Tim, thanks for the infos. Has someone heard of an upgrade in inks and firmware promised by Epson for the 2000P?
Tim, thanks for the infos. Has someone heard of an upgrade in inks and firmware promised by Epson for the 2000P?
"Not all color pigments show metamerism." - Howard Slavitt
Howard, this is news to me, I was under the impression that ALL pigment inks were effected to some degree or other. This is just the nature of the pigment ink particle. What makes some not exhibit colour shifting?
I was also under the impression (passed on to me from others who have used them - I haven't) that the Jon Cone inks did show metamerism but the Cone profiles were what lessened the 'metamerism', as he profiles for daylight and viewing the prints under artifical light shows a distinct move towards magenta. Is this not the case in your experience?
Paul, I don't htink there is any upgrade yet available from Epson and after speaking to the Epson tech in Sydney, it looks unlikely to happen in the near future. Unless of course they are keeping it very quiet. ;-)
Regards
Peter Brown
Personally, I have not used the Cone pigments, but I just requested samples sent to me to see for myself whether or not there's any metamerism. I've been following users' posts (from about 5 different user groups) of their experience with the Cone color pigments for approximately 3 months, and every review I've read (probably around 50) states that the Cone color pigments show virtually no metamerism. From what I've read (not having expertise myself) there appears to be at least two factors that affects metamerism in pigments: 1) some companies (i.e. mediastreet) mix dyes with their pigments to get deeper blacks (and perhaps with other colors, who knows?). A side effect of this is that it produces some metamerism. 2) Epson's pigments apparently have tremendous metamerism (i.e. witness the previous post saying prints looked great under one light source and awful under another). This may have something to do with the Epson encapsulating technology -- who knows? Apparently the Epson 5500 has much less metamerism than the Epson 2000p or 7500, although it uses the same inks. This indicates that the Epson provided driver/RIP may play a significant role in the amount of metamerism. ALL processes, including lightjet prints, cibachrome, etc, show SOME metamerism. We're just talking about differences of degree, which can be huge.
As to putting different inks in a 2000P, yes, apparently you can. www.nomorecarts.com sells continuous inking systems that work great (at least the one on my Epson 1200 does). You can put in whatever pigments you want -- i.e. Generations (from mediastreet) or Cone's color pigments. One issue, however, is that you will need profiles to go with the difference inks because they do not match the Epson inks. You can get close to, or as good as, or perhaps better colors than with the Epson pigments, but you need profiles. Cone makes profiles that are averaged among 3 samples of each type of printer and provides them for free with his inks. He's apparently way behind right now in creating profiles (he very recently, about two weeks ago, appears to have settled on his "final production" inkset; he's been shipping color inks for awhile but has been tweaking the yellow) but one would expect he'll be caught up within a month or two. With my generaitons 4 inkset I had a guy named CD Tobie (he's on a lot of the online user groups) create custom profiles for each of my two most often used papers. They cost about $80-100 each from Tobie or you can also have them made from several other sources, like inkjetmall.com (Cone's website). I tried making them myself using my scaner with RGB Profiler and, although I got ok results, it's really a waste of time once you've worked with a professionally made profile. If you get into doing your own color pigmented prints with third party inksets, you should understand that you will need to spend quite a bit of time learning about it all, and that you will have some hassles, setbacks, and problems along the way. The huge benefits, IMHO, are that a) you can reduce your printing costs essentially to the cost of the paper (because with a continuous inking system and buying bottles of inks your ink costs become de minimus), and b) you have a phenomenal amount of control of color from your desktop and can print professional quality archival prints from an under $500 Epson printer of up to 13" x 19" (of course when you add in the cost of the computer, scanner, etc., and your time, the cost is much higher).
Tim, Howard, Peter, I looked at the two CIS providers . This was all new to me a nd very interesting. Seems a very economic alternative to standard Epson cartridges + a workaround to the metameri sm problem at the same time. It looks like the solutions for the 2000P are recent additions. One has not them yet on sale. Now, I just bought a 2000P at a price it shouldn't be hard to sell. Would I be well advised to get rid of it and get a 1280 instead, since the pigmented inks are available for the 1280 too, or has the 2000P any advantage ov er the other?
That's a good question Paul, and I'm not sure I really know the answer.
If I were starting from scratch, it would seem to me that the 1280 would be a better choice since it offers 2880dpi (over the 2000P's 1440), full bleed printing, and much quicker output.
In practice though, these things are very minor considerations. Most people say there is very little difference between 2880 and 1440dpi, the full bleed prints suffer from variable quality at the extreme edges of the paper, and every new printer will be faster than the older one.
Unless someone else knows of another reason the 2000P would excel (print head differences?), I'd say it's probably a simple financial decision: can you sell the 2000P for enough to buy a 1280 and the required CIS? If not, I'd probably stick with the 2000P.
I'd also seriously consider the possibility that these new archival inks might not be all they're touted to be. With the 2000P, you can always use a cleaning cartridge to flush the print heads and switch back to Espon's archival inks. If you choose the 1280 and don't like the aftermarket inks, you flush and return to Epson's non-archival inks (though, since you've been dissatisfied with the archival ink so far, you might like the dye based ink color gamut better).
Whatever way you go, report back on your experiences with the after market inks. As I mentioned, I'm planning to upgrade my color setup after my next ink cartridge and I'd love to hear your experiences.
One other thing Paul - Before you go to all this trouble, you might want to do a little more color tweaking to see if you can come up with a color profile that satisfies you. Metamerism isn't really a problem unless you frequently change the light source you use to view a print. All photographic processes exhibit some amount of metamerism.
Take a look at:
http://www.tssphoto.com/sp/dg/2000p/metamerism.html
You can see a comparison of color shift in a 2000P, an Epson 1200, and a Lightjet Print. While the 2000P definitely displays the worst shifting, there is a substantial change in the in the reds and blues of the lightjet too. (interestingly, the dye based Epson inks shift the least). Pictures on the web aren't really very good for judging color, but I think you can get a good idea of the problem by looking at this example.
This same page offers a couple of simple curve adjustments that might provide a starting point to help you develop a daylight and fluorescent profile that meet your needs.
Thanks for the info on the Cone and CIS inks Howard, it certainly sounds like these people are sorting the problem out for us - these systems may be the answer until something better comes along, as it invariably does.
Paul, as you know I've been battleing with the same question about whether to exchange the 2000P for the 1280 (1290 in Aust.). After much discussion with others, including printing technical people who know much more than I about these things, and also by looking at 1280 & 2000P prints made with a variety of inks and papers in B&W, duotone and colour, I have come to the conclusion that I will need both. They each have their good points and when the 2000P works well, it produces excellent prints.
The 1280 is probably a better 'all-round' printer and the newer technology including Epson's claim of increased colour gamut gives it the edge, IMHO. The prints printed at 2880 dpi on the 1280 show a smoother, slightly sharper image but I doubt buyers would notice the difference, just as many don't see the cyan/green colour shifts with the 2000P. I think it's often us, the photographers, who create our own problems. I've seen buyers who don't notice anything wrong with a print which I think has a bad colour shift & that I would reject. Perhaps we become too critical of our own work.
If you got the 2000P at a good price and can afford to, I would buy a 1280 and keep the 2000P. This has been my decision. The 2000P does excel with 'art' papers and I have had beautiful results with sepia and duotone 'art' prints. I also get some lovely reproductions with Lucy's drawings and it certainly has better archival qualities, whether it's 50 years or 150, the pigment inks currently provide better archival properties. If you can be sure of where the prints will be displyed then the 'metamerism' on the 2000P will not be a problem, as you can print with the profile fora specific end use. The 2000P is NOT a B&W printer and you won't get good results with it for that purpose.
The 1280 on the other hand produces very acceptable B&W prints as well as consistent colour. The prints appear marginally sharper than the 2000P and the blacks are richer.
However it really comes down to what you want and can afford, for my own uses I have decided I need both.
Kind regards
Peter
Great inputs, thanks! As a matter of fact, it is important to know what one want s from a printer. I think my demands are too broad for a single printer and as Peter suggests, maybe getting the 1290 in addition to the 2000P would be a good idea. I need to print for a number of purposes. The main reason I purchased the 2000P was for the permanence of display prints. But I wasn't aware of the metamerism then. After I reprinted 4 or 5 versions of an image that someone bought to me recently, I finally decided it wasn't worth trying to do an y better. So I picked the best one and framed it. When the client came, he wanted to walk to the window to watch it but I had to draw him to a tungsten light and let him watch the print there. He was very happy and I was ju st worried of what he would feel when he sees the picture on his wall in daylight. Most display situations have v arying light throughout the day. Another use for the printer was print testing for both Lambda (LightJet) and off set prints. Here, I believe, the 2000P is not a good choice. The colors are very different than on my Photo 720 and I a m not sure any profile will do to correct that. I must be able to show the outputs for control under whatever ligh ting is available. I'll try to tweak the green curve as a start to see if it gives better display prints. Thanks again!
I have recently purchased an EPSON 1290 for retail production in my photo store. From being a newbie it took me around three weeks to be producing prints that are highly satisfactory to my customers. I must say that I went through a hell of a lot of ink and various papers to find a combination that yielded the results that I wanted. I finally settled on Konica QP high gloss and genuine Epson ink carts. Since then the cost of the genuine Epson carts has scared the hell out of me and after much soul searching I have purchased an MIS cis which is in transit as I write. Hopefully the MIS system will work as promised and I can cut costs dramatically. I agree with a previous comment that the expectations of the public in regards to print quality are indeed considerably lower than our own and while we should continue to produce high quality work I don't believe that we should become paranoid about it.
Mike, keep on the good fight! Please let us know how the CIS for your 1290 will work. I am interested in this solution too.
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