Which printer?

[Anbesol]

I am wondering what you guys think is the best printer manufacturer - in one, and only one category - end result print quality. what has the best looking pictures. If somebody knows a lot about them I'd really like to pick your brain ;)...

[Anbesol]

hmm, it seems 4 people seem to think the answer is epson... but they wont tell me why!

in any event, *BZZZT!* WRONG! Try again though ;)...

[Franglais]

hmm, it seems 4 people seem to think the answer is epson... but they wont tell me why!

in any event, *BZZZT!* WRONG! Try again though ;)...

I bought the Epson R2400 simply because it is the only readily-availably printer that can do long-lasting prints and also print good black and white. It combines :

- pigment inks for long life
- ink and paper readily available from my local store and also from my usual pro store
- three black/grey inks to master metamerism

OK it is very expensive. But there is no other choice.

Charles

[Anbesol]

I bought the Epson R2400 simply because it is the only readily-availably printer that can do long-lasting prints and also print good black and white. It combines :

- pigment inks for long life
- ink and paper readily available from my local store and also from my usual pro store
- three black/grey inks to master metamerism

OK it is very expensive. But there is no other choice.

Charles

oh - 100+ years isnt long enough for you ;).

the correct answer was canon, but at the present time youre right, there is no consumer printer that canon makes to compete with the R2400. However, they will be coming out with one here very soon - the pro9500 - with the will-be-legendary lucia pigment inks...

I just wanted to see if anybody was sily enough to say hp, honestly ;)...

[SmartWombat]

Best quality?

I only bought one Epson photo printer and it was total rubbish, always getting clogged and requiring huge amounts of ink to unblock it, finally broke about a week out of the 1 year warranty. Compare that to my old HP deskjet which is still going strong 5 years later.
What's the lifetime of a printer?

Best Print quality?

In print quality, walking around the Focus on Imaging show, there wasn't really much to choose between Canon, Epson and HP. Similar size printers, similar funcitonality, similar prices - the biggest difference seems to be in the inks and the paper.

So, what matters most on the quality front; Resolution? Colour? Longevity?


This looks intersting http://www.drycreekphoto.com/tools/printer_gamuts/ the interactive tool is cool, you can compare the colour gamut of anything (camera, printer) to Adobe and sRGB.

It seems to show that the Adobe olour space is always a larger gamut than can be printed. But some printers exceed sRGB in some places, but none manage to match the full sRGB gamut.

Very interesting looking at the same printer with different paper, Epson 2200 with Epson professional glossy paper vs Epson enhanced matte for example.
You can see different papers give different colour gamut and maybe it depends on the predominant colour of the image which is "best" for each purpose.

[Ronnoco]

To take a completely different view, if you set the photo up perfectly using Photoshop, really know how to handle the Kodak machines at your local Shopper's Drug Mart then you can get a quite reasonable print with the limited standard sizes. Become a regular customer of a custom photo printing shop that is small, and he/she will even let you use the large printer to do custom sizes. These can be really cheap alternatives to buying and playing around with your own printer that still will not match the quality of the large ones anyway.

There are always alternatives and always ways to save money.

Ronnoco

[Seb]

I bought the Epson R2400 simply because it is the only readily-availably printer that can do long-lasting prints and also print good black and white. It combines :

- pigment inks for long life
- ink and paper readily available from my local store and also from my usual pro store
- three black/grey inks to master metamerism

OK it is very expensive. But there is no other choice.

Charles

I am currently using an HP 8750 which provide everything that the R2400 can give beside the more limited choice of papers. It's not necesarilly better (or lesser) but I don't think that there is only one path when it comes to a serious printer.

regards

Seb