8x10 printer recommendations?

[David Higgs]

The choice is overwhelming, so whats the LFinfo choice for printing up to 8x10, lots of B+W, some colour.

I'd like to use some nice papers that I cannot get the online sites to use, also the online sites appear to be a bit hit and miss, especially with B+W.

Anything large or gallery worthy gets to go to my friend down the road with his huge HP.

My darkroom is now a laundry room so although the real answer is wet printing, my marriage is more likely to accept an inkjet solution...

[Brian Ellis]

I don't know that you'll save a lot of money or get better quality by limiting yourself to 8x10. My guess is that manufacturers figure anyone who prints no larger than 8x10 is a snapshooter who doesn't demand high quality and so they build the printers and make the inks accordingly. I could of course be wrong, maybe someone here knows of a really high-quality printer for 8x10 and smaller and if so fine. But otherwise I'd look for something that will at least let you go to 13 inches even if you don't plan to ever print that large. Plus with a good printer and QTR combined with some learning and effort you'll be able to make better b&w prints than you ever made in your darkroom.

[David Higgs]

thanks Brian - scouring the web I think you are right, A4 printers seem to be cheap and cheerful affairs with the A3 versions being the quality printers

maybe i should look at A3 - even if I rarely go that big. Whats best for B+W, do I need matte blacks or greys or whatever?

[venchka]

Brian mentioned QTR, a raster driver for printnig. QTR only supports Epson printers. Bummer.
Back on topic. Brian was also correct in that printer makers, Epson & Canon in my experience, don't put all the bells & whistles in printers until you get to 13" wide printers. I guess that is A3 on your side of the pond. Friends of mine make very nice prints with their Epson printers from 2400 to 3880 using Epson's Advanced Black & White feature. I, on the other hand, use Canon's iPF5000 which I got very used and very cheap. I like the output from the Canon. EDIT: Both Epson & Canon use photo & matte inks in their larger printers with 9+ ink containers.
Paper selection and custom profiles for your printer/paper selection may be required for the utmost in quality.
Good luck.

[venchka]

If you are looking at Epson, this may be important. You may wish to standarize on one type of paper to avoid ink loss when switching papers.

Epson R3000:


Ink Cartridge Configuration:

Auto-Switching Black Ink Technology
•Fully automatic switching between Black ink modes
Black ink conversion times
•Matte to Photo Black approx 3 min 30 sec
•Photo to Matte Black approx 2 min sec
Ink used during conversion
•Matte to Photo Black approx. 3 ml
•Photo to Matte Black approx. 1 ml

[Frank Petronio]

The ink prices are high for all of these printers but after doing the math, the Epson 2200-2400-2880 range is still the most economical for people like me, who might do 200 8x10s (or equivalent) per year. People pretty much give 2200s away since they are the oldest, the 2880 is still a current model I think.

The Harrington QuadTone RIP (QTR) is $50 shareware that allows very nice control over B&W printing. It works well with the 2200-2400. By the time of the 2880, Epson made a better driver for B&W so you might as well try that first before hassling with QTR, although I think the QTR offers more control.

Actually the QTR is a really great thing, it minimizes metarism and makes a really nice B&W inkjet possible. For the best "bang for buck" a used Epson 2400 for $150 is hard to beat.

I would love to get an Epson 3880 but realistically all I print are two or three portfolio books, a few dozen gift prints, and a few dozen 11x14 prints I sell. I don't know who is printing so much with these larger printers, at least amongst the mostly hobby togs here.

I am sure the HP and Canon's are great too but after bad experiences with their crummy Mac drivers, admittedly many years ago, they lost me as a customer. Epson's drivers aren't great either but at least they work and their printers don't clog or jam like the other brands did with me (again, in ancient times....)

It would be nice to have a smaller letter-sized pigment printer that didn't take up 2x2x2 feet of space.

[David Higgs]

thanks all! Frank our requirements are similar.

[Peter De Smidt]

I mostly have experience with Epsons, although I do have an HP Designjet 130 for color.

Do you prefer glossy or matte prints? How important is longevity and ink costs?

With printers, companies make most of their money on consumables, i.e. ink and paper. If you really need one printer to do both color and BW, you might look into an Epson 3880. While the printer costs more, the ink cartridges are 10 times bigger than on the 2xxx and smaller printers.

Another options would be to get two letter printers, one for color and one for bw. You could then use a dedicated bw inset for bw and the OEM or non-oem for color. Cone Piezography inks are very nice for bw, and their color inks look good too. (I think their address is www.inkjetmall.com) The smaller printers tend to have 4 or 5 ink slots, which is less than the big printers, but the drop sizes on the smaller printers are much smaller, which mitigates the need for a whole bunch of ink dilutions.

If you enjoy tinkering, mixing your own bw inksets isn't to hard, and the results can be outstanding. See: http://www.paulroark.com/BW-Info/

Currently I use Paul's Carbon 6 inkset in my 4880 and HP OEM inks in my Designjet.

Here's the thing about inkset printers, though, especially ones with pigment inks. If you don't use them regularly, you can have issues with clogs, and there's few things in the hobby as frustrating as running multiple cleaning cycles trying to clear clogs, especially if you have an external waste container that you can watch filling up with very expensive ink.