8 - STEPS TO Perfection

THIS IS A MUCH-AWAITED SUPER A3 PRINTER USING THE SAME basic technology as its smaller brother the R800 (reviewed November 2004 issue). Whilst we were ready for its spectacular performance this time around it is still a joy to report in such a positive vein. We disclosed last November that the R800 ink set delivered the biggest printer gamut we had ever measured. With a bit of profile tweaking and the use of Epson Premium Glossy Photo Paper we can report that we have lifted the bar another 3% – not an awful lot, but the bar was very high to start with! For the record the gamut volume was 889,322 L3 units, about 98.5% of the sRGB gamut.

The Ink Set

The R1800 uses Epson UltraChrome Hi-Gloss. inks. There are eight cartridges in this printer including Matte and Photo Blacks, a red and a blue, a gloss optimiser, along with the usual suspects, cyan, magenta and yellow. They give claimed lives of 100 years for the Matte ink set and 80 years for the Photo Black ink set. The gloss optimiser is a varnish, which enhances the gloss on the finished product – it really works, they are very glossy indeed! The gloss optimiser also keeps bronzing at bay, none was evident; also the sheen is even, all over the print, including the full paper white (which has no coloured ink on it). When you hold a print at an acute angle to the light it is perfectly even and glossy over the entire surface. On the very high-gloss Epson Premium Glossy Photo Paper (EPGPP) there is a slight reduction in reflectance due to the varnish from 95% down to 93.6% and a minuscule shift towards blue (less than 1 Lab point). There was no obvious change in the UV reflectance properties from the use of Ink Cartidges the Gloss Optimiser (Glop) suggesting that no benefit will be obtained in UV fade resistance (neither is any claimed by Epson, but we had to have a

Right: Eight cartridges expands the gamut and helps running costs.

look!). The Glop is just evident from straight on if you can see both the un-coated and coated parts of the image. The print driver allows the Glop to be put down on the entire printable surface or just the part of the paper where there is image data (it does border-free printing up to A3 size). You can see it by viewing at certain angles to the surface, but you need both in view to detect the boundary.

The Print Engine

The print head uses Variable Size Droplet technology to produce an ink droplet as low as 1.5 pico litres, the smallest currently available in the world. This enables a maximum resolution of 5760 by 1440dpi, as fine as one could conceivably need. This may explain the smoothness of the graduations along the tone range even without the smoothing effect of a light black. The printer is fast, claiming a 10x8 in 68 seconds at 1440dpi. In our tests, at Best Quality, we were making full coverage, A4 prints in around 2m 45s.

The Mechanics

This printer is quite a different style to its predecessors (the 1290 and 2100) being more angular in overall form. The support trays are now built in and, by clever design, they fold away when not in use, thus keeping the inevitable dust at bay. The smoked top cover lifts to reveal the 8-cartridge bay and the paper transport system. Gratifyingly the printer continues to work when the lid is lifted so you can see everything is proceeding correctly – this is important if you wish to panic and stop the printer wasting ink for any reason! The printer will accept sheet fed papers, roll paper, CDs and, from the rear entry slot, heavy fine art papers. The rear entry is tight to the back and requires a very small amount of rear desk space. The downside is that the printer does not accept the 1.2mm boards currently gaining popularity (on the 2100 you need as

CD Loading

Left The CD loading guides are stored neatly within the body of the printer. The CD holder will take full size and mini-CDs.

Epson Premium Semigloss Photo paper (PSGPP)

This media was supplied in A3+ format enabling us to make some larger prints. Using Best photo quality and with “High Speed” turned on, we got a nominal 13x19 inch print out in 5m 21s.

We built a bespoke profile and audited the resulting print with excellent values. The Dmax was a little inferior to the gloss media at 2.25 but, nevertheless, another really good result. The colour errors are tabled. The gamut volume was 887,921 another whopper!

The majority of the colour errors were in the lightness channel and the skin tones were rotated a little towards yellow. This effect was initially also observed with the gloss media and raised our suspicions that the Glop was taking a little longer to dry/cure even though the prints were dry and smudge-proof almost as they came out of the printer. No changes in density were discernable to the eye but to test our theory we made three small swatches of cyan, magenta and yellow and fed them directly into the spectro followed by time-spaced testing. As the graph shows, there is some lightening of the tone over the first 10 minutes, after which it seems to stabilise. There was also a colour shift of around 3 ÄE in the magenta (less in the other two colours) as the Glop cured. None of this should worry the majority of users but if you wish to bespoke profile using this printer you are advised to wait for 15 minutes before starting (go have a cup of tea!).

Cyan

Colour Parameter

Epson Double-Sided Matte

We audited this media using the generic profile provided on the Epson CD (“SPR 1800 D-S Matte paper”). It turned in a really first-class performance with an average error of 8.4 Lab ÄE. The surface is not as cool as the PGPP and the skin tones are closer for this reason. The Dmax was 1.58, good for this type of matt media. Surprisingly, in view of having an additional blue ink, the printer delivered the poorest error in the spectral blue, at 29.0 ÄE Lab. This flaw was not however detectable in the images we printed; the eye is not very sensitive to variations in that part of the spectrum, as long as the hue does not shift towards purple.

The greys from this combination were excellent; the Macbeth mid grey was a tiny, 1.1ÄE, from perfection! Metamerism was also low at 1.2ÄE. The grey linearity was well handled by the profile and although the plot has a few bumps in it, the detailed was maintained all the way down to 5 RGB points, something that a bespoke profile rarely achieves. The tonal scale stopped at 17% brightness, typical for a matt paper of this type. We made a monochrome print using these settings and the print looked very good indeed, amongst the best we have seen from an inkjet.

Metamerism

In case you need reminding, metamerism is the mismatch of colours, which occurs when you view them despite the fact that they matched in a different type of light. The brain is able to remember colours such that if you take a print from your tungsten-lit lounge to your conservatory the print may be neutral in one room and off-colour in the other. As the UltraChrome HiGloss is a new type of ink it is relevant to collate the metamerism data. We measure metamerism using a spectrophotometer which has the facility to compare the colour in different lights. In order to standardise we measure a neutral 50% grey in standardised daylight, the so-called D65 light and standardised tungsten light, the so-called Illuminant A. We also measured the full magenta swatch. The difference is measured in Lab ÄE units, the bigger the value the worse the result; in all instances the colour shift was from blue or cyan towards more magenta.

Connectivity

The R1800 may be connected via Firewire or USB 2.

Running Costs

As the cartridge set is the same as the R800, the cost calculations we made for the R800 probably apply, namely about £1.25 worth of ink for a 10x8 inch print.

Fade Resistance

The table below is compiled from data posted on the Wilhelm website www.wilhelm-research.com.

Conclusion

The R1800 continues from where the R800 started, although it is a lot more accurate out of the box. With its fast, silent operation and high fade resistance it is sure to find a home on many professional operations. At £399.99 inclusive of VAT it provides an ideal start for at-base printing. The high operating cost will not trouble those who are selling their prints at realistic margins. The gamut map to the right says it all – this printer is yet another leap forward in inkjet printing – it had not escaped our notice that the Epson 4000 already has eight cartridge slots – “Are you thinking what we’re thinking?” Well we thought incorrectly. Since drafting this piece, the seven new large format printers have been announced and they contain three blacks and no red or blue or glop!

Metameric Colours Shifts

Profile chart

Photo Quote: I know some photographs that are extraodrinary in their power and conviction, but it is difficult in photography to overcome the superficial power or subject; the concept and statement must be quite convincing in themselves to win over a dramatic and compelling subject situation. - Ansel Adams