Epson 4800

Anyone out there have hands on experience with the Epson 4800? We are considering investing in another printer to create our brochures. We currently use an Epson 2200. It does a pretty good job, but have had trouble with color of the images shifting from printout to printout.

Much of our work is interiors of homes. More and more we are finding combinations of fluorescent and incandescent lighting that require the use of multiple filters while photographing or PS adjustments to look natural. While the first few of our printouts come close to the images on our monitors, brochures printed later using the same profiles will have unpleasant green or pinkish casts.

We would really like a printer that produces documents that look reasonably the same over time.

Epson's literature reports each printer is calibrated at the factory for consistency, but over time do color settings drift?

Your comments, as always, are appreciated.

Thanks!
Bill

Bill,

When you refer to "printout to printout," do you mean differences with each brochure....or with each batch of 100 or 200, etc?

Dave,

I can see a noticeable shift in colors after five to ten prints.

I should note that I am using genuine Epson ink and generally use paper from Red River, though I also will use Epson paper or a generic brand. My printing on matte paper is more consistent than on glossy paper.

Bill,

I can't comment on the 2200 but I do use Red River paper exclusively, mostly matte, a couple of different surfaces. When printing note cards I will often a batch of cards in groups of 50 and can't say that I have ever noticed a color shift. Cards of this sort I generally print on an R800 that njust sits there and chugs away.

It sounds to me like there's a problem with your printer. Have you had this problem from the time you first started using the printer or is it a recent development? I don't do a lot of color photography but I recently printed the same photograph 20 times on Epson Velvet Fine Art paper with my 2200 and every photograph looked identical to me, certainly no color casts. I can't imagine that it matters for purposes of your problem but FWIW I use MIS Eboni black ink instead of Epson's black but that's done because most of the photographs I print are black and white and the Eboni gives my photographs a slightly cooler look than the Epson inks which tend to be on the warm side. Of course monitors do shift over time but certainly not in the space of printing five or ten photographs.

Brian,

This has been an ongoing problem with my 2200, or should I say the past three 2200's I have used. I originally bought my first 2200 in Decmber. In February the paperfeed mechanism failed and Epson replaced it. Last month, the replacement developed a glitch in the ROM where it would randomly put fine, one inch lines in the print and Epson graciously replaced it. The current unit works as well as the others did out of the box, but all three suffered the drift in colors that I referred to.

Sorry Bill,

I'm at a loss. It's never happened to me. The only thing I can think of is that one of the color nozzles is putting down slightly less ink over time, or one of the feeder hoses is being pinched, blocking flow in some way. This would result in anything from a mild to severe shift in a printing session.

I'd contact Epson to see what their thoughts are on the matter.

Best of luck.

I am very impressed with the 4800 for the 3 or 4 weeks I've had it. Consistency that you would expect. Black & white prints that are quite satisfying. However, you should consider a color laser printer, too. We just received a Konica Minolta 7300, that prints slightly over 11 x 17", perfect for 4 sided brochures made from one fold of the ledger size paper stock. Still so new that I can't report a review yet, but it's made for brochures...

I have heard, though I am no expert, that the 4800, 7800, and 9800 are all calibrated at the factory, but the 2200/2400 printers are not. I have used the 4800, 7600, and 9600 and have had colors very close to each other even when individual prints have been made in different months with many other prints in between. I have used the 4800 extensively and feel that you will get a hugely noticeable difference from it versus the 2200 you have been using.

The 4800 is a wonderful, very consistent printer. I had the 2200 before it, and I always had trouble getting the print to match the monitor. The 4800 simply cranks out beautiful prints time after time. Mine is too new to comment on the clogging issue, but I have read elsewhere that the "pro" Epsons are much less prone to clogging than the "consumer" models (whether this is a more powerful pump, more intelligent head cleanings, or what, I can't say). The 4800 is also MUCH cheaper to run (less than half the cost per square foot) than the smaller printers, due to economies in ink and paper pricing (110 ml cartridges for the 4800 cost only 5 times as much as ~10 ml cartridges for the 2200, 220 ml cartridges (also supported by the 4800) are only as much as 8 ~10 ml cartridges, 16 inch roll paper is half the cost per square foot of 13x19 sheets). The machine I haven't tried is the 2400, so I have no idea how much of the consistency of the 4800 compared to the 2200 is the new inks versus the "pro" build quality and internal profiling of the larger machines. My one warning about the 4800 is that it is huge and very heavy-nearly 3 feet wide and 90 lbs!

-Dan