I print exclusively matte surface papers with the Matte Black ink cart. - Epson Enhanced Matte (or whatever the heck they're calling it today) works well for many photos and proofs. - Epson Velvet Fine Art is wonderful for finish work, B&W or color. - Hahnemühle Photo Rag Smooth is a wonderful paper and prints is like the VFA but more tendency to chip. - Somerset Velvet Photo Rag (might no longer be available) is like the Epson VFA but without the coating. Even more beautiful surface and feel
I haven't tried them yet, but Crane Museo Rag and Ilford Galerie (smooth) have both been recommended to me. I've been standardized on the VFA and EEM for a long time, but I'm no longer printing much finish work on EEM ... it doesn't have the depth of the VFA or HPR or SVPR. If you standardize on one set of inks and run it til it stops, it is surprisingly economical on ink. I get about 75-90 A3 prints out of a full round of ink carts with EEM ... that's about $1.50 per print on ink ... or about 50 VFA A3s ($2.30 per print on ink) which isn't terrible. That's the big advantage to the R3800: 5x the ink per cart at 3x the price. Plus up to 17x22 inch cut sheet. Oh well, it came out after the R2400. This printer has been great, I have *zero* problems with it. 3200 prints and counting. For the Photo Black ink and either B&W or color, I've heard nothing but raves for Epson Premium Lustre (or again whatever they're calling it nowadays ... I hate that they keep changing names). I have a box and haven't tried it yet. Godfrey BTW: I've been testing the R2400 with Lightroom under Mac OS X Leopard on the PowerPC systems. So far, it's looking darn good: very little difference in print output from Tiger with the exact same image files, all the latest drivers and profiles for VFA and EEM. I hear there may be some issues with the Intel-based systems, but I haven't gotten around to testing that yet. Godfrey On Mar 12, 2008, at 3:49 PM, Ralf R. Radermacher wrote: > Just received my spanking new R2400, this morning. Guess I should be > happy. Sorry to say I'm not. Not at all. > > Part of it is my usual attack of buyer's remorse, some kind of > post-natal depression I usually go through after every major purchase. > Especially when circumstances have forced me to buy something I hadn't > really wanted. > > The story? Epson have at last repaired my trusted Stylus Photo 1270 to > death (three trips to their outsourced German repair facilty and still > the same fault) and offered me this 2400 at a price too good to miss. > Still, I would have preferred another 1270 but they had none left > for an > exchange. > > The problem? I can't use the heaps of Epson Photo Paper I still have. > This is particularly bitter for the Panorama size (21 x 60 cm) as they > make no other paper in this format. > > Worse, I've discovered that each swap between the matte and photo > black > ink cartridges and the ensuing loooong nozzle-cleaning routine gobbles > up some 10 euros (15 USD) worth of ink. Epson being what they are, > they > won't just clean the black nozzle but the lot of them, all 9 colours. > :-/ > > So, I guess I'll have to settle on one kind of paper, either matte or > glossy. Problem is I'd hate printing my colour photos on Epson's > Archival Matte (looks naff) or my b/w on Premium Glossy (looks like > the > plasticky PE b/w papers from the 70's, yikes!). > > Anyone else with a 2400 who'd like to share his experience or a > suggestion for some paper that's OK with b/w and colour? -- PDML Pentax-Discuss Mail List [email protected] http://pdml.net/mailman/listinfo/pdml_pdml.net to UNSUBSCRIBE from the PDML, please visit the link directly above and follow the directions.
