Further thoughts on 9900 and calibration:
For those who are - like me - pondering about waiting for the new printers, here are some more thoughts on Epson's (probable) model strategy. What I wrote in my earlier post from Drupa has been corroberated by experts I have talked to in the meantime. The 7900 and 9900 printers are squarely targeted at the proofing market. The new ink set aims at being able to proof most of Pantone's spot colors and the spectrometer option is a high-end tool offering options like switchable UV-cut filters, user selectable black/white background etc. This has to be seen as a strategic move to defend the huge market share that Epson already has in the proofing sector against upstarts like HP making their solution of a print head integrated sensor look less professional.
The new printers will be marketed as high-end cousins to the photography-oriented models 7880 and 9880 which remain on the market. As photographers we are now facing an uncomfortable choice: Do we want the two black inks? Sure? Do we need the expensive high-end photometer? Probably not really.
Yes, it's true – from a perspective of physical measurement a robot photometer will be more reproducible than a hand-held one and prints made months appart without recalibration are visibly different. I recently reprinted an image on PhotoRag made a year ago with the same profile I used since then and the results differ very significantly. However, from an artistic point of view none of the pictures look "bad". So unless you are for some reason compelled to deliver identical prints over a long period of time you might live happily ever after with hand-made or ready-made profiles as others have suggested.
Epson will continue to have single-black "low cost" printers on the market for at least another year (keeping the 7880 alive for two years), so those of us who want the freedom to choose blacks without the ink change penalty will be pressured to buying the big irons. Even without the on-board photometer the 9900 will be priced significantly higher than the 9880 due to the more sophisiticated mechanics (we photographers don't really need, either). Let's face it: Epson makes its money in the printing industry and we photographers are welcome to buy into what technology they are willing make available at a time of their choice. Just look at their offence of introducing a new A3 photo printer (R2880) with vivid magenta but single matte/glossy black channel.
