Luminous Landscape Forum
Raw & Post Processing, Printing => Printing: Printers, Papers and Inks => Topic started by: Mussi_Spectraflow on December 09, 2010, 05:54:47 pm
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Well I just finished unpacking and setting up our 4900 demo unit, and thought I'd share a few first impressions.
First, while Epson had informed us that this was a ground up redesign, I guess I still expected it to share more with the 4880. This is indeed a redesigned printer.
The most immediate difference, it's BIG. This is the mother of all "small" printers. It's like a tiger tank crammed into a mini cooper. It comes on a palette, and it certainly has a bigger presence, even if the footprint isn't that much different from the 4880.
Hand it to Epson, for designing a really great looking machine. When the Z3100 was first announced I wrote in my review how much I liked the attention that was paid to the industrial design, and this printer certainly radiates an aura of thoughtful design.
The layout is similar in terms of the placements of buttons and the control panel on the front. On the back it's quite a bit different, with the power connection on the far left, and the ethernet and USB ports spaced out quite a bit.There is also a power/data cable that connects the roll paper holder to the printer body.
The printer ships with the smaller starter cartridges, in this case 80ml, and the cartridges are slimmer, similar in design to the older x880 series carts. The front ink cover doors are opened by pressing in on the door rather than being released by a option in the menu as it is on the 9900. I like this system better.
The roll paper holder has auto advance features of the 9900 although it uses a classic spindle rather than the spindle-less design of it's bigger brother.
Sheet feeding is also redesigned with a pop-up adapter for loading sheets. The sheet paper holder is new, with various changes to the design, which functionally being the same.
Feel free to ask any questions, I'm in the process of hooking it up to our EFI RIP and making some test prints. I'll try and add some more info later, and I should have an in-depth review up on the website within a couple weeks.
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I have mine, too for a few days now and I'm seeing some starwheel marks in A4 prints. (Paper Harman Gloss Baryta by HM) They are produced by the star wheels at the END of the printer, which come down onto the print once it is around 50% through.
It's not easy to see them, but once you find the Angle one can see them quite good. Especially on a drak print. I didn't have time to try other stuff, like different papers and sizes, but hopefully will be able to do that this weekend. I would just like to know if you find anything similiar.
The thing is that these marks start around tha half of the print. (A4) Before that the star wheels don't tozch the surface. If one kneels before the printer one can see, how the star wheels click down onto the print after a certain time.
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There was a message with an observation that the 4900 showed more color inconstancy under changing lighting than the same print made with with a 7890. Gloss paper if I recall it correctly. Whether that implies that the 7900-9900 have that too is another question. And the same question could be asked for 11880 versus 7890/9890.
I can not find the thread anymore, could even have been on another forum.
Could you check that somewhat surprising result?
met vriendelijke groeten, Ernst Dinkla
New: Spectral plots of +180 inkjet papers:
http://www.pigment-print.com/spectralplots/spectrumviz_1.htm
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So Far colors look great, however it is hard to say after 10 prints from only one paper. Especially my current maim concern are the tar wheel marks, but when I have some time I will compare it to my 9900.
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I can not find the thread anymore, could even have been on another forum.
met vriendelijke groeten, Ernst Dinkla
New: Spectral plots of +180 inkjet papers:
http://www.pigment-print.com/spectralplots/spectrumviz_1.htm
Hi Ernst,
I had exactly the same thought: what happened to that thread ?
I gave the reply you mentioned to a thread with "Epson 9890 ....." in it subject. Apparantly, somebody deleted it. But why ?
cheers,
Remko
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So Far colors look great, however it is hard to say after 10 prints from only one paper. Especially my current maim concern are the tar wheel marks, but when I have some time I will compare it to my 9900.
Which media in the driver do you set? Not all medias need the eject wheels. PGPP and fine art papers should not use the wheels (in Epson's driver).
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Hi Ernst,
I had exactly the same thought: what happened to that thread ?
I gave the reply you mentioned to a thread with "Epson 9890 ....." in it subject. Apparantly, somebody deleted it. But why ?
cheers,
Remko
There are some site fora (Rangefinderforum is another one) where you can edit/remove your messages. There are even some where the thread starter can remove the entire thread. In my opinion there should be a time limit on the edit feature. An edit in the first 6 hours possible after that no longer. A thread started should stay. I had quite a long reply on your message but it is gone. Nothing provocative, no wikileaks in it. Wonder whether someone could use the content :-)
Let's wait for Mussi's observations.
met vriendelijke groeten, Ernst Dinkla
New: Spectral plots of +180 inkjet papers:
http://www.pigment-print.com/spectralplots/spectrumviz_1.htm
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No subversive wikileaks comments. It was my thread it was deleted by mistake. The delete post button on the bottom of the page was accidentally clicked on and it all went away. My apologies. And yes. Its news to me that you can delete an entire thread if your the starter of it.
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No subversive wikileaks comments. It was my thread it was deleted by mistake. The delete post button on the bottom of the page was accidentally clicked on and it all went away. My apologies. And yes. Its news to me that you can delete an entire thread if your the starter of it.
Craig,
can happen with as stupid feature like that. Pity, but I can live with it.
met vriendelijke groeten, Ernst Dinkla
New: Spectral plots of +180 inkjet papers:
http://www.pigment-print.com/spectralplots/spectrumviz_1.htm
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No subversive wikileaks comments. It was my thread it was deleted by mistake. The delete post button on the bottom of the page was accidentally clicked on and it all went away. My apologies. And yes. Its news to me that you can delete an entire thread if your the starter of it.
Thanks for clearing that up - I thought I was going crazy :D
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There was a message with an observation that the 4900 showed more color inconstancy under changing lighting than the same print made with with a 7890. Gloss paper if I recall it correctly. Whether that implies that the 7900-9900 have that too is another question. And the same question could be asked for 11880 versus 7890/9890.
Interesting. Since much of the ink set is shared between the x900 and x880/x890 if there was an increase in color inconsistency/metameric issues it would be logical to assume that it was related to the orange or green inks. Now the 4900 and 9900/7900 share the same ink set so it would be easy to assume that any issue present on the 4900 would also be mirrored by the bigger printers. For what it's worth I've been using the x900 printers in applications where metamerism was a carefully monitored variable, and the printers always performed very well. That said the different inks certainly do have different properties, and some have a higher metameric index than others, it is possible that with the 4900 there have been changes to the printer LUT, which resulted in a higher use of one ink vs another. I think that any change would probably result in a fairly small change but I will certainly look into this.
One small feature that I've grown to appreciate over the last day is the change to the ink change button. On the 7900 it simply switches between black, on the new printer it brings up common cleaning options, no more going through three menu levels to do a nozzle check. Now it's one button away. So that's nice.
Also I rechecked the ink levels after it was done priming the lines, and it certainly appears to be a bit more frugal than the 4880. Even with the smaller 80ml carts, there was around 80% ink still left.
Small negative is that it seems a bit louder.IT makes a low level humming sound(some internal fan i suspect) that is noticeable in a quiet room.
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Just wondering: is it still necessary to purge the lines to switch from matte black to photo black?
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Just wondering: is it still necessary to purge the lines to switch from matte black to photo black?
The publicity is a bit coy about this point. They say: "Depending upon your media type or driver setting, the printer will automatically switch" and "Highly-efficient print head design ensures fast switching with minimal ink usage". Sounds good, but how much is "minimal"? I think it would take some observation to find out, the possibility of observing this depending on how the driver has been programmed to report ink usage. It has become less transparent in this respect over time, without going to a great deal of trouble. Perhaps a request to Epson directly would elicit an answer this question.
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No it's doesn't purge the lines. The process is essentially the same as on the 7900. IT does purge a small amount of ink from the head when switching but this is on the order of 2-3 ml, much less than the 50ml on the 4800.
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No it's doesn't purge the lines. The process is essentially the same as on the 7900. IT does purge a small amount of ink from the head when switching but this is on the order of 2-3 ml, much less than the 50ml on the 4800.
Makes sense, thanks Julian.
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Also perhaps the coolest feature is the ability to switch back and forth from roll to sheet without touching the printer. This has been working really well from the RIP, and in a setting where you have multiple people sending job for sheet and roll this will be a really nice feature.
RE: Ink usage, if you go into the printer menu you can get the total ink usage, checking this number before and after cleanings can be useful if you really want to see how much ink is being used. Also the printer report the usage down to 1/10 of a ml, the drivers ink usage graph is really only useful for letting you know when a cartridge is getting low without being in front of the printer.
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Also perhaps the coolest feature is the ability to switch back and forth from roll to sheet without touching the printer. This has been working really well from the RIP, and in a setting where you have multiple people sending job for sheet and roll this will be a really nice feature.
RE: Ink usage, if you go into the printer menu you can get the total ink usage, checking this number before and after cleanings can be useful if you really want to see how much ink is being used. Also the printer report the usage down to 1/10 of a ml, the drivers ink usage graph is really only useful for letting you know when a cartridge is getting low without being in front of the printer.
Julian, useful to know, but so far all I've been able to find is the "per job" ink usage in the "Job History" list accessed from the printer menu LCD. I have not yet found anything in the manual indicating how to get the information on total ink usage from the printer. I know there is a way to see cartridge by cartridge the percentage of ink remaining in each, but this is pretty tedious. Could you please describe any other path leading to ink consumption data?
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can happen with as stupid feature like that. Pity, but I can live with it.
I noticed that thread missing a few days ago, the day after I had posted a response. I sent a PM to the site administrator, voicing my concern that an original poster can delete a thread, despite time and effort by others contributing to the thread and having content that may be beneficial to others, not to mention the fact it may help the site be more relevant with search engines. Now to find out it's that easy to do accidentally ... just doesn't make any sense.
Part of the discussion on the thread was about metamerism differences between 79/9900 printers and 78/9890 printers. I'm not sure where those claiming it exists are, except for additional orange and green the printers use the exact same ink cartridges. The 49/79/9900 are K3 printers with added green and orange. You can check the part numbers ... they use the same part numbers for all the inks. I can't see any difference between output of my 4900 and 11880 here in the shop, and specifically printed out some samples and ask everyone here to compare them. I just don't see how adding a tiny bit of orange and green can have that much impact. Perhaps those colors have an issue so on rare cases where a lot of them are used, but to be honest in normal photographic printing those inks seem to used very little.
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No it's doesn't purge the lines. The process is essentially the same as on the 7900. IT does purge a small amount of ink from the head when switching but this is on the order of 2-3 ml, much less than the 50ml on the 4800.
Thanks. That's good to know.
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Part of the discussion on the thread was about metamerism differences between 79/9900 printers and 78/9890 printers. I'm not sure where those claiming it exists are, except for additional orange and green the printers use the exact same ink cartridges. The 49/79/9900 are K3 printers with added green and orange. You can check the part numbers ... they use the same part numbers for all the inks. I can't see any difference between output of my 4900 and 11880 here in the shop, and specifically printed out some samples and ask everyone here to compare them. I just don't see how adding a tiny bit of orange and green can have that much impact. Perhaps those colors have an issue so on rare cases where a lot of them are used, but to be honest in normal photographic printing those inks seem to used very little.
I seem to remember that the two new cartridges were only useful in proofing situations and not for general purposes. Perhaps that is what your finding notes. It would be interesting to see long term what the ink usage patterns of the two new cartridges are.
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I seem to remember that the two new cartridges were only useful in proofing situations and not for general purposes. Perhaps that is what your finding notes. It would be interesting to see long term what the ink usage patterns of the two new cartridges are.
There are thousands of ways to create any individual color when screening and dithering. The main purpose of the two new colors was to allow creation of spot colors, but the firmware still utilizes them on every job.
I've followed print jobs, tracking ink consumption of various colors. We run a mixture of landscapes, portraits work, and art reproduction work on the 7900. we send black and white work to the 11880 so the 7900 prints only color prints and we only use PK, no MK. So far it appears Orange accounts for about 5.7% of the total ink used on average, and green about 3.3%. As comparison, Cyan - 2.3% Yellow 3.8% Light Cyan 6.9% VMagenta 3.2% VLMagenta 10.7%. I was surprised to see orange used more than cyan, but this was about a 30 job stretch and I suppose there were some anomalies in the work printed (such as sunsets etc) which might account for that. I'm going to track it again after Christmas - just a little curious about it.
Blacks are the surprising element here, as PK is about 6.7% but LK is 34.7% and LLK is 22.7%. So about 65% of the ink on the paper is one of the blacks. I've know LLk is the most used color for some time, but didn't realize LLK was used that much.
So I suppose it is possible that the orange ink itself being used in place of other color the 78/9890 printers would use to achieve the same colors could cause some metamerism issues, but still of the opinion it just isn't enough ink to make a difference.
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The orange and green are certainly useful to photographers, although it will take an image with very saturated oranges and greens to really notice much of a difference. Graphic designers will see an improvement in Pantone coverage, although people doing straight proofing of output to a SWOP or GRACoL standard without spots will see zero difference. Honestly the 9890 is a great deal with all rebates being offered right now.
Also I just did a quick and dirty metamerism index on the orange green and the cyan and magenta inks. According to the numbers(illum A vs D50) the Orange and green inks should display less of an illuminate shift than than the cyan and magenta, or at the very least be no worse. Of course the Orange and green will almost never be printed without being mixed with some other color so numbers alone don't mean much in this case, although it does NOT support the argument that the orange and green inks are at the root of some sort of problem.
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The orange and green are certainly useful to photographers, although it will take an image with very saturated oranges and greens to really notice much of a difference. Graphic designers will see an improvement in Pantone coverage, although people doing straight proofing of output to a SWOP or GRACoL standard without spots will see zero difference. Honestly the 9890 is a great deal with all rebates being offered right now.
Also I just did a quick and dirty metamerism index on the orange green and the cyan and magenta inks. According to the numbers(illum A vs D50) the Orange and green inks should display less of an illuminate shift than than the cyan and magenta, or at the very least be no worse. Of course the Orange and green will almost never be printed without being mixed with some other color so numbers alone don't mean much in this case, although it does NOT support the argument that the orange and green inks are at the root of some sort of problem.
In my last reply that got lost with the other thread I mentioned the fact that more and less black generation and different types could have an effect on color inconstancy with changing lighting but also the way the extra hues (OG here) are substituting CMY color mixes. The last can be done on hue angle and bring OG even in the grey spine of the gamut if there is a conventional CMYK black generation done where black only substitutes composite grey from 100-60/70%. If the OG substitute CMY mixes only at the highest saturation levels of CMY mixes then that is less likely to happen. It makes quite a difference on the color constancy if all the hues CcMmYOG are still in the printed greys. I also mentioned the dithering/weaving then as contributing to the problem.
With the Wasatch SoftRip and the (few) media presets delivered for the Z3100 a lot of what I mentioned above was done (or not done right) and there was a dramatic difference in color constancy to the print made with the HP driver. A microscope tells a lot then to find the cause. All the greys up to 60/70% had CMmYRGB droplets in the mix.
I doubt Epson made that mistake but it sketches that even with the same inkset used and inks that behave properly on color constancy it is possible to make a mess of it.
met vriendelijke groeten, Ernst Dinkla
Dinkla Gallery Canvas Wrap Actions for Photoshop
http://www.pigment-print.com/dinklacanvaswraps/index.html
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RE: Ink usage, if you go into the printer menu you can get the total ink usage, checking this number before and after cleanings can be useful if you really want to see how much ink is being used. Also the printer report the usage down to 1/10 of a ml, the drivers ink usage graph is really only useful for letting you know when a cartridge is getting low without being in front of the printer.
Epson Technical Support has now confirmed to me that we CANNOT get any data from this printer on the total amount of ink it has used - only the "per job" information. They also told me they have no information about how much ink the main maintenance tank can be filled with before it needs to be replaced. Julian, if you think they are misinformed about either of these points and you know how to extract the information, it could be useful to many of us. I could find nothing in the manual, on-line or in the driver itself whether on the display or on the printer providing such information.
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Mark,
So you are right, I missed the fact that the "total ink used" is no longer available in the menu. That does make it nearly impossible to account for how much ink is being used in the cleanings. I spoke with a few folks with Epson as well to see if there is any way of accessing these counters through some of the service modes. No info yet.
Now there may be a work around to this if Epson makes the MyEpsonPrinter active for the 4900. This is their web based usage tracking system and it's actually pretty slick.It's still in beta(and has been for some time) so I'm not sure of the future of this service, but it does allow you to track the total ink used for all jobs printed on an Epson printer. The reporting is pretty accurate, and allows you to punch in the cost of consumable to track expenses. Right now it's not setup for the 4900, although the 4900 control panel has it listed.
As far as the main maintenance tank goes I think the number I remember was about 400ml of ink. No idea about the "full bleed" maintenance tank, although I would suspect that should last a good long time.
For anyone interested the review of the 4900 is up on our website.
http://www.spectraflow.com/index.php?option=com_content&view=article&id=74&Itemid=67
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Stupid question alert: can 7900 / 9900 profiles be used on a 4900 machine, or are there distinct differences in either ink or printhead technologies?
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Now there may be a work around to this if Epson makes the MyEpsonPrinter active for the 4900.
I heard back from Epson Technical Support and was informed there will be no MyEpsonPrinter support for the 4900. I find it odd that Epson Europe has managed to get its mEP program out of beta and it supports the 4900 (though US versions of the printer don't seem to work with their program--it won't recognize the serial number). Total ink usage would be beneficial as well as file names to go along with jobs.
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Andy:
Nice meeting you at IUSA.
Checked with colleagues and concensus is 7900/9900 profiles can be used with the 4900 e.g. "compatible" BUT most have found that dedicated 4900 profiles produce better output quality.
Dan (Dano) Steinhardt
Marketing Manager Professional Imaging
Epson America, Inc.
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Thanks so much, Dan. Much appreciated. I have already put mine through the paces, and I think I can get better quality out of it by making new profiles, as my 9900 profiles are off a little bit when I use them on the 4900.
Got any good jokes today? :-)