So I may have enough pennies for an Epson 1280 in the new year, complete with the bulk ink kit. I've had people tell me that I should purchase the 2200, but truth to tell, there's not really that much difference between the output of the two printers to my eye.

The 2200 strikes me as being a "fine art" printer suitable for churning out archival quality, long-life prints. That and it's bleedin' expensive to operate.

I think I'll get the 1280.

Anyone have any opinions on this?

Hi Sean,

I've gone through the same process myself with regards to an A3 printer, and in the end I decided not to buy one at all and get my large prints done by a photo lab :-)

I don't really do enough large prints to justify the £500 cost of the Epson 2200/2100, and I wouldn't want to short-change the people that I do sell to by using the non-archival Epson 1280/1290 or the Canon equivalent (Bubblejet i9100).

If you're selling prints and you have a fairly high-volume, I'd advise going for the 2200.
If you're selling prints and you have a low-volume, I'd stick with a tried and trusted photo-lab.

BTW, I'm not sure if Epson ever improved the 1280, but my Espon 890 (the A4 equivalent) takes a massive 25minutes + to print an A4 image at 2880dpi!! Lets hope the A3 2200 isn't as slow...

Can you really see a difference between 1440 and 2880 dpi?

I can't and think the generally 2880 is just a waste of ink.

It's a bit like scanning at more than 300 ppi - you just can't see a difference when printing at 1440 + dpi.

Collin

You can definitely see a difference in the prints from the Epson Stylus Photo 950 printer that I reviewed last week:

http://www.photographyblog.com/reviews_eps...hp#ImageQuality

Quote:
"The Epson Stylus Photo 950 image quality is quite simply stunning, even straight out of the box using the standard printer drivers. Prints made at 720dpi look great, at 1440dpi they look excellent, and at 2880dpi they look fantastic. You really notice the difference that the extra dpi makes when you print at A4 size; it's not quite so noticeable in a 6 x 4 inch print. As the dpi is increased, the saturation and vibrancy of the print visibly increases, as well as the expected extra detail. The 2880dpi setting in particular, called SuperPhoto in the Epson software, delivers images that are more punchy than the other dpi settings."