Its been a busy week so far, buying paper and testing on my Epson 3880.  I have selected a set of images that are typical of the type of photography I do.  With these images I have been doing lots of printing on Tecco, Epson and Canson paper.

To get an optimum print you need a) a good icc profile which all three manufactures do have on their websites but also b) the correct printer driver settings for the paper type.

Epson is the easiest with it being an Epson printer, but its interesting to note that you cannot download just the profile, you have to download an installer that installs the icc profile and creates a folder with the documentation you need.  For some reason Epson have not signed the installer so if you are a Mac user, your Mac will refuse to install the untrusted application, its amazing that a company the size of Epson forgot to sign the installers.  They remembered to install the printer driver installer!

If you have not already you will need to pop into Security & Privacy and change your downloaded apps settings to Anywhere.  The installer will still fail if you just double click on it, you will have to command click and select open, that will then give you the option of running the installer.

All three of the paper manufactures have all the information you need to make quality prints but the information can be hidden on the website.  It was certainly easier to find on the Epson and Canson sites then on the Tecco.  Though I could not find the paper profile page on the Epson site, but my search engine did.

I am still in the early days of paper testing but already have some papers that I like.  As my local camera shop stocks Tecco Paper this has been the first paper I have tried.

So far I have tried the the following:

PUW285 Glossy Ultra White

So far I have printed some of my landscapes and some wedding portraits on this.  Its an incredibly sharp paper, the image quality is excellent, and its very bright and punchy with great DMax, with it being glossy it does suffer from reflection but its the kind of paper I feel that customers would like feeling and looking like a traditional glossy photo paper.

PPG250 Pearl-Gloss Super

This has been my favourite so far, its not as reflective as the glossy and makes lovely looking wedding portraits.

BT270 Baryt

This is a mat looking paper but uses the gloss ink for the higher DMax.  It feels heavy and has a subtle texture, it has produced some excellent black and white street shots, I also tried it with some high contrast black and white nudes and did a direct compare with the same image on the PUW285 Glossy Ultra White.  The  dynamic range of the glossy did result in better handling of the contrast of the image but the shine did not suit the surface.

BP210 Buttenpapier

This is a very interesting looking paper, it looks like hand made paper very much like traditional watercolour paper, I printed a black and white wedding portrait on it and it looked stunning, the feel of the paper makes the print very much an object to enjoy, not just the look but also the feel.

Its a paper to be used carefully, not all subjects suit this paper, its a genuine mat paper that needs mat black ink so the blacks can never be as intense as say the PUW285 Glossy.

I still have a few more Tecco papers to test and even if I decide other papers are better its been worthwhile to get up to speed with the finer details of fine art printing.

Now that I feel I am getting the hang of the printer, and of soft proofing the prints in Lightroom i’ll be picking up more trial packs paper and selecting nine or ten images that are representative of my style of work and seeing what paper works best.

I have so far ordered some Epson, Canson and Hahnemuhle paper.

I’ll also be picking up some Somerset at some point and possibly some Permajet.  I am not sure about Ilford as its unknown if they are going to continue to make paper.  I want to get down to two or three papers that will suit all my needs.

The issue most people have with printers is the cost of ink, its not cheap and if all you are doing is printing documents from a spreadsheet or word processor then cheap third party inks are an option.

What about the high end photo printers, well thats a little different; while we all like to complain about the cost of ink it is how the company make their money.  The printers for what they are and what they do are really quite cheap now.

The higher end printers are a lot cheaper to run, while a consumer inkjet may have cartridges that contain as little as 18 ml of ink the high end start around 80 ml and go up to about 3/4 of a litre, they are far cheaper to run but still not cheap.

The question to ask yourself is why did you spend all that money buying an expensive high quality printer?  You wanted high quality prints.  That means good ink, good paper and lets not forget a fully colour managed workflow.  Whether you create your own icc profiles for the paper or you download the profiles the better paper manufactures have on there website.

The printer manufactures do spend millions developing their inks and papers and to get the best quality their ink is usually the best option.  There are a small number of specialist ink providers that offer specialist inks such as quad tone Black & White etc but these are very specialist items, in general your better off with the manufactures inks for best quality.

With paper I recommend going with companies that offer good support, you want documentation detailing what driver settings to use or what custom settings, e.g. what resolution to set, whether it supports Bidrectional printing or if its a slower to dry paper then single direction, colour density, paper tray and if you can get the information the platen gap, but that may have to be a guess.  If your using thick paper then you may need to change if from Standard to Wide.  The Epson 3880 has usefully named settings of Narrow, Standard, Wide, Wider and Widest!  Start with Standard and if you get a head strike which I did when testing the Tecco BP210 Buttenpapier, try Wide.

A printer that can print 17 inches wide has been on my wants list for quite a while now.  Having the flexibilty to print up to 17 inches wide in a desktop printer is very useful.  Unfortunately while the Epson Stylus Pro 3800 series is the smallest foot print wide format printer its still not exactly small so its been on the waiting list until we bought the new house.

If you check on Epson’s UK website and also other online retailers the price differs by as much as £300.  At the Photography show last Monday I visited Epson’s stand and had  a look at the Pro 3880 and the smaller R3000.

The R3000 is A3 the Pro 3880 A2+ and there is not a big difference in the physical size.  Running costs is also a consideration as is build quality.  For a consumer printer the R3000 is one of Epson’s better high end printers.  The build quality is very good and as good as the professional services models.  The running costs are another thing; while the R3000 has fairly large economical cartridges for a consumer inkjet printer at 28ml, the Epson 3800 series has 80ml cartridges for not much more.

Epson were not selling printers at the show but they did give me a card to take to one of their dealers who was at the show selling printers.

The show price was about as cheap as I had seen it on the internet, the difference being this was a well known supplier not an unknown company.

When you factor in the retail costs of the ink the printer only cost £370, but then who pays Epson retail costs for ink cartridges, I have seen them range from £30-£48 for the same Epson branded cartridge.

They did not have any of the printers at the show but were willing to sell me one at the very good show price and three days latter the postman delivered my shiny new Epson to me.

I have ordered a number of trial packs of paper from various companies including Epson and have selected a series of images that represent my style of work to test with.

I have also ordered a full set of new cartridges, with the first set needing about 20% of their capacity to prime the lines and print head and with the extensive testing I intend to do, I am not expecting the first set of ink to last long.