Epson R800?

[gavstar]

Hi Chaps
I'm looking to get myself a fairly decent photo printer - up to A4. I've read that the Epson R800 is pretty much top of the game. Anyone out there have one/opinions on them? How about an alternative recommendations? I don't really want to spend more than £200 as I'm not a pro, but do appreciate good quality!
Thanks!

[Bee_Jay]

If you can, get the R800 - a top quality printer.

Equally as good if you just want to print the odd photo and are not selling them to anyone etc is the R340.

The RX620 is stunning though, and for £180 is also a scanner, copier and has a built in negative/slide scanner - very cute.

[ideo]

Agree with Bee Jay on the RX620. I have one and am very happy with it (and I am very fussy about image quality!). Haven't done too many scans with it but the ones I have came out fine.

[munky]

My girlfriend has the R800 and produces very good results from her canon EOS300D camera. I've got the Epson C84 which to my eye is about 80% as good. An annoyance with both printers (perhaps it applies to all inkjets) is that it goes through ink even when you're barely using it. I print a lot more black & white documents than photos, and even when not using colour for ages it still uses the ink, I believe due to head cleaning each time you switch it on. Also with both printers you can't print a black & white letter when one of the colour inks runs out..

[gavstar]

Thanks for the opinions guys. More more thing - I've read somewhere that the R800 can produce superb results as it uses Ultrachrome inks. Is this worth the extra cash? The RX620 is an all in one, with screen etc, so one would assume that the R800 is a better performer as it costs more and is purely a printer. What do you think?

[Bee_Jay]

The R800 will produce better quality prints as it uses 8 inks, one of them being a gloss optimiser. The images are definitely better from the R800, thogh how much better is a matter of opinion - how picky are you?

[gavstar]

To be honest, it'll be my first photo printer. I'll be printing images from a compact - looking at getting the Ricoh Caplio R3, mainly cos of the superb zoom range. The prints will be used for friends/family etc, and for framing around the house.
Maybe i am going OTT on this and don't need such a good printer, but I like to buy the best that I can of things....

[Bee_Jay]

In which case, I stick with my first answer - as with all technology try and get the best you can afford at the time. If you can afford the R800 it's worth it, but the cheaper R340 is a very close second.

[poah]

munky said:

My girlfriend has the R800 and produces very good results from her canon EOS300D camera. I've got the Epson C84 which to my eye is about 80% as good. An annoyance with both printers (perhaps it applies to all inkjets) is that it goes through ink even when you're barely using it. I print a lot more black & white documents than photos, and even when not using colour for ages it still uses the ink, I believe due to head cleaning each time you switch it on. Also with both printers you can't print a black & white letter when one of the colour inks runs out..

have you adjusted the ink concentration. I never use the best photo quality and use a 5% decrease in colour. saves a lot of ink

[munky]

Actually I think I was talking nonsense, she has the R200 with 6 ink carts. Still very good though.

poah - most of the time I just use the draft setting, except when printing formal letters or photos. I'll look for the concentration setting though, good suggestion. Just annoying that it uses up colour ink even when not printing colour. Other option I guess is to refill colour cartridges with black ink and swap in colour carts when I need them, but out of the printer they're bound to dry up.

[happy snapper]

gavstar said:

Hi Chaps I'm looking to get myself a fairly decent photo printer - up to A4. I've read that the Epson R800 is pretty much top of the game. Anyone out there have one/opinions on them? How about an alternative recommendations? I don't really want to spend more than £200 as I'm not a pro, but do appreciate good quality! Thanks!

I have two printers both Epson R300 and a 1290 with the right paper or canvas they both produce superb results. I use the R300 for proofs and if I need to take a printer on my travels. The 1290 have a Fotospeed inflow system fitted and will print up to A3+ all my canvas prints are produced on that it works extremely well with many paper types, once I got the profiles sorted.

The R300 was cheap about £100 with monitor but replacement cartridges are £40 a set, the inks will fade unless kept out of sunlight. The 1290 with Ink flow is £150 a refill but I get 18 months of printing and it’s not going to fade.

[gavstar]

happy snapper said:

The R300 was cheap about £100 with monitor but replacement cartridges are £40 a set, the inks will fade unless kept out of sunlight. The 1290 with Ink flow is £150 a refill but I get 18 months of printing and it’s not going to fade.

Will all photo printer prints fade in the sun? The R800 claims to be fade-proof for 80 years.

[happy snapper]

gavstar said:

happy snapper said: The R300 was cheap about £100 with monitor but replacement cartridges are £40 a set, the inks will fade unless kept out of sunlight. The 1290 with Ink flow is £150 a refill but I get 18 months of printing and it’s not going to fade. Will all photo printer prints fade in the sun? The R800 claims to be fade-proof for 80 years.

If you go to epson web site and read how the test were done?

Yes true but? I use a Epson 1290 with its original Epson cartridges which are not permanent, the Epson documentation does say 75 year plus and they test the fade in fluorescent light not sunlight.

www.epson.co.uk/products/ink...Photo_1290S.htm


The link below has been removed by epsom from thier web site but it detailed the test process www.epson.co.uk/contact/broc...RABrite_Ink.pdf

and thier storage info (taken from the web site)

“Storing your prints in photo albums protects them from both airborne contaminants and light and assures them the longest life. We recommend using acid-free, archival sleeves that are commonly available from camera shops and other retailers.
If you’re displaying your prints in picture frames, mount them under glass to minimize exposure to humidity, cigarette smoke, and other atmospheric contaminants.
Avoid placing them in direct sunlight or near sources of bright light. Your displayed prints will last longer when protected from the environment, but will not last as long as prints stored in photo albums.”

I get kodak to produce photographs from my digital images proofs work out at about 20p a copy FTP the files to them and 48 hours later the proofs are back through the letter box or sent direct to client.

[munky]

Three printers were compared on some TV show recently, possibly the gadget show IIRC. They compared 3 printers, I think they were a Lexmark, Epson and Canon, compared on things like price of printer, price per print, how long the carts last and how many prints per cartridge set, and... fading. Anyway the Epson won overall, and was way better on the fade test. They used some sort of sun lamp, and the Epson prints didn't fade at all whereas the other two did - badly. Note that they used Epson DuraBrite ink in the Epson printer of course.

Doesn't fading depend on whether the ink is a dye based or a pigment based ink? The latter is a lot more fade resistant. Also depends on the paper used, apparently. Anyway some info about it here: www.inksupply.com/inks.cfm

Not related to fading, but I did a little experiment a few days ago. Found a digital photo of my niece, cropped it and brightened it up a bit using that histogram thing on Photoshop Elements (i'm not good enough to justify the full version!). Printed it 3 different ways and got very different results - 1 I printed from PhotoShop Elements, on an Epson C84 Photo Printer (4 ink), with Epson DuraBrite photo paper (200 g/m2, supposedly glossy) but with non-Epson ink. What appeared yellow on the screen came out more orange on the photo. Then emailed the edited pic to my girlfriend, who printed it once from Photoshop (full version) and once from Dell photo software. Both from her Epson R200 printer (6 ink), using Epson ink, Epson paper.

The one printed on my C84 was darker, and as mentioned yellows came out orangey. The one on the R200 from PhotoShop was wierd, good yellow but some wooden cupbards in the background came up a really unnatural orange rather than wood coloured, and some parts of the photo appear really fuzzy. Finally the same photo on the same printer printed from the Dell software came out a lot better - good natural colour, good resolution, but it chopped of part of my niece's head. Finally for some reason her Epson paper (even on the white unprinted border) appears glossier than my Epson paper, even though I have the "glossy" paper.

In all 3 photos printed, all the "enhance" options in the print dialogue box were turned off with the intention of getting a result close

Perhaps I should scan the photos and put them up on a new thread, but it's odd that there is such a dramatic difference, and shows that you can spend time getting a photo just as you want it with the software, but then what you print can be so different and then depend as much on the printer, ink and surprisingly software that was simply used to print it.

[Bee_Jay]

To be honest, playing about with printers with regards to comparing colours on different prints and papers etc. only makes sense when you are using a colour managed process with customer profiles from start to finish.

Anything else and you are at the mercy of lots of wierd and wonderful 'enhancement' algorithms over which you have no control...

[munky]

Bee_Jay said:

only makes sense when you are using a colour managed process with customer profiles from start to finish.

So what are they then? Anything related to ICC profiles? Came across this page last night, when doing a little research: www.color.org/version4html.html which appears all wrong on my screen, but I've no idea how I'd correct this or if I even need to.

I printed out 12 4x6 copies of the same photo last night, each time with a different combination of software used to print and print driver settings - for the colour management, quality setting, digital camera correction on/off, "Super Microweave" on/off, etc. and it seems to make sod all difference (maybe because it's a high res 1200x1600 photo to begin with, so there's no low-res problems to resolve, and i'm only printing it at 4x6" ). On the back of each I wrote the exact combination of settings used. Nearly all seem to suffer from looking "grainy", which on closer inspection shows up speckles of magenta ink everywhere. I did get one near perfect photo in terms of print quality without this speckling, so I went back to the original photo to crop it better and brighten it a bit, and then printed it with the same settings. And.. got a different result. This time the top 10% of the photo is perfect, but then there's a visible and distinct change in the quality, where the lower 90% of the photo has this speckling effect. Very odd. On most of the prints this appears on 100% of the photo. Any ideas? It's driving me mad.

>> Edited by munky on Thursday 12th January 01:49

[Bee_Jay]

I meant custom profiles (to used to typing the word customer in my job!)

Yes, I meant ICC profiles. Buy the book "Getting Colour Right" by Michael Walker, it is in my opinion the definitive guide and will make sure you get the results you want.

Also search in this forum, I am sure the colour management was discussed at tlength last year.

In short, buy a screen calibration device like the Colorvision Spyder to profile your monitor, download printing profiles from your printer and/or paper manufacturer. Read a bit on how to use profiles in Windows (I recommend QImage for printing) and then you should be 99% of the way there and getting some excellent quality prints. The only better thing you can do is pay to get various custom profiles done for each of your paper/printer combinations or buy your own print profiler.

[Bee_Jay]

munky said:

I printed out 12 4x6 copies of the same photo last night, each time with a different combination of software used to print and print driver settings - for the colour management, quality setting, digital camera correction on/off, "Super Microweave" on/off, etc. and it seems to make sod all difference (maybe because it's a high res 1200x1600 photo to begin with, so there's no low-res problems to resolve, and i'm only printing it at 4x6" ). On the back of each I wrote the exact combination of settings used. Nearly all seem to suffer from looking "grainy", which on closer inspection shows up speckles of magenta ink everywhere. I did get one near perfect photo in terms of print quality without this speckling, so I went back to the original photo to crop it better and brighten it a bit, and then printed it with the same settings. And.. got a different result. This time the top 10% of the photo is perfect, but then there's a visible and distinct change in the quality, where the lower 90% of the photo has this speckling effect. Very odd. On most of the prints this appears on 100% of the photo. Any ideas? It's driving me mad.

Sounds like you have some clogged heads, specifically on the magenta.

[ehasler]

Bee_Jay said:

Also search in this forum, I am sure the colour management was discussed at tlength last year.

This thread may be useful, and has a couple of links to other threads on the subject.