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Epson Stylus® R1800 InkJet Photo Printer
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Professional photo printer for professional needs (tips within)Review created: 06/24/05
by: electronguru -- a member of Epinions
Pros:
Large carriage printer that takes the r800's quality & features, one step further
Large carriage printer that takes the r800's quality & features, one step further
Cons:
[expensive] ink is only sold individually
[expensive] ink is only sold individually
Quality
This thing specializes in long lasting, fast drying, color output quality. There are 2 dedicated black cartridges, one optimized for glossy paper and another for matte paper, plus 2 blue (cyan), 2 red (magenta), 1 yellow, and 1 gloss finisher cartridge. The red and blue pairs are about gamut range. Imagine you're a painter and are trying to render a particular blue sky and all you have is deep blue. Without throwing in alot of white, you have to play games (dot size/spacing) to get the dark blue to look light. Printer companies are now throwing in the lighter shades so less games are needed and truer colors are possible. Likewise, printers with 2 shades of black (gray) produce better black and white images (more below).
Everything that comes through my Canon 20D and out this printer is magic - film doesn't even come close.
Speed
Using the firewire interface, I sometimes (printing 4-up 30+ megapixels) wait longer for the print job to que up on my 1.2 G4 than for the print to appear. Translation: fast. Even full page 600dpi+ originals come out with instant gratification.
Appearance
The light/dark grey finish and relatively compact case (with in/out puts closed) are equally at home in an office or bedroom. The part I enjoy is printing to a printer larger than the computer its coming from.
Software
Controls are easy to use (OS X) and photo quality output is nearly automatic. Whatever you do though, turn off Expansion! This on-by-default unfeature increases the odds for a full bleed but at the expense of stretching the picture to an unpredictably larger size (spent hours figuring out why my borders were off). Prints equally well from Photoshop and iPhoto. Its frightening how smart the ink system is, not only can you see in the software how much ink is left, it tells you how many pages "like the last one printed" you can do with the remaining ink for the lowest cartridge. My one nit pick with iPhoto is that jpg doesn't understand AdobeRBG (it only speaks sRGB), so such images don't render correctly. To get around this, drag the original image (not edited in iPhoto, make sure it says .cr2) onto Photoshop, which does render/print correctly.
Use
I started out printing everything in semi gloss because it looks/feels like "real" pictures but after trying matte paper, I'm never going back. Not only are the colors richer/deeper, there is zero glare in any lighting environment - and the ink still won't smudge. For best results, make sure your camera, software, and printer are all set to the same color space, preferably AdobeRGB, and shoot in 16bit full color (usually RAW). With these settings, even 8 megapixel's is enough for full bleed Super B (13x19) posters. Coming from a film background, the hardest thing has been paper size standards. Most of the best paper is 8.5/11 and all the picture frames are old sizes: 8x10, 5x7, 4x6 - I hate trimming everything.
Alternatives - Color
When it comes to printing photographs, ink is everything and Epson has it. With the right paper, this pigment is rated to 200 years and is crazy color accurate. All you need to do is pick your size:
small = PhotoMate
medium = R800
large = R1800
Alternatives - B&W
Epson has a new printer, the R2400, a replacement to the R2200. Its $300 more and both have 8 cartridges but they have a different emphasis and target market. The 1800 has 1 gray and 2 blacks, one for matte paper and one for glossy paper - this thing rocks for glossy prints. The 2400 has 1 black, 2 grays, and a thicker paper path. If you are doing black and white art prints on very special media (ie, textured cotton), the 2400 has more dexterity and shades of gray definition. If you are doing color glossy prints, the 1800 is the way to go.
A word on color
I've discovered a new language, called white balance (aka, color temperature, color balance). This is a funny name for the effect a given light has on the colors you are photographing. This context "tints" what the camera sees in a particular way. You might know this as yellow/red light or blue light. The name comes from how easy it is to see this tint on colors that are supposed to be white - out of balance. Our eyes are affected by this, but our brains compensate automatically. Film is calibrated to averages, outdoor film, indoor film, but this doesn't come close to the control possible with digital sensors. Trouble is, built in settings are also based on averages, they just have more of them, bright day, indoor, night, cloudy, etc. To be truly accurate, you either have to correct every picture in Photoshop before printing (during a raw conversion or with Level's excellent tools - more below) or shoot it right the first time. Getting it right in camera means carrying around what's called a gray card or buying a cool gizmo called an ExpoDisc (expodisc .com). The later is more convenient and in my opinion more accurate, but its not cheap. Having shot an entire vacation calibrated with ExpoDisc, all my prints came out with a color vibrancy I've never seen before, with much less work. I love night photography so my favorite technique is calibrating to the light in the room and then taking a shot lit by a candle (the 20D with a 2.8 lens can see in the dark), the yellows are rendered as the they appear in real life.
A word on black and white.
The best conversion I've found is not switching to gray scale, but turning saturation down to zero. And for best results, make sure the image is correctly color balanced first: open Levels and examine each R G B Channel. For each, "squeeze" the sides as if you were adjusting for brightness. Practice with images that are way off.
More information on the R1800:
http://www.photo-i.co.uk/Revie
This is the perfect companion for my laser all-in-one:
http://www.epinions.com/Brothe
This thing specializes in long lasting, fast drying, color output quality. There are 2 dedicated black cartridges, one optimized for glossy paper and another for matte paper, plus 2 blue (cyan), 2 red (magenta), 1 yellow, and 1 gloss finisher cartridge. The red and blue pairs are about gamut range. Imagine you're a painter and are trying to render a particular blue sky and all you have is deep blue. Without throwing in alot of white, you have to play games (dot size/spacing) to get the dark blue to look light. Printer companies are now throwing in the lighter shades so less games are needed and truer colors are possible. Likewise, printers with 2 shades of black (gray) produce better black and white images (more below).
Everything that comes through my Canon 20D and out this printer is magic - film doesn't even come close.
Speed
Using the firewire interface, I sometimes (printing 4-up 30+ megapixels) wait longer for the print job to que up on my 1.2 G4 than for the print to appear. Translation: fast. Even full page 600dpi+ originals come out with instant gratification.
Appearance
The light/dark grey finish and relatively compact case (with in/out puts closed) are equally at home in an office or bedroom. The part I enjoy is printing to a printer larger than the computer its coming from.
Software
Controls are easy to use (OS X) and photo quality output is nearly automatic. Whatever you do though, turn off Expansion! This on-by-default unfeature increases the odds for a full bleed but at the expense of stretching the picture to an unpredictably larger size (spent hours figuring out why my borders were off). Prints equally well from Photoshop and iPhoto. Its frightening how smart the ink system is, not only can you see in the software how much ink is left, it tells you how many pages "like the last one printed" you can do with the remaining ink for the lowest cartridge. My one nit pick with iPhoto is that jpg doesn't understand AdobeRBG (it only speaks sRGB), so such images don't render correctly. To get around this, drag the original image (not edited in iPhoto, make sure it says .cr2) onto Photoshop, which does render/print correctly.
Use
I started out printing everything in semi gloss because it looks/feels like "real" pictures but after trying matte paper, I'm never going back. Not only are the colors richer/deeper, there is zero glare in any lighting environment - and the ink still won't smudge. For best results, make sure your camera, software, and printer are all set to the same color space, preferably AdobeRGB, and shoot in 16bit full color (usually RAW). With these settings, even 8 megapixel's is enough for full bleed Super B (13x19) posters. Coming from a film background, the hardest thing has been paper size standards. Most of the best paper is 8.5/11 and all the picture frames are old sizes: 8x10, 5x7, 4x6 - I hate trimming everything.
Alternatives - Color
When it comes to printing photographs, ink is everything and Epson has it. With the right paper, this pigment is rated to 200 years and is crazy color accurate. All you need to do is pick your size:
small = PhotoMate
medium = R800
large = R1800
Alternatives - B&W
Epson has a new printer, the R2400, a replacement to the R2200. Its $300 more and both have 8 cartridges but they have a different emphasis and target market. The 1800 has 1 gray and 2 blacks, one for matte paper and one for glossy paper - this thing rocks for glossy prints. The 2400 has 1 black, 2 grays, and a thicker paper path. If you are doing black and white art prints on very special media (ie, textured cotton), the 2400 has more dexterity and shades of gray definition. If you are doing color glossy prints, the 1800 is the way to go.
A word on color
I've discovered a new language, called white balance (aka, color temperature, color balance). This is a funny name for the effect a given light has on the colors you are photographing. This context "tints" what the camera sees in a particular way. You might know this as yellow/red light or blue light. The name comes from how easy it is to see this tint on colors that are supposed to be white - out of balance. Our eyes are affected by this, but our brains compensate automatically. Film is calibrated to averages, outdoor film, indoor film, but this doesn't come close to the control possible with digital sensors. Trouble is, built in settings are also based on averages, they just have more of them, bright day, indoor, night, cloudy, etc. To be truly accurate, you either have to correct every picture in Photoshop before printing (during a raw conversion or with Level's excellent tools - more below) or shoot it right the first time. Getting it right in camera means carrying around what's called a gray card or buying a cool gizmo called an ExpoDisc (expodisc .com). The later is more convenient and in my opinion more accurate, but its not cheap. Having shot an entire vacation calibrated with ExpoDisc, all my prints came out with a color vibrancy I've never seen before, with much less work. I love night photography so my favorite technique is calibrating to the light in the room and then taking a shot lit by a candle (the 20D with a 2.8 lens can see in the dark), the yellows are rendered as the they appear in real life.
A word on black and white.
The best conversion I've found is not switching to gray scale, but turning saturation down to zero. And for best results, make sure the image is correctly color balanced first: open Levels and examine each R G B Channel. For each, "squeeze" the sides as if you were adjusting for brightness. Practice with images that are way off.
More information on the R1800:
http://www.photo-i.co.uk/Revie
This is the perfect companion for my laser all-in-one:
http://www.epinions.com/Brothe
Review ID: 10000000000682037
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