At 10:21 PM, Anonymous said...

Sort of on Topic...

Pete, my girlfriend and I are looking into the 4800, the biggest question I have is, What are the running costs? Have you had to replace the ink cartridges yet? If so how many pages have you printed? I know it's a subjective question, based on what colours you're printing etc, but I can't find anywhere that gives a typical cost per A2 print.

Thanks

Rob A.

 

At 6:32 PM, Josh said...

Hi Pete,

Thank you for sharing and a most wonderful blog!

Hope this is not off-topic. But I was wondering if you saved yr raw in tiffs (16 bits -> more info -> higher quality?). And if you did yr pp using tiff files, did you see any difference in final print quality ( raw->jpeg->print route vs raw->tiff->jpeg->print )?

I hv not done any printing yet.

Please ignore if you didn't use that route.

TIA!

 

At 12:43 AM, Pete Walsh said...

Hi Josh I generally use different workflows depending on the image and what it's being used for.

For image files that are destined to end up as prints for sale, I convert the raw file to a 16bit tiff, in either Prophoto or AdobeRGB depending on clipping, and work in 16bit. I don't mind taking the performance and file size hit when the files are critical and there aren't that many of them.

For anything where there's a larger number of files/not as critical/I'm not printing, they're usually pushed through from RAW as 8bit/AdobeRGB files.

jpg isn't typically part of my workflow - apart from output for web or emailing , so can't really comment on that.

 

At 12:53 AM, Pete Walsh said...

Hi Rob, I can't comment too much on costs apart from saying the saving is primarily in the cost per ml to purchase the ink vs something like the 2400, not in the actual ink usage per print which in theory should be pretty much the same, and not that different I would expect to the older series - so the thing to really compare is the cost per ml of ink.

You can make a rough guesstimate using this ink usage data for a standard A4 test print, but even according to Epson it's not entirely accurate.

I need to sit down and work out approx running costs for the 4800 - haven't got to that yet as it's not entirely critical. I did do it with the 2100 over six months or so and it was acceptable cost-wise, so given the per ml saving in ink with the 4800 and how it's performing generally it looks like it's where it should be.

 

At 4:33 PM, Josh said...

Thanks for yr reply, Pete!

Previously I used 16-bit TIFs after pp my raw files in Nikon Capture -- but thought it was overkill as compressed D70 NEFs are in 12-bit (or 8-9 bit after lossy cmpression) -- though saving in 16-bit TIF over 8-bit JPEG may preserve more data, I could always go back to my original NEF if I needed to re-do the image file.

Or am I missing osmething here? :D

warm rgds

josh

 

At 10:18 AM, Pete Walsh said...

Hi Josh, if you're converting into the Prophoto color space you really need to be working with 16 bit files (in Photoshop that is, I'm not referring to the data in the unonverted raw file). There's a lot of information online why this is so, and you can see it for yourself in Photoshop.

That's not to say you should always work in Prophoto i.e. if there's no clipping in aRGB.

I can't see why anyone would choose to archive or save their working files as JPEG over TIF (including 8bit TIF). Storage is cheap, why throw away data. Separately, Adobe essentially owns TIF, so it more or less supports just about everything PSD does.

 

At 2:56 AM, Josh said...

Thanks, Pete -- appreciate yr inputs.

 

At 5:02 AM, StephenH said...

Re ink usage info, don't forget the report available for recent prints using the Epson LFP Remote Panel. Click "Media Adjustment, then "View" to see info about recent print jobs. It gives you mls used for each ink on each print.

 

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