Rangefinder Magazine
July 2006

First Exposure by Bob Rose
Epson Stylus Pro 4800 and Epson Ultrachrome K3 Inks

Epson 4800 in action

OVER THE YEARS, Epson and others have advanced both printer and ink technology to the point where we naturally expect push-button perfect (and permanent) color prints. Well, although nothing is perfect, Epson came one giant step closer to perfection last year when it announced the latest series of printers utilizing the UltraChrome K3 Ink System.

A lot of the UltraChrome K3 system’s magic is in the ink and paper combination, which yields prints anyone would be proud to show. According to the tests, prints can be shown for up to 300 years, depending on how they are displayed. More realistically, the typical tested color materials are rated for up to 108 years, while black-and-white materials are rated up to 200 years. The UltraChrome K3 ink is pigment-based, which accounts for a significant part of its permanence. It also has an extremely wide color gamut due to the formula used to make up a set of eight colors—Black, Cyan, Magenta, Yellow, Light Cyan, Light Magenta, Light Black and Light Light Black. With that many color channels and the extra black levels, the tonalities and the ability to render neutrals are dramatically improved.

An assortment of prints on various media from 16x24 to 8x10. Images courtesy of (clockwise from upper left:) Bambi Cantrell, Kayce Baker, Tony Corbell and Bob Rose.

The microscopic pigment particles are surrounded (or micro-encapsulated) in resin, which gets the ink into the paper in a faster, more uniform way; there’s almost no no- ticeable “layering” effect seen on the print surface (called gloss-differential). Once the ink hits, it sticks—thereby making the print dry, stable, and scratch-resistant almost instantly.

You can get UltraChrome K3 technology in the Epson Stylus Pro 2400, 4800, 7800 and 9800 printers (13, 17, 24 and 44 inches wide, respectively). Since I found I can accommodate a major part of my work with 16-inch-wide rolls and sheets, I chose the Epson Stylus Pro 4800.

The 4800 is an extremely sophisticated, well built (some say hand-built) device. If you are at all familiar with hooking up an inkjet printer, the 4800 can be unpacked and running in under an hour, requiring little more than installing the software, inserting the ink cartridges and charging up the ink supply lines. It’s even supplied with its own Firewire cable.

Printer control panel showing printing status and ink level

The 4800 is also USB 2.0-capable and optionally network-enabled, and both Mac- and Windows- friendly.

I won’t keep you in suspense—this is the best printer Epson has ever delivered. Prints are detailed, with smooth tonalities. Although it doesn’t quite equal the silver-based equivalent, the new threelevel Black ink technology does produce black-andwhite prints that look great and are almost free of metamerism (full or partial change in color due to a change in the viewing light). The tight tolerance on this system design, along with the supplied color print profiles, means the out-of-box color is acceptable to many people. Still, I was able to notice a slight improvement when I created my own custom profiles using both GretagMacbeth Eye-One and X-Rite Pulse spectrophotometers.

Advanced black-and-white controls also provide print tone setting

The amount of advanced controls, system monitoring and self-calibration is clearly evident: the printer checks itself before each print to ensure that the media is in the correct position and that there is ample ink in the system. Operational feedback, clear guidance and error messages are displayed through a combination of on-screen and printer control-panel window information. And you rarely need to press the buttons on the control panel, other than to change between roll and sheet feed and to replace inks.

An all-new, one-inch-wide, high-performance, eight-channel print head fires ink through a total of 1440 nozzles to provide a maximum resolution of 2880x1440 dpi.

While I’m all for maximum quality, most people couldn’t see the difference at 2880, so I found myself backing down to 1440 (and even sometimes 720 depending on the print media). This meant I could pump out 8x10s in 2–3 minutes and 16x20s in 6–10 minutes (the published Epson spec shows average times of 3 min. 17 sec. for an 8x10 and 9 min. 46 sec. for a 16x20).

With the printer weighing in at a respectable 89 lbs., I opted to get the printer stand; it provides a solid support and raises this 33.4(W) x 14(H) x 30(D)-inch printer 27.5 inches off the floor, while providing quite a bit of storage underneath behind two doors. The stand also gave me the ability to easily reposition the printer to feed large sheets and boards through one of the optional paper (media) paths.

Gemini system includes printer, stand and touchscreen- controlled computer

Media handling is quite versatile. The 4800 can accept rolls up to 17 inches wide and 132 feet long. It also takes cut sheets up to 17x22 inches in a 250-sheet tray and takes manually fed material up to 1.5mm thick. Although manual feed has improved, it can still be tricky. I printed using a wide assortment of both automatically and manually fed sheet media supplied by Epson.

To test the roll feed system, I printed on 16-inch-wide Fujifilm Photo Paper Satin 270. The results were excellent, including a lack of paper curl that I’ve faced with some other media in the past. In addition, because the blackand- white quality was so impressive, I also tried the Fuji Hunt Talbot Museum Fine Art paper (www.fujihuntdigital. com). A heavyweight semi-gloss media with an Alpha Cellulose base, this paper is the closest I’ve felt to fiber-base material since the last time I was in the darkroom.

The only real issue I have relates to printing on matte and fine art papers: For optimum results, the standard Photo Black cartridge should be swapped with a matte black cartridge, which is easy to do physically. Unfortunately, the change requires the printer to purge the ink lines to deliver the right ink to the heads. This takes a few minutes, and a considerable amount of ink (all colors) is wasted in the process. You don’t want to do this unless you have a lot of printing to do.

The predecessor to the 4800, the 4000, had a place for both black inks, but now one is taken up by the Light Light Black. Epson would have had to redesign the unit to hold nine cartridges to avoid this. On another note, while 110mL cartridges are standard, the 4800 can use more cost-effective 220mL cartridges if you don’t mind leaving the ink compartment covers open.

There are many photographic markets where the 4800 fits well. But Epson clearly targeted the portrait photographer when it decided to add an on-board computer with touch-screen controls to an alternate package and called it the Epson Gemini K3 Portrait Printing System.

Originally built on the 4000 printer platform, the Gemini system has four years of real-world development and enhancements that give portrait photographers an easy way to integrate great printing and production technology into their businesses, even if they have no digital experience at all.

Gemini user interface

As Epson says, Gemini is “engineered to help manage all photographic files in an organized method that enables quick and easy selection of images for print. By having this system on site, photos can be viewed by clients immediately and selecting images is simply a matter of mouseclicking their favorites. Once images are selected, cropping and retouching prior to creating proofs is possible using either the system’s built-in photo enhancement software or with other programs such as Adobe Photoshop. When clients place their orders, the photographer simply drags and drops the selected images into built-in or custom-designed photo templates that enable them to print in a variety of common or custom sizes, on different types of media and into a wide array of custom packages. The system can save additional time by applying automatic color corrections that are predetermined by the photographer.”

So, whether you’re looking for the latest technology to offer you some of the best and longest lasting prints, or need additional business workflow options, Epson may have a solution for you. Visit www.epson.com.

Bob Rose joined the photo industry in 1978 after graduating from RIT. As director of Dark Space Research for Beseler, the manager of Digital Business Development for Ilford, and VP of Marketing for Bogen, Rose has been a lecturer and contributor to a number of publications including the Focal Encyclopedia of Photography, and has taught at Parsons School of Design. In 1999 he formed his own company, VMI. He can be reached at: vmi-inc@earthlink.net.