Epson 3800 Review

Epson Stylus Pro 3800 Printer Review | printer repair | Printer ...

Free Download Epson Stylus Pro 3800 Printer Review ebook in pdf files. Printer Repair The automatic sheet feeder works brilliantly and the rear manual sheet feed and front manual feed facilities necessary for some paper types (and weights) are a dream once …

Since its introduction, Epson’s Ultrachrome K3 pigment inkset has established a dominant position in the hearts and minds of legions of professional photographers and knowledgeable enthusiasts. With a wide colour gamut, a higher D-max of 2.3 and the virtual elimination of bronzing on prints, Ultrachrome K3 arrived with a hiss and a roar! 100 years the left brain and the right brain are in a rare state of perfect agreement. Where the heart and mind goes the cheque book invariably follows. Epson tells me that almost 70% of professional photographers in New Zealand and Australia use their printers! No wonder Epson continues to demonstrate strong support of our professional photographers’ events and awards programs! This Ultrachrome K3 revolution began with the A3+ Epson Stylus R2400 and made its way into large format graphics printers in the form of the wide format Epson Stylus Pro 4800, 7800 and 9800 models capable of A2 (17”), 24” and 44” wide paper handling. I reviewed the Epson 2400 in the November 2005 issue of TPM and the 4800 model over two issues of TPM in March and April 2006. Regular readers will know that I was mightily impressed with both these printers. The 2400 would go on to be the favourite printer of many amateur and professional photographers of my acquaintance. They love the quality, can live with the speed but can sometimes be a wee bit frustrated with the small ink cartridges. The 4800 too has found a loving home with many professional photographers. The feedback I hear is that they’re just as happy today as the day they bought the beast. Not a hint of post-purchase dissonance. However, in my idea of a perfect world, the 2400 and 4800 would not require wasteful and time consuming changeouts of the black ink cartridges. With these models it is necessary to switch between Photo Black and Matt Black in order to match these to different printing stocks. In my idea of a perfect world, an A2 photo printer would not require two burly blokes to lift it, nor would it be as noisy as the 4800. In my idea of a perfect world, an A2 photo printer would cost less than just under four thousand dollars including GST. Fast forward to 2007 and hello, the clever boffins at Epson have been listening to the feedback from around the world, continuing to evolve the product and doing their part in the quest for printer perfection. Enter the Epson Stylus Pro 3800, an A2 photo printer which answers all of my “in a perfect world…” requests. So here we go… Matt Black and the Photo Black are installed simultaneously. No black ink changeouts necessary! The printer simply uses the right black for the job depending on what media you select in the printer dialogue box. There’s still some minor wastage but I’m assured that it’s tiny and the printer whirrs away doing all that’s necessary without user intervention. There are four black cartridges, the two previously mentioned plus Light Black and Light Light Black and five colour for a total of nine on board. Why all those blacks? Print a few long tonal scale black and white images and the question is both quickly asked and resoundingly answered. I lifted the box all by myself, the 3800 is a svelte 19.8kg versus the 4800’s 39.4kg and physically not much larger than a 2400 A3+ printer. How do they do it? Well, they’ve done away with an internal paper tray and replaced this with a 20 sheet cut sheet feeder. Also, the 3800 does not offer roll paper handling capability and that’s helped quite a bit in the weight and shape stakes. Neither of these are drawbacks for me as I’d rather use sheet paper anyway and I don’t need to have many sheets in the printer at one time. It’s very quiet, way quieter than the 4800 where most of the noise comes from the vacuum system which flattens the paper. There’s no vacuum system in the 3800 and it seems none the worse for it.

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