8 - STEPS TO Perfection

THIS IS A MUCH-AWAITED SUPER A3 PRINTER USING THE SAME basic technology as its smaller brother the R800 (reviewed November 2004 issue). Whilst we were ready for its spectacular performance this time around it is still a joy to report in such a positive vein. We disclosed last November that the R800 ink set delivered the biggest printer gamut we had ever measured. With a bit of profile tweaking and the use of Epson Premium Glossy Photo Paper we can report that we have lifted the bar another 3% – not an awful lot, but the bar was very high to start with! For the record the gamut volume was 889,322 L3 units, about 98.5% of the sRGB gamut.

The Ink Set

Epson R1800 Ink Cartidges The R1800 uses Epson UltraChrome Hi-Gloss. inks. There are eight cartridges in this printer including Matte and Photo Blacks, a red and a blue, a gloss optimiser, along with the usual suspects, cyan, magenta and yellow. They give claimed lives of 100 years for the Matte ink set and 80 years for the Photo Black ink set. The gloss optimiser is a varnish, which enhances the gloss on the finished product – it really works, they are very glossy indeed! The gloss optimiser also keeps bronzing at bay, none was evident; also the sheen is even, all over the print, including the full paper white (which has no coloured ink on it). When you hold a print at an acute angle to the light it is perfectly even and glossy over the entire surface. On the very high-gloss Epson Premium Glossy Photo Paper (EPGPP) there is a slight reduction in reflectance due to the varnish from 95% down to 93.6% and a minuscule shift towards blue (less than 1 Lab point). There was no obvious change in the UV reflectance properties from the use of

the Gloss Optimiser (Glop) suggesting that no benefit will be obtained in UV fade resistance (neither is any claimed by Epson, but we had to have a look!). The Glop is just evident from straight on if you can see both the un-coated and coated parts of the image. The print driver allows the Glop to be put down on the entire printable surface or just the part of the paper where there is image data (it does border-free printing up to A3 size). You can see it by viewing at certain angles to the surface, but you need both in view to detect the boundary. Right: Eight cartridges expands the gamut and helps running costs.

The Print Engine

The print head uses Variable Size Droplet technology to produce an ink droplet as low as 1.5 pico litres, the smallest currently available in the world. This enables a maximum resolution of 5760 by 1440dpi, as fine as one could conceivably need. This may explain the smoothness of the graduations along the tone range even without the smoothing effect of a light black. The printer is fast, claiming a 10x8 in 68 seconds at 1440dpi. In our tests, at Best Quality, we were making full coverage, A4 prints in around 2m 45s.

The Mechanics

This printer is quite a different style to its predecessors (the 1290 and 2100) being more angular in overall form. The support trays are now built in and, by clever design, they fold away when not in use, thus keeping the inevitable dust at bay. The smoked top cover lifts to reveal the 8-cartridge bay and the paper transport system. Gratifyingly the printer continues to work when the lid is lifted so you can see everything is proceeding correctly – this is important if you wish to panic and stop the printer wasting ink for any reason! The printer will accept sheet fed papers, roll paper, CDs and, from the rear entry slot, heavy fine art papers. The rear entry is tight to the back and requires a very small amount of rear desk space. The downside is that the printer does not accept the 1.2mm boards currently gaining popularity (on the 2100 you need as

R1800 CD Loading

Left The CD loading guides are stored neatly within the body of the printer. The CD holder will take full size and mini-CDs.

Epson Premium Semigloss Photo paper (PSGPP)

This media was supplied in A3+ format enabling us to make some larger prints. Using Best photo quality and with “High Speed” turned on, we got a nominal 13x19 inch print out in 5m 21s.

We built a bespoke profile and audited the resulting print with excellent values. The Dmax was a little inferior to the gloss media at 2.25 but, nevertheless, another really good result. The colour errors are tabled. The gamut volume was 887,921 another whopper!

The majority of the colour errors were in the lightness channel and the skin tones were rotated a little towards yellow. This effect was initially also observed with the gloss media and raised our suspicions that the Glop was taking a little longer to dry/cure even though the prints were dry and smudge-proof almost as they came out of the printer. No changes in density were discernable to the eye but to test our theory we made three small swatches of cyan, magenta and yellow and fed them directly into the spectro followed by time-spaced testing. As the graph shows, there is some lightening of the tone over the first 10 minutes, after which it seems to stabilise. There was also a colour shift of around 3 ÄE in the magenta (less in the other two colours) as the Glop cured. None of this should worry the majority of users but if you wish to bespoke profile using this printer you are advised to wait for 15 minutes before starting (go have a cup of tea!).

Cyan

Colour Parameter

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Photo Quote: Photography can never grow up if it imitates some other medium. It has to walk alone; it has to be itself. - Berenice Abbott American Photographer, 1898-1991

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