leo_maniace2

Has anyone used Adox CMS 20 film with any developer other than Adox developer. I

need processing time for this film and any low contrast developer.

Anyone out there that has used a C41 developing kit I would like to here from. I use a jobo CPP with lift for

E6 with excellent results using a tetenal kit. I am looking for a C41 kit to start processing color negatives

and would appreciate any recommendations on C41 kits and where to buy them.

I have a Nikon coolscan 9000, with the glass carrier. I also had an epson 750. I am sorry, but

the epson in no way is as good as the nikon coolscan 9000, even without the glass carrier,

for medium format that is. For large format, wet mounter it was very good.

Buy new ones

To be fair there have been people that report no difficulty with the HP Z series. The prints are great and once you get used to using it it works fine. I myself do not enjoy tweaking equipment and for that very reason got into digital printing very late. It has always been and still is my contention that there is much more hype than straight forward information in the digital world. Epson is guilty of very long delivery delays, their promised release dates are usually very late.

I have experience with both the Epson 7800 and the HP Z3100, having owned and used both to print B+W and color. I started with an epson 4800 and was so impressed with the prints that i sold it and purchased an epson 7800. Again, the 7800 exceeded all my expectations, easy to set up and use, produced great prints and worked flawlessly the entire time I used it. I never needed to use tech support. I was tempted by the calims of the HP Z3100; no swapping of matte black and photo black, built in spectrophotometer and never shutting off the machine because it goes to sleep and wakes up periodically to do its won maintenance, so should never clog. I was very dissapointed with the HP. Out of the box the set up was terrible, required many hours on the phone with HP to get the ethernet connection to work, could not upgrade the firmware without tech support, the USB connection was defective(time out issues) and the profiling was not as automatic or as accurate as some of the canned epson profiles from individual paper manufacturers(Crane, etc). The HP is more economical on ink consumption and now that I have it working i am happy with the prints, but the epson drivers to me are better in everyday use. My HP was so much trouble to get up and running that the vendor that sold it to me had to come to my home and spend 5 hours trouble shooting problems in order to get it to work. All I can say now is that whenever I begin a printing session my anxiety level is elevated until I actually get results. An independent HP/Epson dealer has confirmed that many other of his customers have had problems with the HP Z series printers. The HP Z3100 also doesn't seem to print from photoshop CS3, but I have not yet contacted HP about this so I am not sure why this is happening.

Overall I would still opt for an Epson over the HP.

I just received word from an Epson large format dealer that a new Epson lerge format printer is due

December 07. Apparently epson is adding an additional color, purple. No word as to whether or not both

matte black and photo black will be installed together so as not to have to swap ink cartridges. Also no

word on the price.

Most entry/consumer grade scanners fudge their numbers, both in terms od true optical resoultion and DMax. Used professional scanners like the scitex IQs' and fuji finescans and Lanovia scan at their rated values. I have a Fuji lanovia that scans the entire 13x18 inch bed at 5000DPI(40 35mm slides at once) and has a depth of field of 11mm so no out of focus areas where the film is not perfectly flat. I can also wet mount any number and size of film and get better results. I seriously doubt the claims about the epsons, microteks and plustek scanners. That is not to say that you can't get excellent results with them, you need to know their limits. I had an Epson V750 and got excelent scans from 4x5 negatives with the wet mount.

If you are going to scan primarily 35mm get a Nikon coolscan 5000 of a Minolta 5400 I or II. The epson and HP will not get anywhere near the quality of the coolscan or minolta , for printing that is. If you are only doing web publishing you can get by with an HP or epson. I had an Epson V750 that was used for 4x5 and it did a good job.

I had an epson 7800 and sold it to buy the HP Z3100. The HP Z3100 was more tricky to set

up out of the box. The HP Z3100 is more economical with ink, never gets shut off, rather it

goes to sleep and wakes up to do head maintenance so the heads never clog, and it has a

biult in spectrophotometer. The epson was easier to set up and use and both produced great

results. And epson has to swap out matte black for photo black ink, which is expensive.

I prefer the Epson drivers over the HP drivers.

I have been printing on an HP Z3100 printer using adobe CS2. When i upgrade to

CS3 i can no longer print directly from CS3, for some reason its as if my

printer does not exist. I work on images in CS3, save the image, close CS3 and

open and print from CS2. Has anyone had a similiar experience.

Does anyone have experience with this printer? What is the narrowest roll paper the printer will work with?

I want to print on 8 1/2" and 11" rolls, is this possible?

thanks, leo

I use Epson Ultra Smooth Fine Art paper on an HPZ3100. I have the HP Z3100 and was able to create a custom profile. The resulting prints are great. If you can't create your own profile you can download profiles for you printer/paper combination from the web site of the paper manufacturer that you are using. When i had an epson 3800 i used a prifile from hahnemhule for their fine art pearl paper and it was dead on.

I've owned the following epson printers: first the epson 4800, then the epson 7800, and then the epson 3800. All the printers worked with any problems. When HP released the HP Z3100(24") I sold my epson 3800 and purchased the HP Z3100. I initially regreted my desision. The HP was a problem fron the start. Installation was difficult, there were time out issues with the USB connection and I needed tech support just to get the ethernet connection running. Then the firmware update would not work, so I was back to tech support for that problem. When I finally updated the firmware with profiles for Hahnemhule Fine art pearl the resulting prints were washed out. I performed my owm profiling with the built in equipment and got a good profile. I have been on the phone with tech support for a minimum of 8 hours to get the printer up and running. I also get conflicting information from the retailer who sold me the printer and HP support, and usually the reseller provides better information. I never needed to contact epson regarding any of their printers. Having said that, the HP print beautifully. Also, the HP never gets shut off, rather it goes to sleep, and when a certain amount of time passes without use it wakes up and runs a maintainence cycle so it does not clog. Regarding the epson printers, i never had a clog and left them for a week at a time.

Now that the HP is running well i am satisfied with it but the epson experience was much less frustrating. I print now on epson ultra-smooth fine art and crane museo silver reg( mostly B+W) and the prints on crane museo are outstanding.

If epson upgrades to similiar features,espicially a built in wake up/maintainence cycle to decrease the likelihood of clogs I will consider going back to epson.

I would like to hear from anyone with experience using a Fuji Lanovia C-550

scanner. I just purchased a used model and have some questions. I have a older

Apple G4 running OS 9.2 with a SCSI card. Has anyone used a Ratoc SCSI/firewire

converter(or any other SCSI/firewire converter)?

Is anyone using OS X on a G5 with a SCSI/Firewire converter?

Thank, leo

Has anyone used 4x5 Efke 25 and either 510 Pyro or Hypercat? What are your developng papameters?

leo

Can anyone tell me the narrowest width roll paper that can be used in an HP Z3100 24" printer. I called HP

and they calim no roll less than 18", but the reseller claims that narrower widths can be used. If the printer

accepts 8.5" cut sheets why would it not take 11 or 13" rolls?

thanks, leo

I have an HP Z3100 and want to know when i profile a new paper how do i decide which paper type to

assign the paper to? I would appreciate help from anyone that uses this printer.

Leo

i had the epson V750 and used it to scan a large format negative from 1950 that was

improperly washed and in horrible condition. It could not be scanned on my drum scanner

because of the nature of the negative damage(a shinny silver like surface). I wet mounted it

on the epson V750 and got a beautiful image(it needed plently of retouching because of the

physical damage on the negative). Very impressive results. I did one 6x17 negative and it too

scanner well. I did not try 35mm because i use a coolscan 9000 for 6x7 and 35mm. I will be

shooting 4x5 soon and i am also waiting to see how the Microtek M1 will do but it will not

have wet mounting capability.

This is not a question but a warning for anyone interested in buying an HP DesignJet Z3100, DO NOT BUY

THIS PRINTER until you contact me first. I have spent an entire weekend trying to get this printer to work. I

have experience with the epson 4800, 7800 and 3800, all infinately better and easier to use than the HP

printer.

Get the 4800. Ihave owned and sold(in the following order) the epson 4800, 7800 and 3800.

The epson 3800 is nice but not up to the same build standards and the 4800 and 7800. I

own an HP Z3100 and it does produce nice prints, but no better than the epsons and the HP

software is a NIGHTMARE, the printed manual is useless and tech support is pitiful. The nice

features of the HP are its economical ink usage and built in spectophotometer for creating

ICC profiles. I have used ICC prifiles from paper manufactureres for my epson 4800 and 7800

and the resulting prints were just as good as those made with the built in spectrophotometer

ICC prifiles in the HP Z3100. I would NOT buy the HP Z series printer

I have had and sold the epson 4800, 7800 and more recently the epson 3800. It is not the

same quality as the 4800 but it is a nice printer. Produces beautiful prints and is easy to use.

Very little time is needed to be up and running. I now have an HP Z3100 and it was a

nightmare to get running. It does procuce nice prints, but no better than the epsons. The HP

does however use substantally less ink and is therefore more economical.

Update: The HP Z3100 is up and running. 14 hours to do exactly what my Epson 7800 did in

less than 2 hours. Nice prints, but no better than the epsons quality. So the advantages are

built in ability to create and install ICC profile, which I accomplished, more economical with

ink than the epson and once you turn the printer on you never shut it down as it does its own

cleaning after a predetermined period. Disadvantages: poor/non-existant tech support, long

wait time with HP, horrible printed manual and iffy software. I had to repeatedly re-install the

drivers. The HP is also slower than the epson. Once again, if I had to do it all over I would

have stayed with the epson 7800.

Update. Another 2 hours on the phone with a technician from the reseller and not only did

the printer fail to print it quit in the middle of a print. HP is supposed to have 24 hour a day 7

days a week support, well this is in fact not true. Everything about this printer to date has

been untrue. It is extremely complicated and HP tech support is 100% useless. DO NOT waste

your money on this printer.

I purchased the printer based on the L-Landscape review. My experience is/was not the

same. I found the manual with the epson printers to be more valuable. The HP might be a

"better" printer but I am not sure that is entirely true in everyones hands. Experience has

to have some bearing on the output quality and I think that while this printer is as capable

as the epson or canon, each is probally capable of high quality output. Having said that,

my experience is that I was able to get exceptional quality output with the epson with little

to no customer support after 1 hour of use. After 10-12 hours of struggling with the HP I

was able to get a mearly adequate print, and that was using HP paper and there own

prifiles. Keep in mind that the L-Landscape review was done by someone with extensive

background in digital imaging. Given that fact the HP printer might not be for someone

with less than advanced training in digital imaging/workflow, which suggests that the HP

printer is targeted to those individuals with advanced skills and not your average level

photographer looking for occassional large prints. In this regard I believe the epson 7800

is a far better choice. I have owned 3 epson printers(4800,7800 and 3800) and my

experience confirms this. I am not saying the HP is a bad printer, simply that it is perhaps

not marketed to the appropriate end-user group.