Have You Bought The Epson P800

O.k., this is nevertheless a printer knowledge forum, with all the questions around technical details etc , and that's not bad, but not a photo forum, photos are typically judged not so much by its technical perfection but by the image composition, expression, whether it conveys a message, or shows an atmospheric or emotional expression or feeling, so there is something else more relevant than this stuff to get the award.

RogerB said:

I am a bit surprised to see your minimum vale of L is 9. Using ABW I would expect to see something around 4 or 5. It will be interesting to see how a 21-step measurement comes out.

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Here are the results from scanning the 21 step wedge supplied by Keith Cooper

Ian Barber said:

Here are the results from scanning the 21 step wedge supplied by Keith Cooper

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I just did a plot of the L values and I must say it doesn't look too linear. The contrast in the shadow region is quite low, with a relatively high Lmin. What settings are you using in ABW?

W. Fisher said:

Yeah, I think it really comes down to perception somehow -- along with all of your findings too.

Sometimes I think we dwell too much on the "Math of Inkology" and the straightness of the linearization line and its numbers, etc. More black is better. More white is better. OBA is bad. OBA is good. This ink sucks. My printer sucks. Etc.

In the past I printed and mounted, what I thought then, was a nice forest scene and then lose in competition to someone who never profiles, could care less, shot it with their cheap cell camera (cough cough), and his crummy uncalibrated monitor and printer spits out more green and brown and his forest stuff which looked better to the judge.
Okay, it looked better than mine too.

Will.

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Yeah I've got friends like that. I'm gonna kill them. In a friendly way you understand.
rs

RogerB said:

I just did a plot of the L values and I must say it doesn't look too linear. The contrast in the shadow region is quite low, with a relatively high Lmin. What settings are you using in ABW

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Hmm, it dips a bit more in the shadows than I was expecting. These are my settings I used

Ian Barber said:

Hmm, it dips a bit more in the shadows than I was expecting. These are my settings I used

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You might like to try "Darker". I find this gives better linearity.

I will try the darker setting, I always thought this altered the gamma value

W. Fisher said:

Yeah, I think it really comes down to perception somehow -- along with all of your findings too.

Sometimes I think we dwell too much on the "Math of Inkology" and the straightness of the linearization line and its numbers, etc. More black is better. More white is better. OBA is bad. OBA is good. This ink sucks. My printer sucks. Etc.

In the past I printed and mounted, what I thought then, was a nice forest scene and then lose in competition to someone who never profiles, could care less, shot it with their cheap cell camera (cough cough), and his crummy uncalibrated monitor and printer spits out more green and brown and his forest stuff which looked better to the judge.
Okay, it looked better than mine too.

Will.

Click to expand...

Nature and the objects around us are imperfect when it comes to colour. Flowers and foliage are subject to genetic variation the influence of light etc.
I follow discussions like this with interest, the attention to detail and the search for quality of colour output is a full time activity on its own, or so it seems to me. I often feel compelled to follow but temper any adoption with the undestanding that the more clinical the approach the less we replacate the randomness of nature, and so the result is often just too clean.
It seems true ( on the surface) that the better one represents colour the more closely we capture a scenes colours, but this aspect of accuracy keeps bringing me back to the fact that no one will ever know what you actually saw, so generating something pleasing via your own expression of colour has at least equal validity and has far less ' content.' Your endeavours keep calling but In the past I have stood with an Art Appreciation group admiring a painting in a gallery and each person sees/favours different aspects of the colour data they are observing. A person with 20-20 vision will see a VERY different image from a person with better vision and that seems to also have the effect of influencing colour perceptions too, which is odd.
So what is gained, and what is lost? I suspect at the end of the day is for one group the self satisfaction of knowing that their endeavours are as technically accurate as they can get, that achievement of said goal being their reward. For others that dont chase accuracy down the rabbit hole gain satisfaction by the application of their own perceptions.

Taking this thread back on track the more I read of the endeavours of the major printer manufacturers the more I am inclined to support the non OEM's in their efforts to thwart the extorsionistic behaviour of the OEM community.

whoever is interested in the Surecolor PX00 series - there is a new model P400 announced - a successor of the R1900/2000 with the Ultrachrome HighGloss II inks and Gloss optimizer

http://www.epson.co.uk/gb/en/viewcon/corporatesite/press/index?gatewayto=/gb/en/content/press/messages/message.php?id=5880&filtercat=products

I have seen, that the German Lyson distributor farbenwerk.com starts offering Ultrachrome HD/P600 compatible inks, so I would assume that other Lyson sellers have that ink type available as well. I have some Photo Black on order, I won't order the other colors for the time being, I'm covered with other pigment inks for a while.