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EPSON Stylus Photo R2880
review
by Thomas Berg
username
twberg
Nikonian in Germany
Tell a friend about this Epson R2880
review
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Print quality
All my conclusions on
print quality are purely subjective; I do not own print inspection
devices that enable to determine deviations in colour or gamma. I
compared the prints against two calibrated monitors, both set to a
sufficiently low luminance (~100 cd/m²); I compared print
against print under varying light conditions and I inspected some
prints under a high performance Rodenstock 6x
loupe.
5.1. Available EPSON paper media
EPSON provides a large selection of media,
more than what I received and mentioned in paragraph
2.1.
I did ask for recommendations
concerning which paper suits which kind of image but EPSON was
wisely close-mouthed. It is all a matter of taste and freedom of
art.
There is no point in listing
the variety of available media here and now, please feel free to
look that up on EPSON's web sites.
5.2. Media
handling
EPSON recommends wearing gloves when
handling the paper. This is particularly important for fine art
media when they shall be printed borderless. In this case, no white
frame remains which otherwise might forgive the one or other sweaty
trace of fingerprint.
The situation is somewhat
relaxed for Premium Luster paper, not only do I like the appeal of
this paper very much, it also seems a little more forgiving due to
its textured surface.
Should you intend to use the
Fine Art / Roll Media path, do yourself the favour of reading the
manual and adhere to the instructions. It saves
frustration.
By the way, I experienced a
potential bug with the version 1.05U of Photoshop Print Plug In
running under all versions of Windows. Despite all Fine Art media
settings being correct in the driver, invoking a print job through
the Plug In constantly led to error messages indicating wrong
settings of the paper path. I just could not get it going, wasted a
lot of time and finally discovered that everything worked fine when
bypassing the Plug In, sending the print directly to the driver.
Initially observed under Windows XP, the same problem appeared
under VISTA and Win7. I just couldn’t make use of the Fine
Art / Roll Media path with plug-in version 1.05U.
Of course I informed EPSON
about this observation and I expect them to trace and rectify this
issue.
While this issue persists, one
may bypass all hassle by just feeding all kinds of paper down the
regular feeder path, defeating the objective of the fine art media
path.
5.2.1. before
the print
Paper can have dust on the surface and
cotton gloves can release cotton fibres and may be contaminated
with sweat. To be on the safe side, I used surgical latex gloves. I
strongly recommend wearing such gloves at least for the handling of
fine art media because they feed different than the other media. We
shall utilize the fine art media feeder path instead of the regular
paper feed in order to minimize the depletion of fibres and
particles in the regular paper path, designated to glossy and
semi-gloss media.
As mentioned above, fine art
media are not fabricated and compressed to a similar dense and
smooth surface as the mainstream media and chances are good that
small particles and fibres separate from the paper while it passes
through the printer.
Feeding paper to the fine art
media path handles noticeable different from the regular feeder,
where you just open the lid and deposit the sheets. The printer
mechanism catches the topmost sheet automatically.
The Fine Art feeder behaves
differently. You need to guide and push a single sheet into the
feeder, about two inches further than the first noticeable
mechanical resistance that you feel. Continue feeding until a hard
stop can be felt. Then you still need to apply some gentle push
force, only then the feeding may be successful and the
printer mechanism can catch the sheet. Please read the manual
carefully, this paper feed procedure is not intuitive at
all.
Since this requires holding the
sheets while applying force and guidance, you better wear
gloves.
The utilization of the fine art
media feeder is recommended for the following paper
types:
- Ultra Smooth Fine Art
Paper
- Velvet Fine Art
Paper
- Watercolour Paper Radiant
White
5.2.2. after the print
The prints do not require lengthy rest for
drying in the same way as dye ink does. A session of 10 printouts
will not necessarily lead to sheets distributed over desks, chairs,
sideboards etc. I typically gave fresh prints a rest of 15 minutes
before stacking them. I suggest putting lint-free tissue in between
stacked sheets to avoid scratches from the backside on the face of
the lower print.
The fine art media deserve a
more careful treatment than the mainstream media. In the attached
instruction leaflets, EPSON recommends 24 hours of drying before
further processing as well as stacking prints with sheets of normal
paper in between; as a separation to ensure that the relatively
rough backing of one sheet does not scratch the underlying print
surface. Mind that one defect on the printed surface may ruin the
appearance of the entire image and this risk grows with
size.
Prints as large as 42cm * 29cm
do not file as easy as letters. In my opinion, A3 is already a
dimension where one should think of the final use or storage before
printing.
I find it unlikely to nail a
nice print to the wall like a poster, without a matching frame and
passepartout. If one is serious about printing large, spending some
early thoughts on final presentation and storage of prints will not
harm. Just my two cents.
5.3. Glossy vs. Matte and
the exchange of inks
The printer utilizes two types of black
ink, “Photo Black” for glossy media or “Matte
Black” for matte media.
This is an
“either/or” choice. Here is one of my serious dislikes.
I do not understand why both cartridges can not stay inserted all
the time. Should the spatial restrictions really be such that this
small imaginary cartridge #9 might not find a home in the
carrier?
Answer EPSON: would lead to a
print head re design.
My reply: it would still be
beneficial for the customers.
In consequence, whenever you
exchange matte versus glossy media you have to swap the black ink
as well, and each exchange invokes a pipe purge and a drain of ink.
This means wasted money and a presents a nuisance particularly with
respect to the small volume of the ink cartridge.
The type of inserted ink is,
after some manual interaction, detected by the driver (and the
Print Plug-In) and taken into account such that inappropriate media
do not appear on the dropdown lists.
I dislike the impact this has
on the workflow. For instance, in the course of this review I would
have loved to print glossy and matte somewhat alternating. Instead,
I limited myself to do virtually all glossy print jobs first
(because PhotoBlack came installed) and performed the matte jobs
later.
I strongly suggest following
the instructions in the manual as for the exchange of black ink
(Photo Black / Matte Black). The procedure appears a bit weird,
like nested workarounds. You need to open the driver options, open
the utility tab and click on the “Information” icon
just to verify that the newly inserted black cartridge has been
recognised by the computer system. Nothing to set, just look.
Eventually, you and the software do the job, but I would prefer a
seamless integration working in the background which needs no
further user interaction than removing one, inserting another
cartridge. Just like with the colour inks!
5.4. What kind of test images were used
From my recent stable of images, I selected
five real-world pictures as main specimens. Here they
are:
I processed the smaller ones to
a resolution of 2160*1527 pixels, which corresponds with the aspect
ratio of all the DIN-A4 format paper I received from EPSON and
yields about 200 ppi actual resolution when printed on A4 with 5mm
border.
The Black-and-White “Face
in the Tree” shows enormous details thanks to the resolving
power of the Nikon D300 and the surprisingly good 16-85 AF-S lens.
Because of that, I prepared an upscaled and carefully sharpened
image file with full 360ppi resolution for a 473*319 mm sized print
on A3+ paper specifically to evaluate resolution and appearance of
larger format prints.
In the course of the review
work I amended the sunset picture for evaluating the performance of
Fine Art media for colour and deep shadows (and, honestly, I was
curious to see that printed large).
You may download and use these
images for personal evaluation purposes but please bear in mind
that all rights are and remain with me.
The objective of the low
resolution colour images (violating the general “300ppi for
quality” rule-of-thumb) is to investigate gamut and tonality
rather than resolution. It is possibly known that ink jet printing
provides some inherent noise/grain smoothing both for technological
reasons and thanks to clever print algorithms. I found it
interesting to see if and when limits in tonal smoothness versus
defined sharpness appeared in the prints. Colour-wise,
cornflower-blue and cornpoppy-red represent nicely the range of
colours where gamut and rendering problems may show
up.
The objectives of the B&W
image are sheer resolution as well as looking for tonality and
colour cast issues. The human perception is quite sensitive to
colour deviations along the greyscale axis, that's why colour cast
and resolution limits can be observed easier with B&W images.
Of course, I like this picture very much because of its fabulous
appeal and the beautiful level of details, which makes the print
inspection quite joyful.
5.5. Tonal richness and
smoothness B&B
I am not an expert on B&W prints, so
take it with a mild grain of salt when I say that all my
Black&White prints came out flawless regarding tonality,
smoothness or representation of grain, not exhibiting any unwanted
transitions or artefacts. They all were so well in accordance with
the preview on the monitor that I would like to say, the prints are
truly “what you see is what you get”.
Great result!
5.6. Colour richness and colour transitions
With respect to the selected evaluation
pictures as well as other sample prints, I did not observe any
noteworthy deficiencies in comparison to my 24 inch calibrated
monitor. Not unexpected, the smoothness of transitions in areas
where image noise or grain start to become visible on the monitor
is hard to perceive in the print. This is more thanks to the dot
interpolation effect inherent to all ink jet printers versus the
relatively coarse pixel pitch of monitors, but anyway a very
welcome contribution to the final outcome.
The gamut coverage is
impressive, certainly thanks to the Vivid Magenta ink. I am
positively surprised how much of the difficult magenta range is
covered by the EPSON inks. Very nice!
From what I can see, saturated
Blue-Cyan seems to be the sole domain where a little bit of
intensity or punch is missing in the prints. I love saturated blue,
maybe that's why I look and judge a bit critical
here.
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