Epson 3800 or 4880 redux? Good deal on 4880 right now...
Good evening folks.....
I've been reading this board for a few weeks, but this is my first posting.
First off, hat's off to Michael and gang and Luminous Landscape for putting out some truly great videos at some reasonable prices; I've purchased LLVJ 14-17 and both Lightroom and Camera to Print videos and have really enjoyed all of them.
So I'm pretty new to printing; never really thought of printing my photos too much before, and now want to "jump in". I was really hyped up about getting a 3800 and went to a Calumet Photo in my city (Chicago) to get a demo of the printer. While I was there I also saw the 4880. Almost all of the reviews I've seen on the 3800 are solid; with the one disadvantage of not being able to use roll paper. The ink swap (matte black/photo black) issue which seemed to plague earlier Epsons in terms of ink waste seems to have minimized/removed with the 3800. Everything sounded really good.
Now however, I'm thinking about the 4880. Part of that was reviewing the difference between roll and cut sheet paper. In one example I found online, this information was found:
17x22” pre-cut sheets , 25 per box = $177; which comes out to about 46 feet of paper
17x50’ paper roll = $125; which is 4 feet longer than buying the pre-cut
So, in an absolutely perfect world, it would appear that by using the roll paper you save about $52 per 25 photos (at this size) and have a bit left over for fudge factor.
And then, I saw a pretty crazy deal seemingly going on at
www.ShadesofPaper.com (I think there is a JDoyle on this board from that company). The 4880 seems to be offered about $200 less than most other folks PLUS you get 3 rolls of paper. Now I did not find out exactly what paper you get with this deal (is this retailer specific I wonder or an Epson offer?) but at the worst case scenario you've got some paper to mess about with and learn to use the printer.
So at Calumet, the 3800 goes for the typical $1,295 (plus you get a free Epson 3000 photo viewer) and the 4880 at the typical $1,995. About a $700 difference. The deal at Shades of Paper lessens that difference to $500 PLUS you get some paper. Hmmmmmmmm.....
Unfortunately, I've not been able to find a good deal of information on the 4880. I know that this has the latest Ultrachrome inks with the "Vivid Magenta", the carts are larger, it obviously comes with the ability to use roll paper, and my understanding from what I've read on the "Luminous Landscape" is that Epson has really minimized the ink loss that occurs with the blank ink swap (the black ink for the cart in use is expelled into the maintenance tank while the other ones are capped - in previous iterations it appears that all inks were expelled resulting in approx. a $75 ink waste per swap; for the 4800 at least).
So any kind of guidance from the group out there? Any additional information about the 4880? What do you think about this especially with the "deal" from ShadesofPaper?
I see that there have been a few discussions re: 3800 or 4880, so I thought I would add this on. :-)
Cheers....
Todd