Mini Review - Epson R800 photo inkjet

[Pradeep]

Well I thought I would put a few words together about my latest toy. It's the latest photo inkjet from Epson, uses 1.5pl droplets, and instead of the standard 6 carts, it uses 8. It's got Black, Cyan, Magenta, Yellow. In addition it has the new blue, red, matte black and gloss optimizer. The gloss optimiezer coats the print, to give it a full gloss coverage. Without it there is a variation in gloss between printed and non-printed parts of the paper. It uses UltraChrome pigment inks, so print life should be very good.

I was wary of buying another Epson after the hassles I had with my c80. But dpreview forums mentioned that this was the best printer to get, at least in the letter size class. And they were right. Borderless 4*6 and 5*7s come out just as good as a photo-lab, if not better. You can't see any dots. And much improved speeds over the slothy c80. I haven't got any borderless 8*10 paaper, but on letter size the results are also very good, keeping in mind my source is a Nikon 995 with 3.3MP. Colours are extremely vivid, without turning into oversaturated Sony reds and greens

It can also print on printable CDs and DVDs, haven't tried that yet. Also has a roll feeder but no integrated cutter so I prob won't be using that.

FW and USB2 ports, I'm using the FW.

A thumbs up from me, if you can afford the cost ($399 RRP).

 

[Mercutio]

My training company just bought a Kodak 8500 dye-sub printer.

It makes photos.

The Ektotherm paper that you *have* to use with it looks and feels exactly like Kodak processed-photo stock, and it says Kodak on the back. And the things that come out of it, after the ~1 minute it takes to print a page, are photographs. As in "visually identical to processed film". It's a $1,000 printer. The paper is $.75 a sheet. I don't know what the ink costs. It's not a cheap solution to anyone's problem.

I printed out a couple of 5MP images from my Canon G5, and they were absolutely spectacular. It'd be interesting to do a side-by-side comparison of output between the Kodak and Pradeep's Canon.

 

[Pradeep]

The dye-subs are nice, problem is that you pay a fixed cost for ink (ribbon) per page, no matter how much coverage you have. So if you want to print anything small than 8*10, you still pay the same cost. Still, if you need a lot of photos printed in a hurrry it can't be beaten for speed.

Let me know if you want to email me a pic, I can print it and mail it back to you.

 

[sechs]

Seems to me that someone made a mini dye-sub printer for about $300. Of course, paper costs are much higher than for an inkjet -- but they're pretty much photo prints.

 

[Pradeep]

Yeah I think Olympus made one that did 4*6s for cheap.

 

[Pradeep]

BTW I submerged a print under water, completely waterproof