Why don't you take my fine art paper?

My Epson 3800 will not print on any type of fine art material that must be loaded through the separate fine art paper selector. That two dollar piece of flimsy plastic that Epson decided to include for me to slide onto the back of my printer is not really living up to the dreams I had for it. I made one successful 8.5x11 print on it after a mere 15 attempts to load from the back. No kidding, at least 15. Now I have been unsuccessful to load any bigger sheets into the back. I have been able to run it through the straight through path (designed for boards), but this isn't the easiest thing to do either.

Bottom line, 3800 is no fine art cranking machine and will be a hindrance to your workflow if you plan on mass printing on anything other than photo paper. Off to call Epson...

WEBSITE FINALLY UP!

I finally got my website up. http://ElevatePrinting.com . FTP up next week! Best of Articles I've written will be posted soon. If anyone needs prints for custom work, let me know... Its some of the most affordable printing you can get from people who actually understand color management (OK, does anyone fully?) and artistic views...

Michael

HP Announces Z6100, set to replace 5500

Being a faithful 5500 owner, I was anxiously awaiting its replacement. As I've mentioned earlier, the 5500 is based off a printer thats over 5 years old now. The HP Z6100 printer claims to print up to 1134 sq ft/hr, almost 10 times what the 5500 was capable of. And on top of that, much better quality. This is a big stab at the iPF8000 and ipf9000, obviously, and we'll have to see how it does. Its supposed to be shown in Vegas tomorrow, can't wait for the reviews.

Only info I've found so far...
www.itsupplies.com/static/HPZ6100.html

Epson 3800 Review

I received my 3800 today, they seem to be wait listed at most places still. Anyway, it does not seem to be anything special. It is significantly smaller than the 4800 or the Canon ipf5000, the 3800 clearly comes across as a desktop printer. This would be great if I only had a small studio. The 3800 doesn't seem to like my sheets of fine art paper, especially if they are not perfectly flat. This is very inconvenient, sometimes I've had to try to load a sheet multiple times to no success. With it only taking sheets, this would be a huge hurtle to overcome for your work flow. This was clearly not designed to be a production or high-volume printer. The prints, however, look absolutely stunning. They even surpass the 9800 when viewed under a loupe. More about color and other issues later.

Epson says 64"

I guess that the printer will be 64", not 60" as I had previously thought. We should be looking for it to come out around this fall. No doubt this will take a lot of business away from Canon's 60" iPF9000, which I believe right now sells for around $10,000 - 12000 depending on your part of the country.

New Epson Printers

It appears Epson has a new printer coming out, the Stylus 1400. Finally something to replace the 1280. Has a new set of Claria ink, I wouldn't mind seeing how they compare against my R1800. I heard rumors of a 60" Epson printer in the works, something to replace the 10000 series of plotters they had, but with the 9800 printheads. We will see.