Printing large with an Epson 7890

[adias]

After many printers over the years with good success, but always accompanied with maintenance chores and costly paper/ink costs I upgraded...  to a  large format Epson 7890. And that includes maintenance, calibration and supplies at the ready. All at the neighborhood Costco store. I checked several SF Bay Area stores and several have current profiled (DryCreek) printers and the results are simply outstanding. Unless one prints for a living, and does it routinely (namely weekly or ideally daily), inkjet printing is an expensive and time consuming chore. Properly setup commercial labs is the way to go.

I suspect this opinion will be controversial but be it as it may. It makes sense... to me.

[Wayne Fox]

After many printers over the years with good success, but always accompanied with maintenance chores and costly paper/ink costs I upgraded...  to a  large format Epson 7890. And that includes maintenance, calibration and supplies at the ready. All at the neighborhood Costco store. I checked several SF Bay Area stores and several have current profiled (DryCreek) printers and the results are simply outstanding. Unless one prints for a living, and does it routinely (namely weekly or ideally daily), inkjet printing is an expensive and time consuming chore. Properly setup commercial labs is the way to go.

I suspect this opinion will be controversial but be it as it may. It makes sense... to me.

some costco’s do pretty good.  However, they are shutting more and more down, good chance none will survive 2016.  They can generate more sales/profit per square foot with some alternate retail.

[jrsforums]

some costco’s do pretty good.  However, they are shutting more and more down, good chance none will survive 2016.  They can generate more sales/profit per square foot with some alternate retail.

Are you talking about Costco or the large printing within Costco?

[adias]

some costco’s do pretty good.  However, they are shutting more and more down, good chance none will survive 2016.  They can generate more sales/profit per square foot with some alternate retail.

You are not talking about the Costco retail system to shutdown. No way!

If you refer to their photo printing being passed out, I doubt it too Here in the SF Bay Area their Fuji printers printers have just been updated. The Epson 7890s are well maintained and eventually they will be also updated. If you like satin (and I do) and do not care for other papers (I do frame) the quality is outstanding. I do not see how one can get a better Epson print at home; the same, probably, but not better.

[Ken Doo]

Costco print quality can vary from store warehouse to warehouse---but our local one is quite good. But it's not difficult to beat their print quality if you know have the basic background to print with a professional wide format printer.

I doubt Costco will shut their mini labs down---it's a loss leader and brings in foot traffic. Come in and save a dollar at the mini lab, but customers rarely leave Costco without spending $$$.

ken

[Paul Roark]

I doubt many B&W fine art printers are going to take their work to Costco.

As a superior alternative, B&W photographers who want the best and most lightfast output, as well as lowest costs, might be interested in the "Eboni" carbon printing options for Epson wide format printers.  From the 7600 up, all of the 6-ink printers are compatible with this approach.  It's for matte paper only, but that includes Arches watercolor paper.  Used Epson wide format printers are readily available.

My latest project is the 9800 -- see http://www.paulroark.com/BW-Info/9800-Eboni-Variable-Tone.pdf
My workhorse for the last several years has been the 7800.  See http://www.paulroark.com/BW-Info/7800-Carbon-Variable-Tone-2015.pdf
For many photographers who want the classic 16x20 format, the 3880 is nearly ideal.  See http://www.paulroark.com/BW-Info/3880-Eboni-Variable-Tone.pdf

MIS Associates sells the pre-mixed inks.  I mix my own, which drops the price almost 2 orders of magnitude from the Epson prices.  Any former darkroom B&W photographer is going to be comfortable with DIY mixing.  Ink cost becomes irrelevant, and the prints are superior to ABW.

As an aside, I might add that the Eboni-6 inkset resulted from a project I did for a Guggenheim award winning watercolorist who wanted a "workable" carbon inkset.  The idea was to make a carbon inkset that would print well on watercolor paper and not have any binders in it, so that it would be able to be smeared on the paper.  The project "failed" from the watercolorist's perspective; the raw carbon would not smear with water and brushes.  The tiny carbon particles simply buried themselves in the paper's surface and would not move.  However, the project produced an outstanding B&W matte paper inkset.  No binder means no clogging.  True, if the MK dries on the head, it'll cause a clog like any other MK.  However, the dilute inks virtually never clog.  There is no "glue" to stick them to the head.

FWIW,

Paul
www.PaulRoark.com
http://www.paulroark.com/BW-Info/

[Wayne Fox]

My sources are pretty well placed, but not at the executive level so certainly not cast in stone.  Basically this is what some who work within the photo departments in costco are sharing with each other.  They have already shut down several of the photo departments, as they are trying to find additional retail space to expand other offerings and bring in some new things.

Margins for printing aren’tt  that great (especially at their prices), in many markets printing is eroding as online services are taking a pretty serious bite out of local printing.  They may do what Walgreens seems to be doing, moving to self print kiosks with fuji dry printers.  Not sure where they are headed other than something other than what they are doing today.  Maybe online ordering with local pickup or simply pushing online ordering to move it out of the retail space.

They do analyze each dept. on a store by store basis, I assume any of them that are doing remarkably well may have a chance to stay for now. My local Costco seems to do a pretty robust business and is pretty large and well equipped, so it will be interesting to watch what happens (they have cut staffing back in the photo dept here and one employee from there has inquired about a job for fear his job won’t be around much longer).