At 1:51 PM, andrew said...

Bugger this! Bugger. Bugger. Bugger.

The 2100 suffers metamerism and bronzing on Semi-Gloss. It is unusable on gloss except when printing greyscale through a RIP, in which case -- bronzing aside -- it's quite amazing and delivers a real wet look. It's lovely on matte papers with minimal problems, except that neutral greyscale really needs a RIP. And it's limited to A3+. Oh, and everyone I talk to tells me how much better the 4000 is and I really should have bought that instead.

I bought an R800. Lovely. Even prints dead-neutral grayscale once it's profiled. Except that even with good custom profiles the skin tones are variable and, worse, it exhibits shocking smearing on images of fine brown hair or fur -- looks like sharpening or compression artefacts, though it may be gamut problems. The 2100 prints the same image just fine. I can't trust it 100%, and for that reason didn't even consider the R1800. Oh, and the glossy greyscale output doesn't have the same wet look as on the 2100.

Enter the 4800. Yippee: all my problems are solved! Now I can finally offer Gloss (and Semi-Gloss) for portrait and wedding work at larger sizes and not have to hope customers don't notice the bronzing; print greyscale with more reliability and less fiddling than with QuadTone … Magic. And the nice men from Epson quoted me around $30 or $40 of ink wasted per change. I figured I could live with that.

Except it looks as though it'll really cost me $80 - $100 or so every time I change the inks. That's 30 changes -- say once per month over 2-1/2 years -- and I've paid the cost of a new printer.

I could stick to one ink cos most of what we print is Gloss/Semi-Gloss, and the glossy greyscale prints I saw at PacPrint were stunning. But some images demand a fine-art paper, and typically they'd be the larger ones, except when they're the smaller ones.

I could buy (lease) two machines, but we only currently sell enough prints to pay for one 4800. Which, technically means we don't sell enough to cover the cost of changing inks in the one printer more than once every couple of months. Plus my wife, the photographer, is getting by with a single D70 and couple of old lenses and would reallylike to have some new gear.

I could advertise to print others' work to bring in extra money, but Joe Public has never heard of fine-art printing, let alone developed a burning need for it. And while I think pigment ink prints, even on glossy media, offer a luminous quality unmatched by chemical prints, that's an ephemeral thing to market.

I could buy a 2400. Ink is not the major component of our print prices, so the running cost wouldn't hurt too much. I'd get all the advantages of the 4800 except for A2 size, paper choice, possibly print quality, possibly consistency …

And I was so excited about the chance to move up to the 4800. Especially to experiment with some of my wife's arty stuff done to a decent size.

I am confused.

 

At 2:11 PM, Pete Walsh said...

I hear ya Andrew. It's a little frustrating to see how beautifully the 4800 handles both matte and non matte papers and then not be able to change back and forth with less penalty. It's something I haven't fully resolved myself. It's a subtle form of torture - we give you these new capabilities... but we don't make it easy to maximize use of them :)

I haven't read or heard anything to suggest the 2400 prints will not be as good as the larger printers - separate to them not being calibrated individually at the factory.

I'm going to see how it shakes down for me over the next month or two.

 

At 3:25 PM, andrew said...

Hey, the 2100 is a lovely printer, just beautiful. And I imagine the 2400 is too. But we need the larger size now and then and, for whatever silly reasons, we don't want to outsource our printing to a pro lab.

Also, the usual advantage of 4000 vs 2100 quoted to me, apart from slightly better print quality, is the superior consistency of manufacture. It means one can use manufacturers' supplied profiles more successfully. I also imagine the consistency, and the solider build, translates to superior consistency of output over the life of a given printer. I would guess the 2400 and 4800 will share the same differences.

So yeah, a 2400 would do 90% of what we need 90% well enough.

Which doesn't seem nearly satisfying enough ;-)

 

At 4:38 PM, Pete Walsh said...

The 2100 has been a GREAT printer for me over the last three years or so (short a month or so, I was fortunate to get a 2100 fairly early, July 2002 from memory). Still is a great printer, I'll keep using it for smaller prints until I've used up most of the ink stock I've got.

My expectations of the 4800 are high, it has to perform at least as well as the 2100 over the next few years.

I agree about outsourcing - that's how I ended up getting the 2100. The outsourcing was driving me crazy, the cost, the delay, the lack of control, results that were never really exactly as you wanted. Nothing beats printing your own work I reckon.

It'll be interesting to see if the colorimetric calibration done by Epson on each 4800 translates to significant improvements over the 2400 when using canned profiles. I don't know you know - maybe it'll just be a marginal thing, and both groups of users are probably going to end up profiling, from peer pressure alone! :)

The build difference, at least compared to the 2100 is amazing. The 4800 is like a Mack truck. Really I'm surprised the price difference between the 2400 and 4800 is so relatively small - either one is over-priced or under-priced.

 

At 4:52 PM, andrew said...

> I'm surprised the price difference between the 2400 and 4800 is so relatively small

And then you factor in the extra $640 of ink you get with the 4800, plus lower running costs -- ink change aside -- and the price difference is probably effectively zero after a year or so.

 

At 11:34 PM, David said...

Hi Pete and Andrew,

Yes, it is fustrating. On one hand we have the Epson 4000, whcih has the advantage of having both Photo and Matt black inks installed simultaniously in the printer and from what I can see, little if any aste when going from one type black to the other. Unfortunately the advange is sort of like a glass "half full" or "half empty" (depending on ones persepctive) since performance with RC glossy type papers can suffer from Brnzing, gloss differential, and metamerism although from my experince it's in some cases not as severe as the idntical image printed on a 2200 (both without a RIP for example). The other issue is neutral B&W prints and here agin the 2200 & 4000 are at a disadvantage compared to the new K3 ultrachrome ink printers (2400, 4800 etc.). As pointed out the 4800 adresses all these problems but at a cost with back ink switchover. It would seem a possible middle ground would be the use of a Epson 4000 that somehow could now take the new K3 inks, which might lead to a marked reduction of brozing, gloss differentail etc. but would have to give up the superb neutrality of B&W printing unless a RIp was employed. At least the cost of black ink sitch-over would be eliminated and by it's ability of using k3 inks (if that could be figured out) would address the issues of know problems with glossy type RC papers. At this time, no one single printer that tackles all these issues at once...that in itself is a bit fustrating (but fun trying to figue out a solution). David

 

At 3:40 AM, Scott Graham said...

on the ink change over price, it would be about $30-40 US; somewhat less than half of a 220 ml cartridge which can be had for $80-85

but perhaps Andrew is talking Aust$ or?

Scott

 

At 7:56 AM, andrew said...

Yup, AU$. 220ml cartridges are AU$180 recommended retail here, about US$135. No doubt street price will be a little lower.

 

At 11:24 PM, sPECtre said...

I'm a nerd, definitively: when I saw the picture illustrating this blog entry, I thought that you printed a screen capture from Star Wars: it looks like a space vista seen from the window of the Millenium Falcon.

Pierre.

 

At 12:10 AM, Pete Walsh said...

cool Pierre! :p

Have you seen the final Star Wars movie? I'm hoping to see it later this week in the city.

 

At 5:21 AM, sPECtre said...

SW3? ot yet... Can't get off your blog ;)

I'm really thorn: I've got a n opportunity to get a 4000 for very cheap (a few hundreds euros)

It would not have the K3 inks, but would not use a ton since there is no need to swap blacks...

Pierre

 

At 6:51 AM, starboy said...

Hey, this may be too obvious to be radical, but instead of printing that huge all black grphic to use up 12ml of black, why not simply keep printing matte (after using the South African Method)until the matte (or photo black)ink in the hoses finally runs out?

12ml of black is almost the amount in an entire 2400 cart, so you could do quite a bit of printing, without wasting more than a ml. of ink or so.

This would take some planning ahead, to be sure, and you would probably have one ruined print where the blacks actually change over. But by monitoring ink usage, and with a bit of practice, you might be able to run an 8.5x11 Enhanced Matte sheet with a "garbage print" through at just right time.

 

At 12:32 PM, Pete Walsh said...

interesting idea starboy! I'm getting very tempted to change blacks back using the SA method just to see how it goes. Good point about how much ink 12ml is - the 2100 carts lasted me quite a while.

I guess one problem would be that due to the chip on the ink the printer would know the blacks have been swapped, and as a result of that some options would no longer be available in the driver, which could be a pain if for example you want to make use of the last photo black in the line, but the printer knows matte black is now installed - separate to how differently it may or may not use the different blacks.

 

At 12:58 PM, starboy said...

All true, Pete, and maybe it's not worth it in the "grand scheme of things," but it's probably worth a shot.

If you can get a handle on exactly what the trade-offs are, you may get some additional large prints with careful planning.

 

At 9:28 AM, Charlie said...

Epson sent 3 blank off carts for the cyan,magenta and yellow so that when changing black carts they are spared. I wonder why they dont send 7 blank carts so that the pump only purges the color being changed? Seems if they can close off cmy they should be able to close the others. I am sure there is a reason for it. If there is an Epson rep who can explain it I am curious to know.

BTW I have taken steps to stabilize my desk for the 4800. The 2200 would have my desk rocking a bit as it printed due to the rather spindly legs on the otherwise sturdy desk. I have added 4 4x4's on each side of the desk since I can only assume the more massive 4800 head will get the desk going more unless I do something. With my luck the rocking would hit the fundamental frequency of the desk and the massive printer, 22inch CRT monitor would come smashing down as the desk legs snapped. No doubt while I am downstairs in the kitchen making a coffee.

 

At 1:23 AM, Pete Walsh said...

Hi Charlie, the blanks are only currently used when draining the black line. All the ink carts then get put back in, and then the printer does a charge cycle.

To me the solution is include a few more smarts in the draining and charging system as clearly what they are using isn't ideal by a long shot (but probably reduces cost).

LOL about your desk stabilization! It's probably a good idea, separate to anything else it's heavy. The 4800 seems to run very smoothly vs the 2100, it does seem to smell more though - I think because of the amount of ink in the maintenance tray.

 

At 9:11 AM, Milt Taylor said...

I'm curious about the consumption of ink in both the 2400 and 4800 (cart swapping aside).

This might be difficult to say, but what do you reckon the cost of making a colour A3 print is? (Assume a landscape-tyle photo that has colour all over the page), but maybe this is immaterial).

$AUD is good, with street price on the inks.

 

At 11:16 PM, Pete Walsh said...

Hi Milt, I don't have that information available as yet - need to print a few more over time to get a semi accurate average cost.

 

Post a Comment

Return to Blog Home