Printer Reviews

By far the most expensive component of printing your own digital images is the cost of consumables--ink and paper. There are plenty of paper options out there that range from very reasonable to extremely expensive, and I'll take a look at these in a future column. With paper, you're kind of stuck with paying for the type and look you want. Ink, however, is a...

Pigment inks, CD disc printing, and moderate cost have kept me a loyal user of Epson Stylus Photo printers. I attribute this to the different set of ink colors compared to what’s found in Epson’s professional pigment-ink printers. With the R1900, and now the new R2000, besides the standard cyan, magenta, and yellow, there is red, blue, and orange ink in the set. I find this is favorable to reproducing all my favorite photography subjects, including people, flowers, and landscapes. But, you might ask, without support for black-and-white grayscale printing, how do I get by? Well, I actually use my R1900 to print black-and-white images and a good part of my testing with the R2000 involved printing black-and-white photographs as well.

I took on this review assignment because I’ve had considerable history with printing, both silver and digital, and printing with Epson printers. Over the past few years this interest has led me on an odyssey through various printers, profiling, and a considerable amount of (early) frustration. My emphasis has been on monochrome printing and those who share in this interest and who have attempted black-and-white printing in the past understand the numerous obstacles it can present. Those include, but are not limited to, unwanted color casts, gloss differential in deep black areas and some tonal borders, poor deep black reproduction (accompanied by equally poor highlight repro), a lot of poor paper surfaces, and the hassle and waste of switching from matte black to photo glossy inks. Color printers face these as well, plus the challenges of color balance, casts, skin tone reproduction, highlight bias, green shadows, and more. Of late I have printed with the Epson Stylus Pro 3800, 3880, and 4800 models, the 3800 being my studio workhorse for years and the 3880 the model that many photo schools and workshops at which I’ve taught use as a mainstay student and production printer.

A popular option for many photographers looking to print images at up to 17 x 22 inches has been the Epson 3880 printer (and before that the 3800). Essentially an affordable option to Epson’s professional level 4800 and 4900 printers, the Epson 3880 and 3800 use smaller ink cartridges and forgo the ability to use roll paper. It’s been several years since this photo printer lineup has been updated, so when Epson gave me the opportunity to review their new 17-inch SureColor P800 I was interested to see what they were able to come up with to improve an already very good printer.

The Epson Stylus Photo 1280 has been going strong for almost six years now, and you'd think that Epson's replacement model, the Stylus Photo 1400, must be exceptional to be worthy of replacing such a venerable printer. While the idea has merit, the fact is that Epson's letter-sized, dye-ink photo printers, such as the R380, already have new inks; the 1280 was the...

Three years ago, Epson brought out a solid 13x19” printer using the new UltraChrome K3 inks. This model, the R2400, was a major improvement over the 2200 it replaced, thanks to the additional gray inks and a new Advanced Black and White mode in the printer driver. Three years is nearly forever in the digital market, and people have been wondering when a replacement would come and what...