printer Thoughts needed

[grangie]

[Patrick]

Re: Your Printer Thoughts needed

I use and am completely happy with an Epson 2400, exceptionally high quality prints both colour and B/W, and I exhibit so second class is not an option. If you work in B/W it uses three black inks which gives as good as from the darkroom using top quality paper.
To get the best this, and any other printer for that matter a profiled Monitor is recommended.
Good quality ink, if in doubt use makers own, I use the Permajet inks CIS (if it you are going to give it light usage CIS isn't really for you) and good quality paper of which there are many from Epsons own to many well known third party papers.
It doesn't come cheap, nor is it cheap to run, but if you want the best.

Patrick

[JSR]

Re: Your Printer Thoughts needed

I use the Epson R1800 and have various other Epsons on the go, including a newly-purchased Epson 1400 (and even an Aculaser C1100 - best photo quality from a laser I've seen, and I've seen a few).

I've seen samples of prints from other Epsons, such as the K3 printers (R2400 etc) and - I'm sure it's probably just me - but I have a problem with the gloss differential. I know it's not a big deal to most people, but I like my gloss to be consistent. Gloss differential is noticeable on glossy prints from pigment inksets because, unlike dye ink that is absorbed into the paper, pigments sit on top of the paper. The gloss of the ink and the gloss of the paper is different and so you see a gloss differential between printed areas of the paper and non-printed areas.

I stand by my R1800 for my regular photo printing, although if you're into black & white you'll be wanting to look at the K3 models regardless of any minor gloss issue. If you're buying new be wary that the R1800 is being replaced by the R1900 just about now. It has a slightly different inkset which may be beneficial if you do lots of flesh tones. I've not seen anything from the R1900 yet, though.

The truth is that, today, you can't really buy a "bad" printer but what you get out of it depends a lot on what you put into it (a colour managed system for starters).

The 1400 uses a dye-based 6-ink (CcMmYK) Claria ink which (if you use specifically the right paper) can give you decent fade-resistance (vary the paper and all bets are off). It can also print on printable CD/DVDs, it has no roll paper support, it has a PictBridge port for printing direct from your camera, and should be considered entry-level A3 for general use. It can produce the goods, but it's more home/consumer-based than the other models. The 1400 is Epson's replacement for the old legend that was the 1290/1290S. If you want a printer that'll do "nice prints" but aren't too bothered about colour accuracy, the 1400 makes for a good "large snapshot" printer. I've not had mine long enough to do any colour-managed printing so it may be capable of better things.

The R1800 uses an 8-ink (CMYpKmKRB+GOP) pigment ink system called Ultrachrome Hi-Gloss. It provides the longest fade-resistance for colour prints due to the inherent properties of pigment and because there are no light/diluted inks in the inkset. It includes a special "gloss optimiser" - a transparent ink that's laid down on the paper in areas of little/no ink to eliminate gloss differential. For printing it uses six colours CMYKRB - it has special blue and red inks to increase the colour gamut in those areas. Light inks (the typical light-cyan and light-magenta colours) are not required because of the tiny 1.5pl droplet size. It has two black inks onboard at the same time, one optimised for glossy prints and the other for matte prints. It can also print on printable CD/DVDs, it supports roll paper, and has a single-sheet rear feed slot for special papers.

The R1900 is apparently the same as the R1800 except that the blue ink is replaced by an orange for better colour reproduction in that area of the gamut.

The R2400 uses a pigment ink called Ultrachrome K3 and is the cheapest way to get into Epson's professional K3 ink system. For colour printing, the standard six colours CcMmYK are used and the K3 refers to the three shades of black for accurate mono printing. The R2400 uses 9-inks in an 8-cartridge system (CcMmYpKmK+LK+LLK) - this results in the need to swap matte black and photo black ink cartridges when switching between paper types (a single cartridge change purges all cartridges so best not to swap them too often). The R2400 doesn't print CD/DVDs but does have an extra-thick media path for printing on very thick media (up to 1.3mm thick, I think), the R2400 also supports roll paper. The K3 ink system has extremely high fade-resistance for mono prints thanks to its highly-stable blacks and light blacks, but in some scenarios loses ground to the R1800 for colour print longevity.

If you decide you want to go down the K3 path and you're do a lot of printing but don't want to consider a CIS, consider the Epson 3800 - a more expensive up-front cost but better running costs due to larger ink cartridges. If you do decide on going for a CIS, consider that you lose any claims to Epson's "K3 inkset" by doing so.

Worthy of note is that Epson's larger K3 printers have recently been revised to use a new "K3 with vivid magenta" inkset. It may well be that there's a new R2400 on the horizon using that inkset, but I've heard no rumours as yet. The R2400 is very nearly as old as the R1800. If there isn't a replacement on the very near horizon, we should be asking ourselves "why not?".

Epson define their printers by ink system as follows -

1400 - Claria : Photo Enthusiast.
R1800/1900 - Ultrachrome Hi-Gloss : Advanced amateur/Pro.
R2400 - Ultrachrome K3 : Pro/Fine Art

See: http://knoware.epson.com/library/Ref...s/epsonink.pdf for more information and comparisons of ink systems.

In short -

1400 : General home printer.
R1800/1900 : Pigment printer optimised for colour glossy prints.
R2400 : Pigment printer optimised for mono prints.

They can all do good things, it all depends on what you see yourself doing the most. Hope this helps. All of this is IMHO, of course.

[grangie]

Re: Your Printer Thoughts needed

Gosh - knew I'd come to the right place. Thanks to both Patrick and JSR for their considered replies which I've found extremely useful. I was favouring the R1800 and JSR's comment are really helpful, including the heads up on the new model release. I envy Patrick his 2400 but probabally cant justify the cost for my anticipated useage.

Thanks for helping me out guys. Much appreciated

[Ian]

Re: Your Printer Thoughts needed

Patrick and JSR have said almost everything I would have

You can also consider the HP Photosmart B9180. It uses archival quality pigmented inks. It's a lot of printer for the money and offers a matt black cartridge for plain or fine art matt paper printing that doesn't need to me swapped out for a dye-based cartridge. The quality is very good - probably as good as the Epson R2400, but I found it more difficult to custom profile.

I recently reviewed the Canon PixmaPro 9500, another A3 pigment ink printer, for What Digital Camera magazine, but although the hardware is beautifully built and a tank would come off worse in a collision, the print quality and speed is quite disappointing and so I can't recommend it.

I'm fortunate enough to have an Epson Stylus 3800 - it's the best part of , but it's a fabulous A2+ printer, but not too big and bulky and comes with network support as standard.

Ian

[grangie]

Re: Your Printer Thoughts needed

Thanks for your comments Ian. After your post I read Vincent Olivers review of the B9810 printer at http://www.photo-i.co.uk/Reviews/int...180/page-1.htm. He too was very impressed with it. Mmm Decisions! Decisions!

[Patrick]

Re: Your Printer Thoughts needed

Thanks for your comments Ian. After your post I read Vincent Olivers review of the B9810 printer at http://www.photo-i.co.uk/Reviews/int...180/page-1.htm. He too was very impressed with it. Mmm Decisions! Decisions!

I don't know how much things have changed with the new models, but my experience with the HP I had a few years ago was not a quality one it was extremely good but running costs, I found the one I had to be excessively expensive to run. By comparison My Epson 2400 would be cheap and that has an expensive reputation.

Patrick

[JSR]

Re: Your Printer Thoughts needed

Thanks for your comments Ian. After your post I read Vincent Olivers review of the B9810 printer at http://www.photo-i.co.uk/Reviews/int...180/page-1.htm. He too was very impressed with it. Mmm Decisions! Decisions!

After my waffle about the Epsons, I can't offer much in the way of the HP info. (The only HP I have is an office inkjet - 550DTN - which is a great little machine, but it's not exactly in the running for what you want.)

I would recommend reading the posts over at photo-i's forum. Some people have had issues with the B9180, and some continue to report wheel-mark problems. There's no doubt that it's an excellent printer, but as I understand it it's on a par with the R2400 - it's not really superior to it (the B9180 only has two blacks, the R2400 has three - that's why there's no ink-swapping malarky on the B9180). It took HP until this year to compete with a printer Epson released two years earlier. That says something to me.

The B9180 has larger ink cartridges than the R2400 so you would think that it would be cheaper to run. However, those that have done cost calculations indicate that its running costs are similar to the R2400.

Consider also that the HP has user-replaceable printheads. This is both a good and a bad thing. On the good side, it means that any bad nozzle blocks can be fixed by buying a new printhead (that said, the Epson's don't tend to block these days anyway); on the bad side it means you'll need to factor in the cost of four new printheads when they wear out and also that setting up is slightly trickier than the Epsons. For the Epsons you just "slot in the ink cartridges" and go; for the HP you've got to install the printheads and then install the ink cartridges.

The reason for replaceable printheads is because HP printers (like Canon) use a thermal printhead that goes through thermal stress while printing. It uses high temperatures to eject the ink onto the paper. The more you print, the more the thermal stress affects the printheads, the sooner you'll need to replace the printheads. By contrast, the Epsons do not use thermal printheads, they use an electro-crystal process called "piezo" - no thermal stress means that (so long as they don't block badly) they'll never need replacing over the life of the printer.

[Stephen]

Re: Your Printer Thoughts needed

All great stuff JSR. I told Grangie you and Patrick would come up with the goods, you haven't let me down

[sara_criss]

Re: Your Printer Thoughts needed

Canon PIXMA iX4000 inkjet Printer TRY THIS ....