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.

Goodbye HP 5500 , Hello iPF 8000

I finally sold my HP 5500 today on Craigslist (www.craigslist.com). Definitely a good place to try and sell higher end gear, and being free sure helps. I had the UV and postscript version, 42", and sold it for $5000. My reason for selling was mainly the fact that the HP 5000 series is basically a 5 year old technology...

My main decision was should I stay with HP with the Z series, or venture out to a new company? Epson has always been one of my favorites, they are very friendly and always look great. I still have 2 small Epson printers. If I did solely giclee, I would buy a Stylus 9800 in a heartbeat. It sure would save some space in my office. But I need something faster and more industrious, so I was in the market for either the Canon line or HP's Z2100. Canon is currently having some excellent rebates, iPF 9000's (60") start around $10k and iPF 8000's (44") start around $3500. No, that is not a typo, they are going for under four thousand dollars. Good deals I found were www.colorHQ.com , www.itsupplies.com. CONTRARY to what is says on Color HQ's website, neither iPF printers can print full bleed at maximum width! I was lucky enough to be informed of this before I purchased one.

As the title states, I ended up buying a iPF 8000. It cost me $3495, including shipping. I would say thats a very good deal. When the original iPF 5000 came out, they're were very mixed reviews (ok, a lot of bad reviews), but as people experiment more and more with these printers they are achieving excellent results. They aren't nearly as "plug and play" as the Epsons, but some photographers claim to be getting better prints now off of their Canons. I will definitely let you know.

Another dreary Monday

Today was rather blase, nothing too interesting. Made some prints off my Hp 5500, finally got my G5 to read it (an accomplishment none the less, but its no Onyx). Its still amazes me how you can use this printer like its own FTP server, just typing in its web address on your network and dropping files in. Not that I do that anymore, but none the less impressing. I suppose at home I could begin printing files at work to save some time if I was really in a crunch. Over all I haven't been thrilled with my 5500 lately, if it wasn't for the Pantone and the Postscript 3 it probably would have been gone a while ago. I don't do nearly enough posters etc to justify it, although it is by far the fastest printer I've used. The quality is still far behind the Epson's, which limits what I can do with it. If I were to start a sign shop, I think I would buy one of those and a W6400 ( Canon ). That's definitely a poster machine. How to start a Sign Shop coming soon...

In more news, I just switched over from www.typepad.com ( www.digitalprinter.typepad.com ) has my first post on it, I decided to opt for a free blog instead of a fee one. I need to save the money for the holidays, anyway.

Printing for the Holidays

I am hopefully getting an Epson 3800 in the next week or so, I can't wait to compare it to the 4800 and the R2400. Although it has the same print engine as the 4800, and Ultrachrome K3 is K3 is K3, I still need to see the proof for myself. Maybe an extra thousand dollars doesn't buy you much more than a roll feed ... But it does claim to only use ~ 2 ml of ink switching from Matte to Photo black and 4 ml for the reverse (its automatic, using the same ink line). It will be interesting to how people feel about the 3800's ability to only print on sheets with no roll options. I read a review of the 3800 on CNET, it looks pretty promising. I saw inkjetart.com was giving away sample prints which they made on one, I wonder if anyone received one and compared them. If you did, please let me know what you think...

I also have a strange desire to buy some INKAID and try printing on some unusual materials. Maybe thin metal? Seems to have promising possibilities.

Happy Thanksgiving all.