I’ve acquired my first professional-level inkjet printer for producing high-quality 8 x 10 and 11 x 14″ prints at home. The model I settled on is the new Epson R2400. Many professionals and serious photographers produce long-lasting, gorgeous prints from its predcessor, the 2200. The new set of K3 inks looks promising for archival longevity.
The printer arrived a week ago, and I finally had time to set it up Monday night after work. Setup is easy: plug in the FireWire (or USB 2.0) cable, install 8 ink cartridges and the driver, select a photograph to print, put paper in the printer, and out pops an exhibition quality print. Ha.
It wasn’t quite that easy. Setup instructions are simple, but it took two hours of figuring out a few quirks. The main one involves the care you need to use in indicating the type of paper (glossy, matte, etc.) and type of print you’ll be doing (borderless, for example). I’m a Mac OS X user, and those menus are quickly accessible in the Print Center. I immediately got a fine 11 x 14″ print from a photograph I made with my Nikon D70 at the Goshen Fair, in Connecticut over Labor Day weekend. That print was made on matte paper. Then I switched to 8 x 10″ glossy paper for an image of Disney Concert Hall in Los Angeles, a stunning building of luscious curves desgned by famed architect Frank Gehry.
That image would not print. Over and over again I tried, and I even resorted to reading the manual. Always an amazing experience. Not badly written, but nothing worked. The PowerBook’s Print Center kept showing “job stopped” with a big exclamation point. I unplugged everything, plugged it back in, deleted the printer named in the print center menu, and reinstalled the driver. Nothing, nothing, but frustration. I thought “maybe this expensive, non-functioning printer is headed back to Amazon.”
Then I paid more attention to the three menus that I’d been using for setting up a print job: Page Setup, Printing, and Advanced Settings. Each has settings for the size and type of paper, and I’d blown it by not having the correct type of paper set consistently in each menu. There are many advanced settings, but the basic ones need to be set identically.
Once those software settings were corrected, the printer came to life, and out came a print with great color saturation and high resolution. And it came out fast: a print of such rich color and detail in a little over a minute. Fast, and fascinating to watch.
I’m getting good results with this printer now. I’m happy to have a superb printer at home for making prints that may eventually be exhibited. Here’s a look at my “studio,” with the new printer on my dining room table.
Nice, Gary. Congratulations. And thanks for the set-up tips.