Hello,
First, thank to all who contribute to this forum. I appreciate any thought and guiding direction for choice on APS & papers.
I've all but ordered a Z3100. A paperwork snafu is holding off getting the order done until Monday, so I have a couple more days to dither on a few final questions, primarily if to order APS (if even available). I've spent time aplenty reading the prior posts, especially Justin's "plea for clarity" post.
First, I am an amatuer photographer and new to printing. I'm an engineer in my other life, so okay with technical. Still, most of the color terms are new im my learning curve. Also, I have color-blindness, which means it takes me extra effort to get things right, even if I can easily see when colors are wrong. So I will lean on tools more than others.
The HP paper that primarily grabs me is Pro Satin, but not many others. I would prefer to print on a gentle Pearl - not sure who's. I think I will end up with just a very few favorite papers. I'm thinking ICC's are available for some other papers without buying the APS, and least a dealer said his rep has done work to create some (Magiclee??).
What I gather is that the built-in spectro does a good job of calibrating the printer, but the standard paper profiling software is limited, leaving room for the APS up-sale.
For me, APS would be a $630 delta, because I just bought a new i1 display, and it's still sealed so I can get the money back are re-direct towards APS. So that's a modest incentive to decide from the onset. However, I understand that some things are best digested in stages. I'd:
- like to work on optimizing shadow detail
- experiment with other papers, someone please suggest a Pearl-type for me to check out (I'm faintly remembering the 44M from Ilford B&W).
- am no color expert
- am stretching the budget already on the printer, plus I see a $400 paper trimmer in my near future. I won't be budgeting for any future RIP.
I read that APS is a bargin, that it's performance is lost on some, that's it's impossible to find, etc. I could just keep the i1 display I bought and wait.
Ralph
p.s. also some added newb notes on choosing the Z3100:
I choose the Z3100 partly because I'm familiar with HP roll printers from engineering work, partly because my partner bought one (we can co-misserate), and because of the switching inks feature of the Epson. But I also managed to get the Bill Atkinson test prints done on Epson & Z3100 to make my final decision, using gloss, satin and matte. Here's what was seen:
- Neither Epson or HP prints what's on the monitor (Spyder calibrated).
- Both HP & Epson printed purples in place of blues
- Everything the HP printed had a yellow cast (i.e. jaundice skin)
- Everything the Epson printed had an orange cast (i.e. sunburned skin)
- The Epson separates shadow detail significantly better than the HP
- The dark grays from the Epson looked hazy, but velvety from the HP (as in the B.A. test image with the yellow rose).
- Contrary what I read, the greens looked better on the Epson, probably due to the HP's yellow cast.
- I thought the best test print of the bunch was HP on Pro Satin, although more saturated than on Photoshop.
- Just to put an opinion in print, one reason I didn't consider Canon was because I don't want to give their marketing any means of positive feedback from their choice to put a useless "direct print" button on the back of the 5D camera.
I didn't think that the HP or Epson made prints significantly better than the other. My teenage daughter lent her eye to the evaluation, and I'm no pro. After my printer is up and running, I could send the test prints to someone else in need.
