Digital BW, The Print

In a message dated 3/29/2004 6:29:28 PM Pacific Standard Time, 
DigitalBlackandWhiteThePrint@yahoogroups.com writes:
If the R800 is all that it is cracked up to
be then a new 21/2200 and a new 4000 are probably lurking over the horizon.
It would have been nice if they had held it back in order to incorporate
some of their technical advances.
Man, they are not even shipping enough of these to fill the backorders, and 
already you are talking about "what lurks over the horizon?" I can't worry 
about that, I have too much work to do.

I do see where you are coming from with this, in theory, but you have to 
consider the Pro/consumer divide in Epson. The DX3 heads are for serious 
production work with really tight DeltaE performance that allows canned profiles to 
work with all the printers. 

The 2200 is still a prosumer product with sloppy heads that requires custom 
profiles (in color mode, for which it was designed, we can get away with other 
stuff in B&W because it's less critical) that's basically a throwaway after so 
many prints. I mean $400-700 (2200-R800) vs. $1,800 means they have more to 
work with. If you break it down by the pound even. It's apples and oranges for 
sure.

I have owned over a dozen of the little plastic printers and still do. 
Because of their fragility and sloppy head tolerances, they have been as much of a 
frustration as a joy, but are fun to play with for R&D of Carbon inks, etc. 
Cruising through past messages on this board will tell you that. On a per square 
foot, production/cost basis, the pro printers kick butt and this new 4000 
would be amazing at twice the price, so forgive me for not signing up to the 
school of though you propose.

All my production work that I sell everyday in my portrait photography biz 
come from pro printers. I need to depend on them.

Off the soap box for now.

Claude


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