New Epson 13 x 19 printer: $400

[Photomax]

Epson recently announced the Stylus Photo 1400, a 13 x 19-inch format printer that uses the company's Claria dye-based inkset.

The Stylus Photo 1400 replaces the venerable Stylus Photo 1280 and will carry an estimated street price of US$399.99 in the U.S. Epson's press information on the Stylus Photo 1400 does not include an availability date, but CNET has reported that it will ship "this quarter".

http://www.epson.com/cgi-bin/Store/consumer/consDetail.jsp?BV_UseBVCookie=yes&infoType=Specs&oid=63066043&category=Products

[sanking]

Epson recently announced the Stylus Photo 1400, a 13 x 19-inch format printer that uses the company's Claria dye-based inkset.

The Stylus Photo 1400 replaces the venerable Stylus Photo 1280 and will carry an estimated street price of US$399.99 in the U.S. Epson's press information on the Stylus Photo 1400 does not include an availability date, but CNET has reported that it will ship "this quarter".

http://www.epson.com/cgi-bin/Store/consumer/consDetail.jsp?BV_UseBVCookie=yes&infoType=Specs&oid=63066043&category=Products

This printer appears to be available from Epson now. I went to the Epson site and was able to add it to the cart and begin the checkout phase. Course, maybe this is just a wait list.

I am very interested but won't buy until I have a chance to check out the UV blocking capabilities of the dye ink-set since I would plan to use it almost exclusively for printing digital negatives for alternative printing.

Sandy King

[sanking]

BTW, I just looked again at the specifications for the 1400 and they say that the maximum paper size is 13X19". I wonder if that is really so? All of the previous 13" wide Epson printers had drivers which allowed paper sizes 13" X 30" or more long. Could it really be that this capability has been eliminated from the 1400? If so, I would not even consider it.

Sandy King

[Dave Parker]

Sandy,

I would wait until it starts arriving in the stores to be sure, sometimes Epson, does weird things, I know I have been bit a couple of times with their new printers.

Dave

PS, wondering, are you heading back out Montana Way again this spring? let me know.

[sanking]

Sandy,

I would wait until it starts arriving in the stores to be sure, sometimes Epson, does weird things, I know I have been bit a couple of times with their new printers.

Dave

PS, wondering, are you heading back out Montana Way again this spring? let me know.

I will wait. I will also run a color file on pictorico in a local CompUSA to test UV blocking capability of the machine.

Yes, I plan to be in Montana again for a carbon workshop at the Formulary in early June. Hope to see you again.

Sandy

[neil poulsen]

We know that die based inks don't have the longevity of pigment based inks. Do you have an idea of how long digital negatives made from this printer last, before appreciable fading occurs?

[Charles Hohenstein]

Are ink jet printers which use dye inks any less prone to clogging than printers with pigment inks? Are they both equally suitable for printing an occasional letter on the same printer?

[Ted Harris]

Sandy and others, at 400 I am not sure this printer will be much to rave about. We had one of the new HP B9180's at our last scanning workshop last weekend and it performed remarkebly well. An A3 paper limitation (nominal 13x19) but it will take rolls. We did some quick side-by-side comparisons with the output from a 3800 and, even looking at the paper with a 4x loupe, any differences were very small and very very subtle. Jim and Stu wanted to play with it for a few days and then it will be on its way to me to give it a real shakeodwn cruise here. This printer uses HP's 8 ink pigment ink set. The street price for this beast $500!!! It is a real 2400 killer at that price and in many respects appears to rival the performance of the 3800.

All I can say now is that I was very impressed with its out-of-the-box performance so stay tuned for details. OTOH, given the price if you needed a new printer and were not shopping the professional wide format machines (4800/7800/9800, ProGraf 5000/8000, Z3100) I don't see how you could go wrong with this machine. I know that, unless my full tests show something awful, at least one of these machines will absolutely replace my venerable R800 that I use to churn out notecards .... so many more capabilities at not much more price. Midwest should have them in stock in another few weeks latest. BH has them now I believe. They have been getting great reviews in Europe where they have been on the street for some 8-9 months now. I have not yet tried it with any of my normal papers though. I did check with the folks at Red River and they say it runs fine with their papers. There are many profiles already available for it from Moab, Crane, Red River, etc.

BTW, anyone on the Forum who has any direct experience with this printer and has any specifices (positive or negative) they want to bring to my attention or specifics they want me to watch for/test for please contact me offline,, preferably by email, ASAP.

[sanking]

Ted,

I should emphasize that my major use for a printer is different from that of most persons in that I am almost exclusively interested in making digital negatives for alternative printing. There are two issues involved with printing digital negatives that don't apply to making regular color prints, UV blocking of the ink set, and Venetian blinds.

Unfortunately *all* of the Epson printers that use a pigmented dye set have a reputation for Venetian blinds when printing with digital negatives. Venetian blinds is a line of uneven density on the positive, from side to side with the direction of movement of the head of the printer over the paper. You will not see it on regular print because it is in the shadow values, but these are reversed when you print a digital negative. Some have suggested that the professional level Epsons, i.e. 4800/9800 etc. would eliminate this problem, but based on my conversations with many other alternative printers that is not the case. The only wide-carriage pigment ink Epson printer that is not subject to Venetian blinds is the least expensive one, the R1800. The 3800 appears to be extremely well built and to a precision not seen in previous Epsons, particularly in the precision of the stepped motor, and hopefully this machine will work ok for making digital negatives.

The other issue regards UV blocking. Past models of the Canon and HP printers did not provide enough UV blocking to make good digital negatives. Unfortunately, visual appearance is not a good reference to UV blocking so in order to evaluate this you must either test it empirically or print a color palette and read the densities with a UV densitometer.

Sandy King

[sanking]

We know that die based inks don't have the longevity of pigment based inks. Do you have an idea of how long digital negatives made from this printer last, before appreciable fading occurs?


I don't know the answer to that question. However, many people have used the Epson 1280, which also has a dye based ink set, for making digital negatives. I am not aware of any problem with appreciable fading of digital negatives made with the 1280 on exposure to UV light. And, it appears that the dye based ink set of the 1400 should give even greater longevity than that of the 1280.

Sandy King