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photo.net would love any ideas about how to work with hp


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Kevin:

 

You won't clean nozzles on the 8750 because it doesn't have them. You get a new print head on each cart.

 

You can run a cleaning cycle if you want but in 5 years, I've never needed to do it.

 

Try some of the Ilfors papers but remember to turn them upside down when you take them out of the box and put them into your printer tray since HP feeds under and over. The new National Geographic papers give razor sharp detail but are on the cool side compared to HP papers. I also use some of the Epson matte papers for some subjects.

 

And you're right. You don't need RIPS.

 

Conni

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Photo.net doesn't do "fluff" reviews. In most of what I do I try to present actual samples of images so that readers can judge for themselves.

 

Of course that's easy with cameras and lenses, but not so easy with printers since print quality is at least partly subjective.

 

You also don't see many bad reviews on photo.net or in magazines because neither tends to test any of the bottom of the barrel "Bell and Howell 10MP (interpolated) $150 digicams" or low end Lexmark printers ($50 for the printer, $60 to replace the ink...). These days there really are very few "bad" products made by any of the major players in the digital imaging game. Usually, if it's made by Canon, Epson, HP, Pentax, Nikon etc., it's pretty good for what you pay for it - whatever it is! Everything has some problems of course, but they are generally usually more worthy of being mentioned than being dwelled on.

 

5 or 10 years ago you couldn't really always say that. When I played with a $1000 1.3MP Nikon Coolpix, it was way overpriced, very slow in operation, the image quality was significantly worse than a P&S film camera and it drew so much current from the batteries that they lasted about 20 frame and were so hot when removed from the camera you couldn't hold them! Thankfully those days are behind us!

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One of the photo mags did a review of several printers including the 8750. The reviewer's bias showed clearly to those of us who have the printer because he failed to note the back of the printer opens to handle large (13" x 19") stock as well as allowing for the use of heavyweight papers that won't do the 'under-and-over' feed method HP uses. There were other errors as well that demonstrated that his review was written based on past experiences that have been corrected and are no longer an issue (feeding problems that existed prior to the 7550 model).

 

Conni

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It's my strong opinion that Bob Atkins does excellent, demanding reviews. When he's arguably in error it's because he's trying so hard to do right that he stretches negative points.

 

HP would get more attention on Photo.net if it made printers that rivaled Epson's for most serious users. If I was mass producing B&W prints I'd certainly consider HP, but the negatives outweight the arguable positives for my own work.

 

Dmax is HP's long suit. That's not enough to beat two generations of fabulous troublefree Epsons.

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I do not share John Kelly's enthusiasm for Epson printers. If all

you want to do is make photo prints I suppose the new pigment printers

are great, but if you want a general-purpose printer, text looks bad,

and line-art diagrams look very bad. Moreover ink cost is high.

The R1800 was 14th ranked among models tested by Consumer Reports,

with H/P and Canon models taking the top spots.

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  • 2 weeks later...
  • 4 months later...
Once upon a time, there was Encad, now bought out by Kodak. The printers were very expensive, probably a bit more than we have in mind here. But Encad had some excellent linkage with Adobe, and some really excellent articles on the Adobe Netsite about folks who were using Encad Printers. Samples of the work were shown and information about the Artists was also supplied. The end result was not just a fluff review as is currently the norm with few exceptions, but a real learning experience and eye opener for the reader. Just a thought that something like this could be done again with HP.
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Since it doesn't make much sense to just promote HP it would probably be better to have a side-by-side comparison with Epson and Canon.

 

1. Have a contest on any subject you like. Let people vote or whatever.

 

2. Send the top 10 people sample prints of their work from HP, Epson and Canon printed on paper from the same manufacturers without marking the samples (just mark A, B, C...). Independently supevise the printing process.

 

3. Award winners with 100, 50, 25, 10 and so on free large prins on the the printer/paper of their choice. Publish what printers/papers the winners chose.

 

That would be a fair comparison. Let HP be a sponsor it if they are confident they can win or at least hold their own ground.

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The best thing a manufacturer can do to promote its digital printers is to read the endless questions raised by the Epson users, and learn from them. Examples:

 

- the prints don't match the monitor images

 

- the provided profiles are poor

 

- the b/w prints have color casts

 

- the blackest black can't show on the prints

 

- the deep shadow details are lost

 

- the lack of documentation on how to get the best prints from the popular image editors, such as Photoshop

 

- the heads clog easily

 

- the cleaning cycles consume way too much ink

 

- the ink cartridges are "empty" while there is still useable ink

 

My impression is that the hw technology of the current photo digital printers are all excellent. But the sw, documentation, and support are well behind to let non-technical users to be able to get great prints from the printers right out of the boxes. If the manufacturers care to survey, they would notice that the huge majority of their customers fall into this category. It makes perfect business sense to satisfy and retain your biggest customer base.

 

Fix these problems, and you have a winner. Epson will cease to be the printers of choice.

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HP probably doesnt want to hear that my two 36" Encads are a decade plus old, have NT3.51 RIPS's, and did 1600 bucks worth of output last week in two jobs.<BR><BR> Larger 24" plus wide roll feed machines are reviewed in the Signage, Repro, Bigcolor, Large Format trade magazines for the last two decades. <BR><BR>There is often little if any real data on ink consumption. many of us printers just measure the ink before and after a big job, and get a figure for cc's of ink per square footage of output. Our 10 year old RIPs give the cc's for each image, but its a calculated swag based on their software model. One bug in the software I have seen in several RIP's is the total ink usage model summation counts up even if you bail out a print at the start, or middle of a print. <BR><BR>With a bigger printer you own a bigger dog to feed. With our 4 cartridge printer you have say 900 bucks in ink; 1800 for an 8 cartridge printer. <BR><BR>printers are razors, the inks are the blades. HP and others make money on the inks they sell. Getting you hooked on their brand is their goal. In a perfect sale you would not figure the ink costs, and work at a monopoly, and have the large format printer on the LAN for the entire company to print their sunset, soccer, dog and other fine art images at no charge. Deep in the bowels of our 10 year old Rip's is a log that cannot be deleted, with every job, what persons computer it came with, what the paper and ink was consumed, when it was printed.
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