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Digital BW, The Print

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Re: [Digital BW] Epson vs HP for fine art bw???

2002-02-16 by Martin Sluka

Mike, your reply is something what I dont't understand. I met several 
products of HP in my life and every time I was very disapointed. The 
marketing data was so different from reality.

One and half year ago I was on a fair on Epson boot. There was an ESP 
7500. Beside was a boot of Olympus and they made there big 
photographers show every day. Photographers printed their digital 
prints on HP 5000. Several of them came to Epson try ESP 7500. After 
two day they printed print outs on HP 5000 for show and good pictures 
on Epsons 7500 for themselfs. :)

HP 5000 has exchangable heads and ink system. They say in 20 minutes 
you may change inks from dye to pigment. Funy - to change heads on 
any Epson (including small A4 ones) means to set up geometrical 
linearity of heads and timing for all sizes of drops and each ink - 
work for quite long time. Are you realy sure the physical laws work 
fifferent for HP and for Epson or Epson is simply not able to do the 
same physical tricks HP does or for dpi over 300 one doesn't need 
such setup, or...?

The way how Epsons/Seiko new heads (10000 and others) produce drops - 
absolute control of meniscus of ink in the end of nozle - is possible 
only with piezo, never with thermal heads.

The HP inks - I have seen several exhibitions printed on HP 5000 here 
- including BW prints. Compare to Piezography horrific. No details in 
shadows, very flat, and strong metamerism from greenish to pinkish 
and to silver efect.

Good luck

Martin

>Antonis,
>
>As architects we have used HP printers for many years. I will tell you that
>they are build like tanks and require very little service. When I was
>considering the HP 5000 vs. the ESP 10000 a few months ago I opted to
>purchase the 10000 for a couple of reasons. First the quality of the HP 5000
>is equal to the Epson 9000/9500. The Epson 10000 print qualty exceeds the HP
>5000 and Epson 9000. Second, the HP 5000 does not have a straight through
>paper path. Using sheets like Hahnemuhle William Turner, Torchon, and German
>Etching Board is near impossible. Using roll paper becomes imperative.
>Sheets are too stiff and get runied in the 5000.
>
>The good part is that the HP LF inks are excellent. They have wonderful
>gamut, superior life with virtually no fade, and I hear metamerism is all
>but non-existent. I have a small HP 1280 desktop printer in the office.
>Believe it or not, I get a fairly neutral grayscale from this machine using
>color inks with no observable crossover. HP photo quality printer produce
>very smooth images. The neat thing about the 1280 is that when I get
>banding, it means the cartridge is about to run out of ink. I buy a new
>cartridge which comes with a new print head and away we go. HP desktop
>printers have the print head in the cartridge.
>
>Mike
>


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