Normally we found it was more cost effective to use a pro-lab for sizes larger than A4. However with more and more portrait work being undertaken and framed prints seemingly becoming more popular we decided we needed an A2 Printer, but which one?
First problems were a lack of choice. The obvious printer to go for was the Epson pro 4880 but we just couldn't get our heads around the whole swapping inks thing and the associated costs of doing so. The same reason applied to the 3800. Canon has no A2 [discounting the LP17] nor did Hp. So what to choose?
The decision was to opt for an A3+ machine for now and await the new Epson A2 printer, which surely must do away with the swapping of the black inks in its next incarnation? Or maybe there will be a new Canon or HP by then?
Next dilemma, which A3+ printer? We were moving up from the Canon ip8500 which was a superb, quick & reliable printer but its endless head cleanings and wastage of ink in doing so was driving us mad. If you missed one day of printing you would be subjected to the soul destroying hiss, hiss of pound notes being squeezed through the heads and away into the inner sanctum to be lost forever in a gloop of liquid gold or, should i say, liquid brown sludge with hints of green running through it, which a more accurate metaphor would be, costing the same as gold! Precious ink lost forever, never to be impregnated into the next work of art that would roll out of the ivisualise stable door to be admired for generations, or possibly less should the sun get to it first!
So the Epson R2880 was off the list because of the stupid black ink thing leaving the Canon pro 9500 and the HP 9180 to do battle to the death for the honour of serving the iVisualise cause.
So if your like us, which is probably why your reading this in the first place, it was off to tappity tapp into the might of the Google search engine to read all the reviews our little minds could absorb...so not much then.
So the first crippling blows were struck by HP. In the excellent and thorough review site http://photo-i.co.uk/ the Canon had a problem printing borderless onto fine art paper. Wow 'that's not on we thought,' we can't have a printer that's not house trained so to speak, which in retrospect was harsh as we never print onto fine art paper anyway....but we may want to one day was our reasoning.
But the Canon fought back and it was the HP that received the inevitable mortal blow. Its unique and much praised self cleaning programme had a horrible sting in its tail. After around the two year mark the NEDD sensor seems to clog with all the pigment ink that had been flushed keeping the heads clean causing the printer to go into overdrive with ever increasing frequency of cleaning cycles and the inevitable heart wrenching waste of pound notes being squirted into the abyss, sounding familiar? Maybe that was what was wrong with our ip8500? To be fair you could solve this problem by dismantling the printer and cleaning it but I'm afraid that's not on our job description and is certainly more than our jobs worth so it looked like the Canon had won!
So we hot footed it down to the excellent new Park Camera facilities at Burgess Hill to view the printer and get some expert advice. Two hours later much to the relief of the poor salesman we emerged clutching our new born proudly to our chest and lay her lovingly in the boot swathed in blankets to bring her safely to the comfy fold of home iVisualise. We would name her Princess... Epson R2880 ......and she would be loved!
Now we know what your thinking....how did that happen?
Ok, ok,here's the reason why. In coming to the final decision i weighed up all the factors which included;
- Ink cost, prices verse size of cartridge. HP won here but only by a margin of 10%, small enough saving to ignore
- Cost of media. Canon slightly in the lead but only by a margin which again small enough to ignore.
- Cost. Hp wins at the time being sub £400 with Epson next at £429 and the Canon last at above £500. So compared to the Canon the other two give you a whole set of inks extra in cost saving. This was December 08 since then the price of the Epson has risen to the same of the Canon.
- Quality. Lets gets this straight. All these printers are capable of a quality which far exceeds my abilities as a photographer! Whether one has a larger colour gamut over the over or smaller picolitre drop size is really in material in real world terms. I nearly bought the HP because of one fabulous BW print sample of a fisherman sitting next to his boat, nets in the background etc, but you have to pinch yourself and realise all these printers are capable of producing this print but am I, as a photographer, capable of providing these printers with the quality of picture they deserve. I think not!
- Reliability. Hard to determine as they all seem to be fairly reliable apart from the HP and its excess cleaning problems.
In the end it was Epson's market penetration and also because it was the newest of the printers. Don't you just hate it when you buy a product and then a month later its all singing all dancing replacement arrives to chants of 'i don't believe you own a piece of so yesterdays news darling!' Shallow i know but relative as it happens to me all the time. Also this printer can except rolls which you may think is not relevant to you but you will be surprised once you catch the panoramic bug of how useful this is! So in the end the Epson won and as I continue to use her I am constantly reminded that for my requirements I made the right choice.
So as a printer how does she perform? In a nutshell faultless superb quality prints as long as you use a good profile. As a tip the ones from the Epson USA website are spot on you can find them here. A word of caution during the first few prints the printer undertook 3 cleaning cycles, one before each print! a feeling of De ja vu prevailed and after a concerned phone call to Epson they assured me that the printer did not perform scheduled cleaning and that the cause could be the USB cable. The same cable used on the old Canon IP8500 which I changed and have had no further cleaning cycles performed since. Makes me wonder if this was the problem with the Canon?
Photo Black & Matt Black
Lets tackle the Photo Black [PB] & Matt Black [MB] issue. We use in the studio for portraits either a semi Matt or lustre/pearl type paper. We have rarely used Matt papers so in reality the swapping will rarely be an issue. As a business cost per print is everything to us as each small saving does actually add up to a substantial cost saving throughout the year. So the hunt was on for a replacement low cost paper. Now once you get into the realms of third party papers you begin to realise that its Epson that seems to be the better supported printer for items such as ICC profiles to test their papers with. Also should you wish to move over to a third party continuous ink system [CIS] again you realise that it is Epson that is the better supported manufacturer. Now in testing some third party papers, Permajet in particular will give you profiles to use on Matt papers using the Photo black and the Epson Photo glossy driver setting. I have read that you only loose 0.2 of D-Max using photo black over the Matt and have to say that the BW test prints we tried on the Matt fine art papers were excellent using the PB.
If you are looking for the last word in D-Max [or the depth of your blacks] then you really should not be printing on Matt papers in the first place as the coated papers which require the use of the PB will produce the deepest blacks especially with the new Bartya type papers. Remember that the Matt papers are generally used because of their archival qualities or you just happen to prefer the Matt look for your work. If your a fine art photographer then you do not need this review as you will know what you need from a printer and the paper you use already.
So, you really need to be honest with yourself and determine if you will need to print on Matt papers and if so, see if using the PB ink delivers the goods for you. Try the Permajet fine art test packs using their profiles for PB to help you in you testing. With the Epson you need to use a driver setting for one of the Epson coated papers otherwise it will lock up warning you cannot proceed without changing to MB, which Permajet do provide. If your happy with the result just bare in mind that many third party paper manufacturers will produce you a bespoke profile for your printer, just make sure you tell them you want to use PB and which driver setting do they recommend. If you, like us, are happy with the results then the issue of swapping the blacks becomes a non issue.
Ink usage.
Since installing the first set of ink carts we have so far printed;
- 31 A4 [12 of which are BW]
- 3 x 10 x 8
- 7 x A3+
- 2 x 13 x 30" Panoramas
That equates in sales from our studio and events a total revenue income of £517. We charge more for our sittings and less for our products than most studios so this is a conservative income for many a studio or pro photographer. We are just needing to change three of the cartridges Vivid Light Megenta, Light Black & PB. Light Light Black is reading low with Light Cyan 1/3 full, yellow 1/2 full, Cyan & Vivid Magenta 3/4 full. You have to take into account also that as these are the first ink cartridges so a percentage of the ink was used to charge the lines, so the yield will be higher from subsequent cartridges.The three remaining cartridges are at half level. The cost on the web of a new cartridge varies between £9 -£10 we find MX2 the best prices so far when they have it in stock, so make sure your not in a hurry before you buy from them.
We are pleased with this and taking into account our paper cost we would comfortably expect to see a 15% running cost based on our prices. Looking at what we have now it seems that this whole amount of prints could be printed again with just the change of five carts possibly even more prints by a margin of 15% due to the aforementioned difference of yield due to charging of the lines from the first set. If you are not selling your work and you are printing for pleasure this will at least give you some indication of how many prints you will be able to produce before running low on ink.
Reliability
Obviously too early to tell but no clogged heads with the longest period between printing being 3 days. Also we do leave the printer continuously on as Epson tech dept recommended to us. We will update this post should we have any problems in the long term.
Conclusion
An excellent printer that produces first class results. If you want to delve beyond Epson media such as papers or CIS or want authoritative reviews and information from the web then for now Epson is the best supported and that cannot be too underrated as an important consideration in your buying decision. We will move this printer over to a third party CIS system once we have a new A2 in place. The A2's larger cart sizes bring the cost of printing to an acceptable level so we see this printer possibly being dedicated to a pure BW machine, we will keep you updated on this. Sorry if this is not enough of a technical review as you may of hoped for but there are far better and more knowledgeable reviewers on the web that have already done this for all three of these printers. This, however, is more of an insight into real buying decisions that influence me as a photographer and my business which in many reviews are seldom touched on.
Epson Continuous ink systems use ink tanks which are designed to sit beside a printer. Due to which Continuous ink systems result in a saving of approximately 90% due to the bulk feed.
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