P700 explorations....

Keith Cooper

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I've been sent a P700 by Epson UK to have a look at for a new review. If anyone has any specific questions, please do let me know and I'll see if I can address them

Some may have come across my printer reviews on the Northlight Images web site, which I'll be adding to over the next few weeks (A P900 should be next) I've already had a new Canon PRO-300 here for a few weeks (see the Canon forum here) - definitely a good year for new printers ;-) Just as well since like many working photographers I seem to have rather more free time than I'd anticipated...
 

stratman

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Look forward to reading your review on the P700. Recently I have begun to learn more about Epson printers and your timing couldn't be better!
 

Ink stained Fingers

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I would like to see some review of the color performance - gamuts of the canned profiles, black level comparing to your profiles, comparing to other printers in the model range and the predecessor, a judgement of the apparent print quality - dithering - uniformity - overall impression of like printouts. Epson or Canon always claim to have improved something - gamut - black level etc but how much is it actually - can you just measure it or are these gains actually visible in printouts - thanks
 

Keith Cooper

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Sorry, I don't really do comparative reviews at all. I'd note that, although I did a lengthy review of the P600 when it came out, I don't have one here to compare.

As for the profiles, I make mine freely available (for non-commercial use) for people to make their own comparisons with whatever tools they possess. The only measurements I do show are in testing B&W printer performance and then the actual data is but a small part of that.

Without some detailed, relevant and well explained methodology, any comments on print quality are no more informative than much printer marketing copy. I'm asked about 'depth' for example, without ever any definition adequate to know if my personal meaning matches the questioner. I try and include photos, but there are limits.

A good example would be giving Dmax values for a B&W print setup. Some people love this one - coincidentally so do people who sell paper/ink, which should raise suspicions ;-)

On its own it merely tells me how deep the deepest black (100%) is on the paper. It tells me nothing about the context of that black (shadow crunching for example)

We are long past the days of significant improvements in print quality - to say the P700 is a big improvement in this area, would be to suggest the P600 was deficient - it wasn't. Indeed, if you can't make a great print with any recent printer, the problem is most likely to be your own lack of skills (photography/editing) than the printer - that goes for me too ;-) That means in reviews I tend to concentrate on aspects of usability - paper handling and printer use for example

The P700 is the first of a new generation of printers and has a lot of entirely new internals. In terms of ease of making prints it already feels better - the touch screen for example is one area that I like (with its confirmatory image of the print).

The question I prefer to answer first is 'what's it like to use'...
 

pharmacist

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User replaceable waste ink tank and the size of it. What about the amount it displays when the first cartridges are installed into the printer and the print head is primed and what is left of the ink cartridges after the primary priming routine after the installing the first cartridges.
 
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