As John mentioned HP is better on matte papers, but I believe that on photo paper (baryta, PE glossy-lustre-silk etc.) nothing can beat Canon iPF PRO
Just purchased a Z3200 based on Mark L's head's up on the great price at
http://www.proimagingsupplies.com. I have wanted a Z3200PS in house at Aardenburg Imaging & Archives for a long time, but price was always a barrier in the past. Now, that I've had the Z for an entire two days
in my studio I can say: this printer should have captured way more of the pro photography and/or fine art printing atelier services market than it did. Print speed isn't a major factor in this market segment. Quality, Quality, and Quality is. The HP Z2300Ps has brilliant "turn key" engineering that takes pretty much any media and calibrates it (with auto adjusted ink channel ramps) and then goes further to place an ICC profile of that same media into the correct OS system folder where it magically appears in the enduser's image editing app (photoshop, etc). A photographer-first printmaker-second enduser's dream!!. Superb image quality that more than holds its own against the latest offerings from Canon and Epson. And print longevity still likely to be best in class notwithstanding Epson's latest advances in its HD and HDX ink formulations, meanwhile Canon Pro-1000, 2000, and 4000 Lucia Pro inks still have
?? longevity ratings. All of this goodness packaged into an ancient-by-digital imaging standards nearly 10 year old printer model design. Have to give HP engineers and color scientists plenty of credit for that.
What's not to like about the HP Z3200? Well, on that score, my last two days have been loaded up with plenty of WTF!!! moments. The documentation sucks, the Hp website has so many broken links to the relevant supplementary info cited in the user guides, etc., that it has been a very frustrating learning curve coming up to speed on how to make this Z3200 printer hit all of its many high notes. So, the Z3200 has a very bi-polar personality. In the manic (I'm happy) phase, the concept of start-to-finish media calibration is amazing and the image quality is great, particularly for photographers and printmakers who don't want to make color science their secondary area of expertise. However, in the depression (I'm not happy) HP Z phase, the newcomer to this printer (even one like myself with years of experience in inkjet printing) is struggling to figure out simple skills like how to reliably load a cut sheet, how to build and implement more advanced ICC Profiles than HP has built in at the basic level, or even why sleep mode still keeps a hard drive and/or fan spinning?
But on the whole, I'm definitely impressed by how well the HPZ3200 has stood the test of time. Its printer model longevity is best-in-class right there along with the prints it churns out
And initial image quality is not really limited by any of HP, Canon, or Epson's line of printers suited for fine art printmaking these days, (except for the fact that machines with gloss optimizers/enhancers do tend to outperform on luster/gloss media unless one post coats with a spray varnish like Premier Print Shield. HP's gloss enhancer is still as good as any I've seen). IMHO, initial print quality debates should really focus on the realities of excellent digital file preparation... Garbage in garbage out as they say. Superb quality in, superb quality out
kind regards,
Mark
http://www.aardenburg-imaging.com