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New photo printer

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clovishound
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New photo printer

Post by clovishound » Sat Jan 15, 2022 5:53 pm

I got the Pup a photo printer for Christmas. We have been putting it through the paces, and I admit I am impressed. She is looking toward selling some of her photographs, so I spent more than I would otherwise and got one that will print bigger and cheaper, but still provide great resolution.

I ended up with an Epson ET-8550. This is one of their eco tank photo printers. I has 6 ink tanks. The first thing I noticed about it was the size of the ink bottles that came with it. They hold a whopping 70ml of ink each. That is enough to fill the onboard tanks when empty, with just enough left to top the tanks after priming the lines and print head. So far we have printed about 60 or 70 8 1/2 x 11 photos on it, and the tanks around 1/8 of their capacity on average. The grey tank is down almost twice that, but you can buy individual bottles, so that's not a problem. Availability of ink is spotty right now, but I managed to snag a bottle of grey this week, and the primary colors are currently readily available. Doesn't seem to be using any black and very little photo black. Ink bottles are quite reasonable at about $18 a bottle for the Epson brand, and less for aftermarket. I'm sticking with the Epson brand for now, as I'm leery of mixing two different ink brands.

This printer will print up to 13 x 19 prints. I've printed one 11 by 17 so far, and it's very impressive. Print quality rivals chemical photographic printing IMO. The black and white photos are just as good as what I used to print in the darkroom. Supposedly, when using the premium paper and Epson's inks the prints are good for 200 years when properly stored. Obviously, that doesn't mean displayed on the wall, but sounds like they are unlikely to fade away in the first couple years.

It's really nice to have control over the final process. If I'm not printing in the full aspect ratio, I can choose which part gets cropped out. I also have the option of printing the full long side of the image while leaving blank strips on the top and bottom, which can be trimmed off. The only down side is you can't let it sit idle for long periods of time, or the print heads will dry up, and have to be serviced.

Sorry if this sounds like a commercial for Epson, but I am impressed with the printer and it's results. It wasn't cheap, but the results are really great.
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dave77
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Re: New photo printer

Post by dave77 » Sat Jan 15, 2022 11:29 pm

I had a printer quite a few years ago that I used for small prints, don't remember the brand. I used photo paper and printed a couple of color 4x5's that hung in the school's work room for a couple of years and they faded a lot. The prints were not under glass and they say being under UV filtering glass makes a huge difference in their lifespan. I don't print any of my photos anymore, I do have a couple that were done locally from film negatives back when we still had local camera stores (we used to have 3 in our medium sized town, they are long gone), not sure how they were done, but they've been on my wall under glass for at least 25 years and have not faded at all, can't say what kind of glass, it's what came with the inexpensive frames they are in.

An interesting blog by a pro photographer, looks like your prints will be OK if you use UV filtering glass on any prints that are going to be exposed to light.

https://keithdotson.com/blogs/news/how- ... graph-last
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Re: New photo printer

Post by clovishound » Sun Jan 16, 2022 8:50 am

Interesting article, I wonder what the publication date was? Inks have come a long way in terms of permanence over the last decade or so. I was unwilling to spend the money on a pigment based system at this point. Glad to hear that the Epson inks and paper are good for at least half a century under normal glass. Their advertising says 200 years under ideal storage. First I've seen that B&W dye ink lasts significantly longer than the color inks. Makes sense. Good news for me, as I love B&W.
DSC_0097-2.jpg
This is one I took on our outing Friday. The color version is nice, but I prefer the B&W. I looked over the article again and see a 2022 copyright date, between that and the types of inks mentioned, I assume it's current. It also makes me want to try some of the matte presentation paper. It's actually cheaper than premium photo paper, and looks like it might be a good choice for some prints, with the benefit of being a more archival product. Thanks for posting that. I had looked into archival properties of inkjet prints prior to buying this printer, but looks like this one wasn't available at that time.

I'll add that I'm starting to think about dry mounting some of the matte presentation prints on black foamcore using the dry mount press I inherited from my dad. The mounting tissue is hard to come by, and a lot more expensive than I used to be, but makes for a great long term mount.
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Re: New photo printer

Post by Nam Vet » Sun Jan 16, 2022 1:21 pm

Great B&W photo. Leica has the M10 Monochrome 40-megapixel full-frame black and white mirrorless camera body with Wi-Fi $8,99.00 lens not included. I'm hoping to win the lottery so I can buy that Leica and a great printer. Think I have a better chance of my hair growing back. :lol:
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Re: New photo printer

Post by clovishound » Sun Jan 16, 2022 2:50 pm

Well, that one was taken with a $500 D3400 Nikon kit, and I saved it as a much lower resolution JPG in order to make it more upload friendly. Granted I bought the D3400 for the Pup several years ago, when they were offering great deals. Still, It's a 24 MP crop sensor body and came with an 18-55 and a 70-300 zoom. I printed an 11 x 17 inch print from her D5600, which has the identical sensor system, using the same 18-55 lens, and it has plenty of resolution. I'm confident I could go up to 16 x 20 with no problem.

I'm also finding that by starting with a color image, you can individually adjust the colors when in B&W editing mode. This is done in the editing phase and allows you to control the density of each individual color, even though it is shades of grey in the display. In other words, if you have a blue sky, when you go to B&W and adjust the density of blue using the B&W mixer feature in Lightroom, it adjusts the grey of the sky. You can therefore selectively change gradations based on the original color. The only way to accomplish this when shooting in B&W is to use filters. This assumes the B&W mode camera doesn't still record in color in background mode. I'm not sure how the Leica records, but since it's called a monochrome, I assume it has a monochrome sensor.

Nikon has some of their 44 MP cameras for about half of the Leica. Not sure if that is in your budget, but it's definitely more affordable. They also run sales sometimes on their factory refurbs. I bought the Pup a factory refurb 70-300 FX VR lens to upgrade her telephoto from the kit lens. It was absolutely perfect out of the box. Looked brand new to me. Other manufacturers offer similar cameras.

Digital is a whole different animal than film. I had a B&W darkroom back when I was into photography, and am blown away by what can be done with digital. The resolution on even the crop sensor cameras is impressive.
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Re: New photo printer

Post by dave77 » Sun Jan 16, 2022 11:42 pm

Nam Vet wrote:
Sun Jan 16, 2022 1:21 pm
Great B&W photo. Leica has the M10 Monochrome 40-megapixel full-frame black and white mirrorless camera body with Wi-Fi $8,99.00 lens not included. I'm hoping to win the lottery so I can buy that Leica and a great printer. Think I have a better chance of my hair growing back. :lol:
Would be interesting to see some side by side comparison shots taken with the Leica and a good conventional camera, I would think there would have to be a pretty big difference. It does have good reviews, it should being that the lens they recommend is $5995 so you'd be into it for $14,990 plus another $8995 to have a M10-R for your color shots. :o .

https://www.bhphotovideo.com/c/product/ ... zmEALw_wcB
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Re: New photo printer

Post by clovishound » Mon Jan 17, 2022 9:06 am

If you mean film, by conventional camera, I'm sure the 40MP Leica would come out ahead. IMO the crop sensor pics I get from our D3400 and D5600 have more resolution than the 35mm negatives I used to work with. Of course, it's been several decades since I worked much with a negative. If you do an internet search on the MP equivalent of a 35mm negative, you will get answers all over the place. When I look at a couple of my 8x10 B&W photos from several decades ago, I see a picture that could easily go up to 11x14, but perhaps no further. When I look at an 11 x 17 print off the crop sensor, I see an image that can easily go up to 16 x 20. My instructor in the digital photography class I took last year said crop sensor images are good to 16 x 20, but you need a full sensor to go further. My gut says he is right. I doubt I would have tried a 16 x 20 from any of my negatives back in the day.
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Re: New photo printer

Post by dave77 » Mon Jan 17, 2022 2:56 pm

clovishound wrote:
Mon Jan 17, 2022 9:06 am
If you mean film, by conventional camera, I'm sure the 40MP Leica would come out ahead. IMO the crop sensor pics I get from our D3400 and D5600 have more resolution than the 35mm negatives I used to work with. Of course, it's been several decades since I worked much with a negative. If you do an internet search on the MP equivalent of a 35mm negative, you will get answers all over the place. When I look at a couple of my 8x10 B&W photos from several decades ago, I see a picture that could easily go up to 11x14, but perhaps no further. When I look at an 11 x 17 print off the crop sensor, I see an image that can easily go up to 16 x 20. My instructor in the digital photography class I took last year said crop sensor images are good to 16 x 20, but you need a full sensor to go further. My gut says he is right. I doubt I would have tried a 16 x 20 from any of my negatives back in the day.
Not film but a side by side with a comparable full frame digital camera. Just curious how much better the dedicated B&W sensor photos would be compared to a B&W photo from a color sensor camera would be.

I would love a full frame mirrorless camera but for the amount I use my camera anymore I really can't justify the cost. I have a nice Tamron 28-75 f2.8 that I use on my Canon D70. It will take very nice photos most of the time but sometimes for no apparent reason they will be out of focus (maybe not out of focus as much as not sharp). I have heard that there can be issues with some full frame lenses when used on a smaller than full frame camera.

I saw on a previous post that you had got a FX lens, have you had any issues using it on your DX cameras?
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Re: New photo printer

Post by clovishound » Mon Jan 17, 2022 3:44 pm

None whatsoever. It is a sharper, and much sturdier lens than the DX kit lens that came with the camera. My understanding is that you can use an FX on a DX camera with no issues. You can also use a DX on an FX camera, if you put it in crop mode. Of course, you will only be using half the sensor, so you will not have gained anything. In fact, most of the newer crop sensor cameras have much higher than half the resolution of the full frame sensor cameras. Of course, MP isn't everything.
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Re: New photo printer

Post by dave77 » Mon Jan 17, 2022 4:57 pm

Maybe it helps that your's is the same brand as the camera? I went so far as to send it in to Tamron and they found nothing wrong with it. I still use it as it's mostly fine but don't use it if I know it's going to be an important shot that can not be duplicated. Used it at a Wedding several years ago and while almost all of the shots were fine there were some candid shots that weren't sharp.
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