Thanks, I will consider this. From his website, it sounds like we will hear from Michael Reichman soon, since his 4000 arrived Friday and he is promising some updates from his original article on it done in October. I, too, will be looking for other's views in the coming weeks.
I guess I should thank Inkjetart for getting me mine so quickly, they have always been very good about prompt order processing and shipments so I buy a lot from there. I just ordered another set of ink carts and two more rolls of paper since I think no one else in the US has any 17 inch Ultrasmooth from my Google search.
One thing you should all note, the Ultrasmooth is lovely paper but it has a very strong cream color to it and if you have browns or whites in an image, they turn a bit yellow from this. The large print from Jess is very, very different on the U/S paper versus the Luster paper, and I prefer the Luster in this case. Normally I would not since the blacks build so nicely on the U/S paper.
Just jumped on a great opportunity.
I am about to order the 4000 from our local Epson Pro dealer.
They have just received their demo model which I went to have a look at today (it's huge, built like a safe though). I was quite honest that I want to use it predominantly for B&W but am not prepared to stump up for a RIP. They will have their training down in London with Epson tomorrow and I have left them with two of my current hextone grey prints (which are on 1290 printers using MIS UltraTone2 inks) - one carbon print on Epson Semi-Gloss and one neutral print on Epson Archival Matt - I have provided both images on a CD. They have offered to use these as prints during the demo's and training. I can't wait to see how close the actual Epson team will get to reproducing this output.
I for one was not blown away by the 7600 + IP5.6 for B&W output altough I've only seen a couple of samples.
I will obviously post back on how things go in the next couple of days.
Steve, that is indeed a great opportunity to see how B&W works on it. To date, as I have said, I think it is much better than the 7600/9600 although still not what I would call perfect with B&W. To some degree it depends on the paper used, both because of the finishes and because of the profiles Epson did. Epson has clearly been working hard on improving the standard provided profiles. I am sure we all look forward to hearing the results. Let us all know what the delivery time is expected on your 4000 in the UK, as well.
Arthur, the answer is YES, it is decidedly reduced. I saw very little, if any, in the prints so far. I have as yet to do many glossy or semigloss, but the only papers I saw any hint of it were on the Luster which has a slight magenta tint but none of the weird green tints that the 2200 sometimes exhibits. One 8 x 10 on glossy that I converted from color to b&w by just desaturating, was much better than even the R800 which is in turn better than the 2200.
On Wednesday I am planning to do some 8 x 10 and perhaps 11 x 17 premium semi-glossies and now that you ask, I will print a couple of b&w shots. Since I do so little of it, I don't have many. If you have a test image you would like me to try in the smaller sizes (I don't have any glossy paper over 8 x 10 and only 13 x 19 premium semigloss) send it to me. If you will PM me, I will give you a real email address that will accept files up to 20mb. Dont want to spend too much ink or time on glossies but it would be an interesting test.
Hello Gerry,
Many thanks for the E4000 posts. I think, many here will agree, your experience and hopefully future posts will go a long way to ease our personal set up an operation of this printer.
Tony
I appreciate all the comments from others, it keeps me going on what is becoming time consuming but still rather fun.
I dont think I can really get the costs down until the first cartridge runs out, but it is clear that per square foot of print, the ink cost has got to be much less because of the larger cartridges - 110ml and 220ml if you don't mind them sticking out. I have not used the big ones yet as I do not plan that much printing. Compare that to the 2200 cart which supposedly holds 11ml.
The problem for personal use is that the bigger the print, the more ink and paper so when you go as I have from using a lot of 11 x 17 paper to 17 x 22, the amount of ink is going to go up. At present the software driven Status monitor shows that I have about 55% of the ink left. Nearly 40% went to priming the 8 lines so the amount attributable to printing seems small to date.
One bug in the hardware/software at the moment is that the LCD levels for Matte black, cyan and photo black show as nearly full, while the software status monitor shows all 8 carts as down about 55%. One or the other has to be wrong.
The reason I asked about metamerism is that I have ordered a 2100 (Euro 2200) and ImagePrint which gets rid of metamerism.
BTW, I was not referring to colour casts which is entirely different from metamerism which causes colour shifts when going from different lighting conditions. I am sure you knew that, I just want to make sure we are singing from the same hymn sheet !!
You see, UK prices of a 2100 AND Imageprint 5.6 is about £800 or so less than the 4000 but of course the latter comes with 8 x 110 ml ink tanks which is worth about £500 in total!! Suddenly the 4000 doesn't look so expensive if I don't have to get a RIP.
I will be very interested to see how you get on with B&Ws and I look forward to hearing from Steve (Scrubber) from the UK who is also worried about B&W metamerism.
Arthur, we are on the same page. As I tried to indicate, I see no color shift like sometimes occured on the 2200. Those I have seen on other printers like the 2000p give a print a slightly green cast in some light conditions, although apparently sometimes it is a different color. The 2200 prints I printed and saw were really not exhibiting bad metamerism, but there could be some. I don't see that on the 4000 at all, although I am certainly not an expert in this area.
In addition, I was trying to make the point that I also thought the paper profiles had been improved which eliminated some actual color abberations, like magenta casts, AND that I thought this might also have helped reduce or eliminate metamerism effects. As I understand it from a lot of reading on this subject, virtually all dyes and pigments can and will exhibit metamerism under certain light conditions. It is just that it is possible, as Epson seems to have proven, to reduce it to the point it is not readily visible or objectionable.
I am virtually certain that someone, somewhere will tell you and tell me that the 4000 and other printers still exhibit it. They may see something you and I don't or cannot, but even with my old eyes, I see shades of color pretty well, even when I need glasses to read.
Gerry: I just received my 4000 and set it up. Unfortunately, because the CD drive on my Mac Powerbook decided to die last night (!), I couldn't install the software from the CD. So, I installed the new printer driver and Utility 2 from the Epson website. I attempted to install the new firmware too, but couldn't -- when I unStuffed the package and tried to use Utility 2 to load the new firmware, it was "grayed out", i.e., unselectable. I can't recall, but did you have problems installing the new firmware? I plan on contacting Epson today, but just thought I'd check and se eif you had any trouble installing the new firmware. Thanks.
You are absolutely right, there will be metamerism whatever. Imageprint on 2200 seems to reduce it (by, I read somewhere, not using the yellow ink) to a level barely detectable by the eye. I was just wondering aloud if Epson has tweaked the 4000 driver to the point where it is no longer the issue it has been with the 2200.
As always I am very grateful for your input, I am sure it has taken you a lot of time and effort to reply to all these questions but that is the trouble being an early adopter on the "bleeding" edge of technology :-)
best as always
Arthur
PS your kit list can almost be mine, minus the Leica and Rollei and two of the printers.
Would it be possible to post a bit more information about actual ink usage?
I would like to estimate my business expenses for 8x10, 11x14 and 16x20 prints on different papers and canvas at 1400dpi and 2800dpi.
I saw a single reference to 1.8ml per 12x15 print. Does it include nozzles cleaning procedures?
To rephrase the question - how much $ in inks does this printer steal from you on regular basis?
Second question that is probably irrelevant here - did Epson suggested anything to make it possible to cut canvas and thick paper using built-in cutter? I am so amused with that fact... What’s the purpose of this cutter than? What Epson suggested printing on then? Toilet paper?
It’s such a shame and pity, I hoped so much to get more affordable tool for 16x20 prints and now it goes into 7600 price zone again.
You apparently cannot install the firmware unless the Status Monitor software is installed and working. It seems to have something to do with an inability of the Epson Utility2 to communicate with the inards of the machine unless the SM is running. The moment I got the Status Monitor working, the Utility started working and the firmware installed. Fortunately the firmware change has little to do with actual operation of anything except hi DPI quality. The printer will work without the SM, but you cannot see the ink levels or change some things.
Hm. I don't, as far as I'm aware, have a "status monitor" for the 4000. I assume this is on the disc (which I can't install b/c my drive stopped working)? The downloads on Epson's website do not include the Status Monitor.
gervaise wrote:
You apparently cannot install the firmware unless the Status Monitor software is installed and working. It seems to have something to do with an inability of the Epson Utility2 to communicate with the inards of the machine unless the SM is running. The moment I got the Status Monitor working, the Utility started working and the firmware installed. Fortunately the firmware change has little to do with actual operation of anything except hi DPI quality. The printer will work without the SM, but you cannot see the ink levels or change some things.
Paul, I get the impression that there simply is no way to cut the heavier papers with the automatic cutter, even by punching the manual cut button. I suspect it would cut it, but within a short time, it would dull the cutter blade severely. It has to do with the design of the cutter head which rides on the printer head and apparently even will cut the sides of the print. I have not tried the latter, but the cut line marker is useful in that it at least shows you where to cut with scissors. Based on the sound it made when I cut the U/S paper, I would not do that again and surely not try canvas or even thicker materials. This is clearly not a good design for the cutter if the 7600 can do it and this cannot, but perhaps that is the price of making a very fine printer available at a lower price.
As to ink usage, I will try to post some information on it, once I get some other things working. At the moment, the very neat ink useage report function has turned itself off as a result of my reinstalling the Status Monitor and so it does not report the ink usage per print as it did initially. I think it is just that I don't know where or how to turn it back on. The functions of the Epson Utility2 program that run this are, IMO, poorly documented in that there is no printed material I can find on it, only the online examples in the Help function, which are useful but minimal. I have a call into my Support contact on this. When that starts working I will let you know. It does not report how much ink is used to clear heads, but presumably if it happened while printing a particular print, it would report it. I can tell you that no 17 inch print I have done so far, even at 2880dpi and unidirectionaly has used over 4ml.
The Status Monitor is part of the printer driver and seems to be the very last thing the installation files install, since that is the file that glitched for several days and would not install, even though the printer would print as a result of the rest of the program working. It was there on the Tabs but when you punched the SM button, nothing happened. I am sure it is in the files you cannot get to from your CD.
I might suggest that you simply download the proper new installation files from the Epson site, and install them, as they do not need a CD to do so. What you apparently installed was the Epson Utility2 which, as I said, will not work without the Status Monitor. I presume the MAC works the same way, but bear in mind my system is a very fast PC and not a MAC. There are however install files on the web site for the MAC.
One final thing, bear in mind that once I had a bad file from an aborted install, the whole reason it would not install later was that the PC registry (thanks to Brother Bill) left pieces of it that I could not clean out with the Epson Uninstall and had to restore the Registry to its earlier state without Epson files. As I know nothing about any similar functions on the Apple OS, this may or may not be an issue for you.
Isn't it fun to be an early adapter? This happens to me every time I buy something and I never learn, but then that is probably why I have learned to figure out how to fix broken hardware and software and how to get Customer Support people moving on issues of new machines. I do have some sympathy for the Support folks since it is not their fault that some engineer or software guy screwed up the design or functionality of things. The Epson guys have been very supportive and I think are trying hard with a new product.
Try my suggestion above and let me and others know how it works. I am sure others will want to know how this install works with a MAC.
On re-reading your original post, I see that you did do the install of the driver from the Epson website. Does the printer print, but just not have the SM working? It should show up when you go, at least on a PC, printer preferences.
I also note when I go to the Epson site that the MAC downloadable files are different than the PC in that the PC files include a specific Status Monitor file, while the MAC versions do not. Perhaps the structure of the files needed is different than the PC, which would not be surprising. Call the priority support number in the Maroon Epson Preferred Support manual you have, using the Priority ID it has there. Someone other than a PC user needs to talk you thru this.
Jerry, I wanted to thank you for the incredible amount of time you have put into these posts. They have been enormously informative. I'm looking forward to my own 4000, though I intend to use it mainly, or at least initially, for b+w. Many thanks again for your thoughtfulness, thoroughness, and consideration.
