Large format Epson Printers Advice

[Rider]

I've been using an Epson 4000 for years. I'm very happy with the 2-dimensional artwork and surface design on matt papers; less happy but can live with photographs on luster paper. Not so happy with wasteful ink clogging.

The most important use for me is 2-dimensional artwork and surface design on matt work (where it's used professionally). Photography is a hobby.

From time to time, I may want to print wider than 17", but am not sure whether to outsource those prints.

I've been thinking of adding a new printer (i) in order to take advantage of newer inks, (ii) avoid expensive clogging and (iii) print wider than 17".

The printers I'm thinking about are:

Epson 4880, Epson 7880 and Epson 7900. I know nothing about Canon and HP printers.

Do you have any big picture suggestions or things I should be aware of in terms of (i) print quality or (ii) printing costs that I should be aware of or investigate before deciding whether to upgrade, and to which printer?

[venchka]

Investigate the Canon iPF 5000 and slightly newer iPF 5100. They are 17" printers. Unless you do a lot of printing wider than 17", it may be more economical to send the wide stuff out. I know someone who is MOST particular about his photo printing and he is quite happy with the Canon iPF 5000. The folks at Luminous Landscape wrote about the Canon iPF 5000.

http://www.luminous-landscape.com/reviews/printers/canon-ipf5000.shtml

http://www.luminous-landscape.com/reviews/printers/canon-5000-terms.shtml

If you must have a printer for stock wider than 17", I was never here.

Good luck!

Wayne

[Don Boyd]

Luminous-landscape.com recently posted its user report on the 7900. The author seems to be very happy with it:

http://www.luminous-landscape.com/reviews/printers/7900-9900.shtml

[PenGun]

They do seem to like everything. I removed them from my critical evaluation of stuff because of this.

[bob carnie]

Currently we use a Cannon 9000 60inch printer and are very happy with it, before that we used Epson 9600's which served us well.
After one week of use with the Cannon we gave away the two Epsons 9600 .

Last fall I used an Epson 7800 24inch on a week long project away from the Lab and was very impressed indeed with the unit.

I would say that any of the Current main brand, Cannon, Epson, HP , Roland all have there strengths and weaknesses over one another but at the end of the day they all are pretty impressive devices. I don't think you can go wrong.

Our thinking two- three years of great usage for each device and then move on to the better and best that is currently being offered. I am sure they are built this way to keep the buyer hooked.

[Doug Dolde]

I bought a 7900 in March. It is awesome !

[falth j]

Pehaps...


you could also take into consideration the HP designjet z3100, or the z3200 series.


If you have the space, because it needs it own stand as weighs about 150 lbs, and the shipping weight is listed at 240 lbs.


I attended a workshop when the z3100 had been on the market for about a year, and had a chance to compare it with a couple of epsons and a canon.


It is basically a roll printer, but with some patience, you can learn to coax sheets out of it as well.


Not only were the prints remarkable at the time, but for the money today, and the built-in spectrophotometer for making paper profiles, you probably can't go wrong.


Since the z3100 has been replaced by the z3200, the price on the internet has dropped to the point were you can pick one up a 24" factory new model for about $1,400.00, from an authorized HP retail partner, shipping included, and with a little shoping you can cut the price of the 130ml inks to a manageable amount.

[Bill L.]

I have a 4800 and a 9800 - both are great. The 4800 clogs reasonably frequently, but the 9800 hasn't clogged yet in over a year of use. The one thing that the 4800 (et seq) has over the 7XXX/9XXX series is the paper tray. With the larger printers you either need to feed one sheet at a time or (much more likely) feed in roll paper. We keep a 44" role of canvas in the 9800 - it works wonderfully as a canvas printer for gallery wrap photos. I put in a stack of whatever size paper I need into the paper tray of the 4800, and let it chug away.

Cheers!
Bill

[Rider]

Do you believe that the newer inks are truly an improvement over the the Epson 4000 for non-photographic designs on matt paper?

[D. Bryant]

Since the z3100 has been replaced by the z3200, the price on the internet has dropped to the point were you can pick one up a 24" factory new model for about $1,400.00, from an authorized HP retail partner, shipping included, and with a little shoping you can cut the price of the 130ml inks to a manageable amount.

I tried finding Z3100 printers on web for $1400 and failed to find any near that price. Can you point me to a source for that deal?

Thanks,

Don Bryant

[Bill L.]

I've never had the 4000, but I did have a 2200, which IIRC was a similar ink set. I found the 4800 had a slightly wider gamut than the 2200, and I tended to like the darker prints better, but not sure how much that was a profiling issue. My understanding was that the 4800 vs. 4000 had less metamerism, but can't comment from personal experience. All my printing is on matte paper. The newer printers are supposed to have an even wider gamut - every time my wife wants to print wild and out of gamut flowers on the 9800, I keep reminding her that if she does too much, we'll have to buy a 9900 ;)

Cheers!
Bill

Bill

[Martin Miksch]

I use the Canon IPF 6100 and I am very happy with printing quality and speed.
Regards
Martin

[Klyment Tan]

I am soon to be a former Epson 9800 user (and soon to be an Epson 9900 user), former user of the Epson 9600, 4000, 4800, R800, and have worked with the 9880 and 7880 as well. I don't have any longterm hands on experience with Canon's and HP's competitive products. When I was using the 9600 as my primary printer, I experimented with several third party ink sets. All of these ink sets gave me wider gamut, noticeably higher dMax on matte substrates (Epson's original Ultrachrome matte black isn't amazing). They all clogged similarly to the OEM inkset which I ran until the original warranty expired. Except for one inkset from MIS Associates . . . that ink had sediments in it which severely clogged the printer forcing it to require a few priming cycles with cleaning fluid. My Epson 9800 and former 4800 rarely clog. I researched reviews and visited owners of the printers (including owners of current HPs and Canon's). All three manufacturers have printers that, for most purposes, will produce similarly high quality output. The differences are in overall consumables cost, usability of the OEM driver, and ergonomics. To my knowledge, HP's Z3100 printers are still crippled by small ink cartridges . . . 130mL I think. While cost per milliliter of ink is similar to that of other current printers, I believe that all of these large format inkjet printers use some sort of droplet counter and not an actual measure of what is left inside each ink cartridge to determine when replacement is required. Smaller cartridges usually means more left over ink as a percentage of the entire cartridge. Furthermore, printers tend to go through some sort of priming cycle after you insert a new cartridge and this also uses ink. Staking out a printer as you are expecting a cartridge to run out wastes time and the smaller the cartridges, the more frequently you'll be waiting near your printer to switch cartridges . . . to a degree (sometimes cartridges will run out at roughly the same time but you get the idea).

With the x900 series, Epson FINALLY does away with the artificial need to do a wasteful and time consuming ink switch when you want to switch from matte to glossy black ink in a printer under 64". Until the release of the Epson 9900, I was going to go Canon with the IPF8100 for this reason. I wouldn't recommend the 7880 that you were considering if you are doing matte prints and sometimes use photo papers as well. That, combined with the increased print speed of the x900 series will easily pay for the price difference in time savings.

I think that Epson's paper feed choices even on the x800 and x880 printers is more ergonomic than Canon's which is in turn more ergonomic than HP which has you sort of loading paper from behind. The new cutter in the 9900 is supposedly rated to cut fine art papers and canvas whereas with your Epson 4000 (and the entire x800 and x880 series printers), Epson recommended against using the integrated $100 cutter blade to cut canvas as it would prematurely dull the blade and leave a lot of dust in the printer which could clog stuff.

One thing that I haven't experimented with much with the Epson x900 series printers is with profiling and how easily it would be to create a good printing profile without a RIP. Moving from light-fi as with the x880 and x800 Epsons to the hi-fi ink set of the 9900, the z3100, or the Canon IPF printers can be a difficult transition. I know that after attempting to create a robust profile for the Canon IPF8100 with just ProfileMaker and without a RIP, I gave up after a fruitless week of messing around. You can get your colours pretty accurate with some substrates but with others the colours were accurate in some areas but not in others, depending on the images. The printer that I was profiling was hooked up to a computer with Ergosoft Postrprint and after some fiddling with that, creating a profile was no problem.