Hello, I current own an old i9900. I have been pleased with the performance of this printer, but the print longevity leaves something to be desired. To date, I have printed 100% glossy for myself, family and friends. I don't plan on selling any prints either. I am considering the Canon pro9000 with the Chromalife dye inks to avoid gloss differential/bronzing and get better print life. However, I am keeping an open mind and also looking at the Epson 3800. Other than my main concerns of gloss differential, bronzing and the pizza wheel effect, I also am wondering about the color density and vibrancy of the 3800 versus the pro9000. Coming from a dye based machine, printing on gloss Canon paper and getting deep, rich blacks and colors I am concerned about how "washed-out" these look on a pigment printer. I don't print much B+W, but of course would like to keep that option open. I like the fact the 3800 is small enough to fit on a desk, yet print 17x22 and then still have the ability to print all the way down to 4x6. I shoot mostly landscape and I love colorfull, contrasty images. I also don't print regularly, so ink drying/clogging is a concern as well as going past whatever "expiration date" is on the inks. I could always run a test print through and shake the tanks? Then I come to sharpness. I get very detailed prints right on up to 13x19 on my i9900 from my 5D. Not ever seeing what Epson can do and thinking the i9900 is still "up there" in IQ, would I be blown away with what I saw in the 3800? Even compared to the Pro9000?Regarding gloss differential and bronzing, if I use gloss, semi-gloss or luster paper, how bad is it really? Does it hit you immediately or do you have to really look for it and at the right viewing angle? Sorry for the long post, but this is a very big descision for me.
I have a Canon iPF5000 and love it, but it is a big critter. The Epson 3800 is a nice machine the K3 inkset is excellent, would have bought the 4880 if it wasn't for the dreaded black ink swap, 3800 does a minimal black ink transfer. The 3800 has a new Epson head that resists clogging.
If you are going for all Velvia all the time you may want to stay with dye inks. But current pigment ink sets come very close. Even the K series Epson inks had a little gloss differential the K3 doesn't, with good profiles neither does my Canon on selected papers.
Inks will be fine for a year to a year and a half, if you can't use then in that time, get a smaller printer. Epson rates them for 6 months but many folks have a different story. Check out Eric "Madman" Chan http://people.csail.mit.edu/ericchan/dp/Epson3800/index.html
The dye based inks of the i9900 and newer 9000 pro will always look better on glossy paper than pigment based inks. To my knowledge the Canon Pro 9000 is the only 13" carriage printer that still uses the dye ink.
I have the Pro 9000 and the HP Z3100 24" pigment printer (and it is huge) that has a glosser ink cartridge that helps with bronzing. If you don't have some way to suspend the pigment you won't be happy with glossy prints when compared with the dye based Canons.
I ended up buying the Epson 3800. What a monster of a machine. I'm having issues at the moment with prints being dark, which is a total headache and a half. But from the dark prints on glossy and luster I tried, I saw no gloss differentail or bronzing. So on that front I am more than satistified. But this dark printing is not good and either I'm doing something wrong or my monitor is that badly off, which I don't think so. The same files I printed last night have in the past been printed on the old Canon i9900 using the same monitor and they matched the brightness very closely. Like 97%. So I will continue to tinker and hope I get a decent print out of the 3800 in term of brightness as it also muddies the color up a little, although the color itself is spot on.
Well I figured out the dark print issue. My ignorance as I suspected. The print I did on the luster paper looks fantasic. Much better than I had hoped and gloss differential is a non issue. The print had a few blown highlights of my own doing, not the printer, and unless I viewed the print really, really up close and at an extreme angle, I could not see the little sections that showed up with no ink. From my perspective, it's a non-issue with these new Epson printers, papers and inks. Color vibrancy is actually very close and I am hard pressed to tell the difference between the old Canon i9900 and the Epson 3800. The Epson handles detail in the highlights a lot better from what I can see. Thanks to everyone for their thoughts.
tomm101 wrote:
I have a Canon iPF5000 and love it, but it is a big critter. The Epson 3800 is a nice machine the K3 inkset is excellent, would have bought the 4880 if it wasn't for the dreaded black ink swap, 3800 does a minimal black ink transfer. The 3800 has a new Epson head that resists clogging.
If you are going for all Velvia all the time you may want to stay with dye inks. But current pigment ink sets come very close. Even the K series Epson inks had a little gloss differential the K3 doesn't, with good profiles neither does my Canon on selected papers.
Inks will be fine for a year to a year and a half, if you can't use then in that time, get a smaller printer. Epson rates them for 6 months but many folks have a different story. Check out Eric "Madman" Chan http://people.csail.mit.edu/ericchan/dp/Epson3800/index.html
