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Home >> Photography >> Digital Epson
R2400 Printer Review Diary I'm going to try something a bit different for this review. Taking my cue and inspiration from Digital Outback Photo, I'm going to write this "review" as a diary, because I want to get information about the printer to the readers, but I'm not at the point that I can write a detailed review of the Epson R2400 printer yet. The Epson R2400 is the prosumer printer that uses Epson's newest pigment ink technology, Ultrachrome K3. It promises excellent print life and stability with no bronzing, as with the old Epson 2200 printer. It basically marries the longevity of pigment with the quality of dye ink thanks to the Ultrachrome inks combined with a Gloss Optimizer that's included in the color inks. B&W printing holds much promise thanks to the use of three black ink cartridges of either Matte Black, Light Black, and Light Light Black. Or Photo Black, Light Black, and Light, Light Black. Matte Black is for use with matte papers and Photo Black is for use with glossy and semi-glossy papers, such as those with a luster or pearl finish (the ones I like the best). The other inks are the usual Cyan, Light Cyan, Magenta, Light Magenta, and Yellow. This contrasts to the relatively new Epson R1800 that uses Cyan, Blue, Magenta, Red, Yellow, and either Matte Black, or Photo Black, along with a separate Gloss Optimizer cartridge. Two somewhat different approaches within the same brand of printers. The R2400 prints up to 13x19 inches and has options for 13-inch wide roll paper. From basic specifications, it appears to be the best of the 13x19 capable printers from any manufacturer (Canon, HP, et al.) September 30, 2005 - Brand new Epson R2400 UltraChrome K3 inkjet printer delivered to my house. Unpacking as follows in the photos below. Initial thoughts: large, beefy printer, a bit bigger than my old Epson 1270 dye-ink printer. New design gives the R2400 a very refined look over the utilarian 1270. Time constraints had me wait a week before I actually got down to installing and using the printer, and only then because a reader was asking about my experiences with it so far.
October 8, 2005 - Initial setup of the R2400. Followed instruction manual, everything goes smoothly with zero problems. Only hiccup was when I tried to download the Premium paper profiles from the Color Management folder on the installation CD. Appears the Epson FTP server is no longer accessible. Wondered why the heck would Epson continue to have out of date URLs at its website, then recalled some bit of news that Epson was going to be including paper profiles created with X-Rite/Monaco profiling equipment with new R2400s. So, Epson has probably taken down the old profiles - I think. No matter, as I later discovered, all the regular profiles for the Premium series of papers have already been installed from the install CD, but will be checking back on the Epson website from time to time to see if there are indeed better X-Rite profiles available for download. Installed the Matte Black cartridge instead of the Photo Black, as I expected most of my printing would be done on Epson Enhanced Matte paper. First prints coming out of the R2400 look really nice, but lacking in saturation compared to what I see on the profiled monitor. Compared with print from the 1270 and the old dye-ink printer gets closer to the saturation I see on screen but noticeable blockage of shadow detail compared to the R2400 print. In this regard, the R2400 print matches what I see on the monitor. I'm getting into the fall mood, so my test image was an old one of the pumpkins seen below.
October 9, 2005 - only my second day in actually using the printer, I swapped out the Matte Black cartridge for the Photo Black because I want to print on some glossy and pearl finish papers. Big shock in how much ink is wasted from that first swap out and significant enough to give me concern about this weak point in the R2400 design. The screen shot below shows you the ink levels right after the cartridge swap. Prior to this, I'd only printed off five letter-sized sheets of 6.7x10 inch images, and ink levels hadn't even budged.
You'll have to determine which papers are your most used and then choose your black ink accordingly. While the R2400 profiles installed include Enhanced Matte and Heavyweight Matte papers for use with the Photo Black ink, I don't think the quality is as good as using the Matte Black. Horses for courses as the British would say and if one had the money, I'd suggest two printers, one dedicated for matte papers, and the other dedicated for glossy. But only if you happen to print equally for both types of papers. Since I like semi gloss papers the best, but tend to print on matte to save costs, I'm a bit torn by this ink swapping conundrum, because individual cartridges cost $20 per and everytime you swap, the printer goes through the charging-up process again, resulting in too severe a loss of ink. Maybe I'd be better off being a R1800 owner/user instead, which has both blacks installed for zero wastage of expensive ink when swapping between matte and glossy papers. Tried some Ilford Smooth Pearl paper. Downloaded the R2400 profile from the Ilford website and wow, this is a really nice paper. Results look identical to Epson Premium Glossy with its appropriate R2400 profile. I'm going to give some other Ilford papers a try given this very good start. I tried the Smooth Pearl with the 1270 before and it just blew, because there was no custom profile available for it. I used the Epson 1280 profile, but the results with the 1270 were pretty gross. Looking over an Epson Premium Glossy print at oblique angles to check for bronzing and see none, nada, zip. Very good and I think it was a good move on Epson's part to include the Gloss Optimizer within the color cartridges themselves instead of as a standalone cartridge, as with the R800 and R1800 printers. Comparing that Premium Glossy print to one fresh out of the 1270 gives me a pleasant surprise, the output is nearly identical. Now of course, the 1270 profile isn't stock like the R2400 one, but is a custom one made with a GretagMacbeth spectrophotometer a couple of years ago. Previously, I always thought that my 1270 output might be suspect because of the way the color inks seem to somewhat inconsistent from batch to batch, but I'm happier now. However, that isn't to say that the 1270 output is fully the equal to the R2400 print. Closer inspection reveals that the R2400 provides smoother looking fine detail and gradations of tone, always a 1270 weak spot, are also superior. Very natural looking compared to the courseness from the 1270. The 1270 print is also "more glossy" in finish with the R2400 finish being duller in light reflectance. Keep in mind that I'm looking at these prints from mere inches away, as close as my eyes can focus. At this early stage the R2400 seems to equal to the task for both matte and glossy papers, but only when using the appropriate black ink cartridge to match papers. The Photo Black output on Enhanced Matte paper is lacking in punch compared to the print made with Matte Black. The knock about pigment inkjet printers is that they are much better with matte papers than with glossy, whereas dye inkjet printers are better with glossy papers than with matte. That was probably true before the R1800 and R2400 printers arrived, as I noticed the 1270 is better with glossy papers than with matte, but even at its best, the old 1270 is bettered by the new kid on the block, albeit subtle at times in the differences seen. Another difference noted is that the R2400 does not output as much ink as the 1270, which is most noticeable with matte papers. More often than not the Enhanced matte paper seem to sag or buckle slightly right out of the printer and then dries that way with a sublte curl effect. No such problems with the R2400, but I should note that Enhance Matte is not the thickest of matte papers. I hope to have some Epson Velvet fine art paper to try out soon. So far, the R2400 is looking very good indeed. Below is the Advanced Printing screen from the Epson printer driver with a list of the different types of Epson papers supported. Based on how I use printers and how I feel about always trying to use the same brand paper and ink, the list of supported papers is all that I'll likely ever need. But the Ilford papers are giving me thoughts of adultry 8^)
Next up, printing large 13x19 prints with Premium Semi Gloss paper. October 10, 2005 - In my rush I neglected to discuss the noise levels and speed of the R2400. It's much quieter than the old 1270, but it can still be heard very clearly. I doubt that Canon will be worrying about losing their claim for quietest inkjet printers on the market. Speed wise, the R2400 is also much faster than the 1270 by about half. In the time that it takes the 1270 to spit out a 4x6 print, the R2400 can output a 8x10 print. That's about 3-4 minutes for a letter-sized sheet compared to about 8 minutes for the 1270. Haven't printed larger yet, but soon will and see how a 13x19 fares compared to about 20 minutes for the 1270. I haven't discussed B&W printing yet because I've only done one and that test image was not very good to begin with. However, there isn't any colorcast as there would have been with the 1270 (I've printed the same image before on the 1270 and got an ugly green cast when printing with all the colors.) October 11, 2005 - Printed some samples on Epson Premium Luster, Ilford Smooth Gloss, and Fuji Professional Premium Plus papers. They seem to be good, but will comment more on quality in a future article on inkjet papers. Also printed a 10x15 image on Ilford Smooth Pearl 11x17 size paper, and a 12x18 image on Epson Premium Semi Gloss 13x19 size paper. Print times are as follows:
Print times follow the standard set by letter sized printing of being twice as fast as the old 1270 printer. October 15, 2005 - I noticed that with certain papers, you have different settings available for print quality, such as Best Photo and Photo RPM. To now, I had been using Best Photo as my quality selection and all the prints look great, but I wondered about Photo RPM. A look at the manual indicates that Photo RPM is the highest quality setting of 5760x1440 dpi. It does not mention what the Best Photo resolution is, but I'd guess that it's at least 1440 dpi, if not 2880 dpi. Is there any difference to using Photo RPM versus Best Photo? None that I could detect with the naked eye. I don't view my prints under a loupe, so I don't care if technically, Photo RPM is better, as I see no point in doubling up your printing time and more than likely, greater ink usage for zero difference in quality. I did a number of B&W prints to see how the R2400 fares and I like it. Luminous Landscape is on record as saying the Advanced B&W mode for the R2400's driver is still not as good as the ColorByte ImagePrint RIP, but I wasn't about to spend US $500 for the RIP to find out, especially since the R2400 is just a loaner. Printing with B&W with the 1270 is fraught with difficulties, enough to create a little cottage industry of custom B&W inks for use with it and a number of other inkjet printers. Printing with all the colors results in a greenish colorcast with my particular printer and even using black ink only still results in a print that cannot be considered neutral.
I tried using all the colors with the R2400 to print a B&W image and it's much better than what I could have gotten with the 1270. Using the Advanced B&W mode of the R2400's driver got me a touch more neutrality.
There are four basic settings of Neutral, Cool, Warm, and Sepia in the Advanced B&W screen with an additional window to adjust various tones to customize your B&W prints.
Cool seems to add in a very slight blue cast, which seems logical and appropriate, while Warm gives the print an old school look. It's really quite charming and I liked it a lot. Sepia is basically taking the Warm and adding in more brown, but I'm thinking that this default setting is not quite Sepia enough and could use a little bit more toning, but this is subjective to one's personal perogative. My experience with B&W printing is very minimal, so I can't offer a conclusion about how good the R2400 is compared to other printers, especially those from HP. And of course, there's the issue of using RIPs to improve the quality even more. I may try out the low cost QTR B&W option and see how this fares against the Epson Advanced B&W mode. I finally got through to Epson's FTP server to download their new ICC profiles for their Premium Glossy, Semi Gloss, and Luster papers. I'll report back on how these profiles fare compared to the canned profiles. False Economy I should point out that for the majority of consumer photographers wanting the ubiquitous 4x6 inch print, printing at home with an inkjet, or any printer for that matter, leads to a false economy. Never mind the cost of a printer, which can be reasonably low, to very high cost, depending on the size capability you desire, ink cartridges and paper will conspire against you. Using
Ilford Smooth Gloss or
What you get from printing at home is convenience in not having to drop off and pickup your prints, and speed, since you can print on demand whenever you want. Most consumers don’t need such convenience and most consumers don’t want to develop the kind of technical know-how to produce a good-looking print. Even printing four images per letter sized sheet, as I do, on cheaper matte paper, will not beat the low cost of going to an outside lab. It’s only when printing 8x10 images that home printing starts to become competitive, and it gets better the larger you print. Thus for me, some of the extra cost of printing family snapshots is somewhat compensated by the larger prints I produce. Something to think about for those that generally only want or need 4x6 prints. In the past, I’ve offered some relatives little 4x6 inch printers as Christmas presents so that they could print at home with their then new digicams. After being advised of how much the consumables cost, they declined and indicated that the local Save-On Foods would be just fine for them. I blanched at the thought of using those services, but then we serious photographers are a rather anal bunch J October 16, 2005 - Update to the cost factor comments above - I came back from a shopping trip to London Drugs ostensibly to buy a package of Epson Velvet Fine Art paper, but also bought a package of 100 4x6 size Epson Premium Glossy Photo Paper for CAN $25 pre tax. After taxes, the price per sheet is $0.285 before ink usage. Still more expensive than an outside lab, but not as bad as I thought with a likely per print cost of about CAN $0.50 per 4x6 print. As for the new Premium profiles, I only tried the Premium Luster profile as that's the only Premium paper I have at the moment in letter size. The results are subtle, but the new profile is better than the older canned profile. It cuts down on the warmth of the older profile to get the print closer to what is seen on the monitor. Bronzing - I mentioned that there was no bronzing of the prints, but I should qualify that as being no bronzing seen from prints that have been dried for a little while. Prints straight out of the R2400 have the bronzing sheen to them, but it's gone after an overnight drying, which is when I do any serious print evaluations. A profile for Epson Velvet Fine Art paper and Photo Black is included, so I gave it try. I had to use the Manual Roll feed option and feed the paper in manually through the rear tray. Kind of tricky to feed the paper in correctly and I'll need a bit more practice, but Velvet Fine Art ain't cheap to practice with though. Not at CAN $50 for 20 sheets, or CAN $100 for 20 sheets of 13x19. Given my lack of experience with fine art papers, I'm going to reserve judgement until I can print with Matte Black ink. Also tried the QTR program for B&W printing. Have only just started using it and initial results using the default settings aren't making me want to bypass the Epson Advanced B&W options. The QTR image was sort of like the Epson Warm setting, but allowed to run amok and it produced...a mucky looking print. I'll need to work with the settings a bit more before offering final judgement on QTR, but I'll be taking my sweet time on this one given how good Epson's Advanced B&W mode is.
General Printer Settings When using Epson papers with supplied profiles, here's how I print using Photoshop's Print with Preview:
Next, I go into the printer settings by clicking on Page Setup, which I setup to default open up the Advanced settings screen:
For papers that do not have a profile, such as Fuji Professional, and where Automatic settings are recommended, I would set the options as shown in the screen shots below:
The Upgrade Path When using glossy and luster finish papers, there’s not much to desire from using the old 1270 printer. Based on what I’ve seen and reported on already in this diary, where the 1270 falls short is in ultimate quality when using matte paper and a lack of proper gradation in certain shadow regions of an image. It otherwise still has good color punch from its dye inks compared to the pigment ink R2400. However, serious photographers are a pretty nitpicky bunch and it’s of course in the areas where the 1270 fell short that we appreciate having resolved in newer printers. While the 1270 can continue to print quite nicely with the latest papers, you may find it difficult to find appropriate profiles for those papers. It wasn’t too long after the 1270 was released that the 1280 came out to replace it, and indeed the 1280 is still current as of this writing despite the introduction of the R1800, which would seem to be its logical replacement. Profiles are still readily available for the 1280, but not so the 1270 and it would be folly to spend significant money on custom profiling equipment and software, when it would just be more cost-effective and efficient to buy a new R2400 and obtain the latest technology and ink sets. Add to these issues is the need to use a single large cartridge for five colors, plus one black. Use up one color and the whole color cartridge is dead and at $40 a pop (on sale), one has to be thankful to the competition that Canon presented to Epson and moving the whole industry towards the use of individual ink cartridges. All this to say that the 1270’s time has come and gone and that I will find it rather disheartening to have to return to it after the R2400 finally departs. Is there a R2400 in the future to replace the old 1270? Not if I can convince the CFO of the house to let me buy the Epson 4800 instead J The one fly in the ointment is the potential disaster in waiting of clogging if you don’t use the printer regularly. On more than a few occasions I’ve left the 1270 alone for a couple of months and then fired it back up without any issues. There have certainly been others times when the printer has clogged and I needed to run through several cleaning cycles to clear the lines again, but I’ve always been able to eventually print. I’ve also noticed that the ink cartridges seem to play a role in clogging too, as during one period of time, every print job required a cleaning, but as soon as the color cartridge ran out and was replaced, I no longer required cleaning despite long intervals between print jobs. Pigment inks have actual particles in the liquid, which helps to provide the astonishing longevity, but can also contribute to clogging. The Epson CX4600 died on me after minimal usage, but I wonder if it wasn’t a case of the DuraBrite pigment inks clogging up rather than being a faulty print head? It’s something to think about and what it comes down to is that with a pigment printer, you will have to print something, anything, a few times a week as preventative maintenance from clogging. Samples of Printing Tonality and Gradations Samples scanned with an Epson 1200 flatbed at 300 ppi resolution. Samples shown saved as maximum quality JPEGs.
Print Longevity In the past, I’ve felt some discomfort in knowing that the 1270 prints, while looking very good, won’t stand the test of time. If I were to photograph a wedding digitally, I would not sell prints made with the 1270 because of the potential lack of longevity; however, with the R2400 I have no such hesitation. At the very least, we’re talking between 60 to 70 years with the Premium series of papers and longer with matte papers. Under dark storage, R2400 prints could conceivably last for centuries. That’s a pretty damn big jump up from the 1270’s heyday only five-years past when print life was a maximum of 20 to 30 years under ideal display conditions. It’s very reassuring to be able to give prints to others without worrying about fading and agent orange. It’s also great to not have to worry about metamerism and bronzing, as users of the old 2000 and 2200 printers did. Summary Every time Epson introduced new printers I wondered if it was time to retire the 1270. Every time Canon and HP introduced new printers that offered features that Epson did not, I wondered if adultery was warranted. However, a sober second look and further research into those new printers always revealed one limitation or another despite the promise of some truly excellent print quality from the three brands. Canon was first to offer individual ink cartridges with very fast and very quiet printing. However, Canon printers are still dye ink based, meaning print life would still be shorter than desired for professional print sales. HP was first to offer more than one black/grey ink for much improved B&W printing without colorcasts. New HP inks also promised very long print life when used with HP’s best premium papers. However, HP continues to use multi-color ink cartridges that will result in users paying more for ink compared to those using printers with individual ink cartridges. There have also been questions raised about the durability of HP prints due to the use of swellable papers that take too long to dry and are susceptible to moisture. Epson have had their own issues that irked its user base. The first pigment printer, the 2000P suffered from metamerism and was brutally slow in printing. The 2200 alleviated the metamerism, but introduced a new problem called bronzing when glossy papers were used. The current generation of printers have resolved the bronzing by introducing a gloss optimizer, either in its own cartridge (R1800), or already mixed in with the color inks (R2400). The R2400 comes closest to being the ideal printer that attempts to cover all the bases. It has individual ink cartridges to prevent ink wastage, as with multi-colored cartridges. It has three black inks for good B&W printing capability. It doesn’t suffer from metamerism or bronzing and its print quality, while at times subtle, is an improvement from past generations of printers, especially in tonality. Add to all of this, excellent print life and the R2400 seems to be as good as it gets, and overall, I’d say that it is. The only negative about the R2400 is with the need to swap black inks depending on which paper type one uses. If matte, then Matte Black is needed for best results and for glossy or semi gloss papers, then Photo Black is needed. While the potential ink wastage is not as great as the larger professional printers such as the 4800, it’s still enough to make me reluctant to swap out the black inks too often. While I initially thought that I’d be a Matte Black printer because of my previous heavy use of Epson Enhanced Matte paper, I’m really a semi gloss/luster paper kind of guy, so I’m good with just using Photo Black for most of my printing. But still, I can’t help but think how many prints I could have made every time I want to print on a nice heavy weight matte paper and need to swap inks. If only Epson had given the R2400 the same feature as in the R1800, to allow for both black inks to installed and switched on the fly depending on the paper selected, the R2400 just might have gotten my Ultimate Recommendation. As it is, even though I've only used it for a week, after 20 letter sized prints, 10 11x17s, and one 13x19, I can still give it a Highly Recommended status. November 19, 2005 - Epson has posted some new premium profiles for the R2400 printer. Two new sets of profiles for matte and fine art papers join the older gloss/semi gloss profile, available here for download. |
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