HELLO!

Well, it's Easter weekend,and I am happy that spring is coming!! I have spent a great deal of my free time looking at data for the current crop of wide format pigment printers for 07/08. If you are looking for one that has these features: great black and white, wide color gamut, and super fast printing speeds: forget it! The current 3 brands: Canon IPF8100, Epson 9880, and Hewlett Packard Z3100 have some of these attributes each. The problem for the new generation of printers is that if you want speed and quality, the printer (Canon IPF8100) will end up being so heavy that it will require 4 people to set it up! Then there are the 2 different types of heads:thermal and micropiezo. Canon and HP have thermal replaceable heads. HP is the winner as far as price for these @ just under $200. each x 2, Canon heads are about $600. each and their printers also require 2. As far as color gamut, Epson 9880 has the widest gamut, and their head is permanent. It has 3.5 picoliter droplet size, which is the smallest. This gives less patterning, or dot spacing. The other two have 4. picoliter size droplets. Canon's newest series of printers featuring the IPF8100 is almost 10 times faster in print production! I can tell you from experience, that this is a huge factor for photographers that require many images to be printed in a short and very efficient amount of time. Canon has the largest ink carts for the 44" size printers at 701ml. However, this printer is 12 color, so that would mean around $3800. for a set of ink in this size! HP is also 12 color, but their ink is typically 130ml which is far less expensive, but requires changing more often. In glossy mode HP has a clear coat cartridge which effectively tackles the issue of bronzing especially in black and white. The main difference that sets the HP apart from the other two is a spectrophotometer for custom profiles. Epson is 9 color even though it color gamut is wider than the other two! Whew!! Weighing all this has been a real education. So far, there are no real ratings or real data from other actual users of these printers. They are too new, and not much is out there to help decipher which would be best for my actual needs! I had a Canon IPF8000 last year that was rife with many problems and nearly ruined my business from all the breakdowns. I no longer have that printer (Canon hauled it away)! Now I am in queue for whatever I decide is next. I am leaning again to Canon. Their pro/customer support went far beyond my expectations. Unfortunately, the printer just kept getting error codes and malfunctioning. However, between those repairs the images that I printed were spectacular and so accurate. Although I am gun shy, it may be a Canon IPF8100 or IPF9100 in my future. I will post when the printer of choice arrives-
Angela