A question for those that went to the Epson Print Academy this Saturday in Atlanta. What did you discover about the new Epson printers? How were the prints,how did they handel cut sheets? Any information on these printers will be most welcome. Hear in the UK Epsons web site does not even mention them yet as far as I can see.
I haven't been to Atlanta but I might be able to answer one or two of your questions as I have taken delivery of a ESP 7900 in the UK.
As with previous Epson LF units without a sheet feeder, sheets are fed manually one at a time. I have found that the 7900 will feed cut sheet cleanly as long as there is no curl. All my stocks are 24" roll based so when I am proofing, I cut a 210 mm wide section across the roll and then cut that strip into two. I then rotate each sheet 90 degrees to allow give portrait A4. This was fine with my 6 year old ESP 9600 even with a little curl still present in the paper at 90 degrees to the usual curl. However the 7900 required some encouragement to feed paper in this way and a little ink was dropped perhaps as the head touched the paper surface. I regard this as my error and not a problem with the printer - I will just need to spend a moment longer de-curling paper when I feed it this way. By the way, there is no paper release lever as with previous models. Instead, a button is pressed to engage and disengage. This is one of many changes that seems to make the 7900 a much more refined unit in operation than my 9600.
I don't know when Epson UK will update their web site but you could try visiting a fewer UK dealer sites. The Epson 7900 was demonstrated three weeks ago at the London Total Print Expo although I had a private demo the week before that.
I normally print on Hahnemuehle PhotoRag and more recently PhotoRag UltraSmooth. However, in light of the recent relatively disappointing Wilhelm permanence figures for PhotoRag with Epson ink I may now recommend Epson Ultrasmooth to my clients. The video interview with Henry Wilhelm on this web site would seem to support this approach too.
The only thing that is holding my company back from moving fully over to the 7900 now is ink availabilty. Hopefully it will only be a few days before ink becomes available in the UK.
Ryan Grayley
