Printer choices

If this belongs in the Photography Equipment forum please feel free to move it (although I don't see much about printers there).

I have had my Epson R1800 for a number of years and perhaps it is time to change. I have fought darker than expected prints for almost the entire time (most prints a bit dark, some not too bad) and have posted here before on the subject despite calibration, soft-proofing, etc. Perhaps a new printer won't correct that problem but, then again, maybe it will. As for my needs I do not print often and I do not sell prints. When I do print it is never B&W and usually is 8x10 or 11x14, 11x16 using Epson Premium Semi-gloss paper. I may go several months without printing but I do try and print a colored page or run a nozzle check just to keep ink moving. I do not agitate the cartridges between printings but clogging hasn't seemed to be a problem with one recent exception. As with others, I am not happy with the prices on ink cartridges. Does anyone have any suggestions as to what printers I might consider to replace my current one?

Joseph, this is the correct forum for everything to do with printing.

So, I'm not sure if the underlying issues in your post are the only things motivating you to consider a new printer, or if there are other things at work, too. I see a couple of points that you mention. First is "darker than expected prints". I can virtually 100% guarantee changing printers will not help this. There's a vanishingly small chance that your printer is malfunctioning, and this is making prints that are too dark but otherwise correct in colour, detail, etc. Possible, but quite unlikely.

So if it's not the printer making the prints seem overly dark, it's something else -- the monitor, the image processing, the colour management settings, something else in the printing workflow like printer driver or driver settings, the ambient lighting under which prints are viewed, or perhaps even the expectation of how ink reflecting light from paper can look compared to how light emitting from a monitor can look. If the cause is any combination of those things, switching printers will not help.

The second point I see is the cost of ink cartridges. Again, switching printers probably won't help here as long as you're switching to a small format desktop printer suitable for 8x10 and 11x14 work. All the printers from all manufacturers in this class are sold effectively with minimal profit margin in the hardware, because the money is made on the consumables like ink and paper. Relatively speaking, the ink for all the small format printers is expensive so switching to a different one will not save anything significant.

This is especially true if your print volume is small. How many cartridges do you go through in a year? If each cartridge was $2 - $3 cheaper, how much would that save? The only way to really economize on ink is to switch to a large format printer with comparatively massive ink cartridges where the price per ml is far less; but the larger carts assume you're printing a lot in order to save by buying ink in bulk. This probably isn't justifiable by your printing volume.

Newer printers have a few different features, probably print a little faster, maybe with a little better colour or detail. But fundamentally none of the current crop of small desktop photo printers will change much regarding the above two considerations. Cost of printing from small format consumables is something you're still stuck with, unless you decide to outsource to a printing service. And the dark print thing is a problem that is likely solvable, but not by switching printers.

If for some reason you still want to look at a new printer, there are just a few current 13" photo printer models from Epson and Canon. With Canon, it's the PRO-100, PRO-10 and PRO-1. I've spent a bunch of time evaluating the PRO-1 last year, and it's a fine printer. Some design things about it irritate me; it seems slow to do many things, for no good reason. And it has that fake Apple design style where they take away all the controls and readouts in favour of something that looks "cool" but ends up being actually more annoying to use when you know exactly what you want to do but the printer won't let you do it. Canon printers should have one major positive compared to Epson, which is a lack of clogging issues and wasted ink on head cleanings / nozzle checks. But this at the potential expense of print heads that are more like consumables in the printer, intended to be replaced after a finite life. Canons also treat the switching of PK and MK black inks differently, not wasting a ton of ink to do the switch. But if you mainly print on a single type of semi-glossy media, this will not be an issue either way.

With Epson, you're looking at the R3000 or R2000. Capabilities of these will be similar to what you already have with the R1800, just a little bit jazzed up.

Thank you, Royce. As always a carefully considered and clearly presented assessment of the problem. Perhaps I will start out by working out the monitor calibration issue again. Your advice is very much appreciated.

Feel free to post the calibration setup and so on here. As you've probably seen from past threads it can get somewhat involved. But fundamentally it's just a game of details, going through and cross-checking each one.

One thing with print darkness or brightness to consider is that it's just a physical object -- ink on paper reflecting light. So if the "print is too dark", then either: a) the ink sent to the paper is too dark, which normally means a colour management problem somewhere upstream of the printer; b) the monitor is too bright, making it look like the print is too dark when it reality the print is correctly reflecting the light that it should; or c) the ambient light under which the print is viewed is too dim for proper viewing, and so the print can only reflect dim light in turn.

Got it.

A final posting to conclude this discussion. I have had my NEC monitor for a couple of months and have recalibrated using brightness at 95 as opposed to the previous 120. My prints are no longer too dark despite the fact that I am still using my rather dated Epson R1800 printer. I am quite pleased with current results. Many thanks to you, Royce, and also to E.J. for both of your inputs on monitors and printers and for setting me on a straight path.

Glad it's working out better for you now, Joseph...