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Epson 2200 review
I know there are a lot of these online, but Id like to chime in with my own experience around the Epson 2200 (2100 in Europe)

First thoughts:

Huge! This thing is big. With all its flaps extended, and in "full flight mode" its just over 35" deep. (Front to back) 25" wide, and a good 14" tall.

Inks: There are 7 ink cartridge seats, Black (or matte black) Light black (Gray), Cyan, Light cyan, Magenta, Light Magenta, and yellow.. Just opening the packages, and installing the cartridges took me quite a while

Black vs Matte black? Well, from what Ive seen, the matte black is a "richer" black, but suffers from bronzing terribly on glossy papers. On most matte papers tho, The matte black is richer, darker and more solid than the Photo black can produce. The photo black does a fine job of making Rich blacks on gloss, semi-gloss and luster papers.

After installing the carts, My 2200 took about 2 minutes to prime the printheads. I ran a nozzle check, and noticed gaps in the magenta head (Probably didnt prime all the way) so, 1 cleaning cycle, and another printhead check later, all is go.

Printing:

The boxed profiles are actually very good on this printer. A printout (once I had my ICC settings done in photoshop) was very, very close to what I had on screen, only a little magenta cast in the medium tans / browns. Easily corrected in Epsons driver software.

Paper:

Well, Epson makes some fine papers. But, their Premium glossy, and Premium semigloss suffer from bronzing bad enough for me to write them off as usable. Epsons enhanced matte paper is a real winner, except you have to use the Matte black ink (Not included with the printer) to get deep, true blacks. No bronzing, and razor-sharp reproduction can be had with this paper.

So, Off I go to the store to pick up some premium Non-epson papers.

Papers tried:

•Ilford Smooth pearl paper:
Ding Ding Ding!! Winner.. The same surface finish as ilfords pearl B&W photo paper, (about the same finish as Epson Premium luster), but Almost no noticeable bronzing! Okay.. Ive found my Luster paper.

•Red River Polar Matte:
Very nice paper, sharp reproduction, lifelike saturation, but requires Matte black for deepest blacks. I like this paper a lot.

•Red river Polar Satin:
Nice, smooth surface. Rich luster feel. Nice and sharp. Good saturation, but suffers minor bronzing. Only paper Ive seen Metamerizm (SP?). (Colors change slightly under different light sources).

•Red river Polar Gloss:
Very glossy paper. Smoothest gloss Ive seen. Hard to profile this paper, But once I got it profiled, I did my standard print test.. Results? Very saturated colors, (almost too saturated) but, the bronzing is much more subdued than anything Ive seen yet from Epson papers.

•Bergger PN32 Smooth matte:
Oh man.. Nice matte paper. Tack sharp, great saturation, and interestingly enough, the Photo black ink is just as rich on this paper as it is on the glossies.. No matte black swap needed.

•Bergger PN33 Textured matte:
Nice, but Im not a big fan of textured inkjet surfaces. Colors are a little subdued Vs the PN32, and some sharpness is lost (Texture makes ink travel farther to the paper?) Overall tho, a very capable matte paper.

Il still be trying other papers as time goes on.

As far as 1400 vs 2800 DPI printing? I achieve very, very nice results with 1440 DPI printing. As a matter of fact, the 2880 DPI only yields marginally better prints. For 99% of my output, the printer stays on 1440DPI...

Ink usage:

To date, I have printed roughly 8 8X10s, 12 5X7s, 30 4X6 and some odd size things (Calibration patches, Etc)
My lowest ink is Lt Magenta, at 50% All other inks are 75% full or more.

And finally, the roll feed, and paper cutter..

Well kids, Its neat, but not real usable. At least not for me.. The cutter / roll feeder assembly takes a few minutes to put on, and the cutter does a fine job of cutting your prints right at the edge (Once you calibrate the cutter, that is.) However, I have found that the prints that come off the roll, stay in that rolled-up shape.. Even after a couple days under some heavy books, they still pop back to their curved form.

Conclusion:
I really like this printer, and its worked better "out of the box" than any other Epson Ive owned. With a little tweaking of profiles, I should have a great piece of equipment here, and am happy to call it one of my photographic tools.


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by Jason See Profile edited by SurfTheSky See Profile
last modified: 2004-02-17 19:26:48