Epson R1800

printer

Epson R1800 printer

I thought about not including the Epson R1800 printer in my wedding photographers perspective as I’m not able to keep up with every printer that is released, but I then realized that because I am specifically writing from the view of this type of photography perhaps some people would find it useful. The Epson R1800 is a medium format printer, which means you can get prints as wide as 13in out of it. It also supports rolls, which I do use often which means you can prints wonderful panorama’s with it also - in addition for larger paper it is much cheaper buying quality paper by the roll instead of cut sheets. Its uses Epson’s UltraChrome pigment ink, which is wonderful for glossy colour photo’s straight out of the box. Personally, I wasn’t over the moon with its black and white prints at first, but for my clients I use a rather expensive Hahnemühle photo rag paper which lasts forever and a day. Once I paid for a profiles to be made, the black and white quality became rather good also, albeit it not as great as the colour prints. The benefit to using a pigment ink printer is that the ink is archival which when used with archival paper means my clients will receive excellent prints that look the same years from now. The downside to the original pigment ink printers, is that the colour gamut they were able to reproduce wasn’t great and the black’s weren’t as black as dye printers which is what almost all printers used except the more expensive professional models. Epson has now been able to solve this, as their first attempt wasn’t great, but these Ultrachrome models produce a wide gamut as well as all the normal pigment ink benefits.

You often see it said that people have problems with Epson printers because of the print-heads drying out or clogging and they get terrible prints once this happens. Being that I print almost every day, this isn’t something that effects me and I’ve never had much of an issue with this and certainly nothing more than a cleaning cycle couldn’t fix. The only downside I have had in the past with the R1800 is the outrageously expensive little ink cartridges. They come with a tiny amount of ink and there are eight of them that need replaced. It was a constant battle keeping enough spare cartridges in so that I could replace them and keep going. I have now found a way around this by using a continuous ink system from Lyson with their archival UltraChrome compatible pigment ink. It is a very close match to the original Epson inks in colour so most would be able to use it straight away. Due to the fact I get paid for prints and I’m spending a lot of money on excellent paper products, I wanted the last bit of quality so I always have profiles made and the difference is prints that exactly match my calibrated monitor so I know precisely what is going to be coming out of the printer. Now that I have grown into it, and have it set-up to suit my style, this is one heck of a printer and it is rarely off. The prints are just gorgeous