More printers...which to buy?
Discussion
I recently bought the 9950, after using a 1290 for a couple of years.
There is no comparison on the quality for photo work. The vibrancy of colour and level of fine detail has to be seen to be believed. Additionally the canon will output an A3 borderless in approx 2 minutes. The Epson will take around 20-25!
There is no comparison on the quality for photo work. The vibrancy of colour and level of fine detail has to be seen to be believed. Additionally the canon will output an A3 borderless in approx 2 minutes. The Epson will take around 20-25!
The 1290 is a good design, I had great success with its immediate predecessor the 1270, but its getting a bit old now. I'd go for something with separate ink tanks for each colour as they'll be more economical. Haven't used the Canon but seen it demonstrated and I was impressed. Either one will give perfectly satisfactory results, but I can vouch for the durability of the Epson Ultrachrome inks when used with Epson paper.
V6GTO said:
Cheers Stuh!
Any more? Ed, what's your take on this? And Stuart,(srider) you a thing or two about printers, what do you think?
Martin.
>> Edited by V6GTO on Monday 18th April 15:27
I'd have to say for me it would be a toss up between the Canon and the Epson 1800. As you know, I have the Canon and it is a definite step up from the Epson 1290. Most importantly, its much much quicker. As other people have said the Epson took about 30 minutes to do a super A3 page, the Canon takes about five! The quality of the Canon is also noticeably better, although the Epson is still better than any print I've seen from film, given a good file to work with. I had a lot of issues matching colours with the Epson is well, although I was being extremely picky. I ended up buying a hardware colour calibrator and it produced excellent results after that. I found that the default printer settings with the Canon driver produced excellent results out of the box.
There are a couple of downsides to the Canon, from what I've heard print life is not strong point. I don't think this will be huge problem for myself as the print should still last quite well when under glass, but I don't think I'd be confident selling prints from this printer for any sensible amount of money. The range of papers that are available from Canon isn't as large as that for the Epsons, and is quite expensive. Having said that the papers they do make are of excellent quality.
From what I've read it would seem that the Epson 1800 does everything my Canon does, with none of the downsides. It's fast, cheaper, has the full range of Epson papers available, and has long life inks. I suspect if I was buying now it would be the one I would go for, but the Canon is still an awesome printer.
>> Edited by srider on Tuesday 19th April 09:59
V6GTO said:Firstly, what sort of printing are you likely to do - gloss or matte?
I've decided to take the plunge and get an A3+ printer. I was really impressed with Matt's Epson 1290.
So the question is...which of the following is best for me, for printing images for home and competition entries?
Canon i9950
Emson 1290
Epson 1800
Other
Cheers guys,
Martin.
If it's gloss, then I'd go for the Epson 1800. Matte, and I'd go for the Epson 2100.
Reasons? The 2100 is fantastic for "fine art" type matte prints, which are probably better for framing and hanging on your wall, however it's not so good at glossy prints due to the way the pigment ink sits on top of the paper.
Glossy output is better on the 1290, however this uses dye based inks which don't have the same durability or gamut as the pigment inks, plus it's quite an old printer now.
The very new 1800 is basically a glossy-enhanced version of the 2100 (with the long-lasting pigment inks)/A3 version of the Epson R800. I've not had a close look at the output of either of these printers, but understand it is very good and if I wanted glossy output, this is the one I'd go for.
Then again, you could always use the services of someone like www.photobox.co.uk who use printers like the Fuji Frontier which produce prints which look even better, and more like "proper" photos than even the best inkjets (IMHO). I've had a couple of A3 prints done, and have been very impressed.
I've managed to get very accurate colours out of my Epson, but this does take a bit of experimentation with various paper types and profiles, and a custom profile would give even better results if you wanted to go down that route.
If you want to get an idea of the 2100 matte output, you can send off for a trial print from the Epson 4000 here. This uses the same inks as the 2100, so will give you an idea of the type of output you can get.
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