Been out the game for a while...whats the latest and greatest ink jet?

[ZooCity]

+1 on the 4800/4880/whatever the hell the newest one is that's roll-feed in this category.

Used to have the 3k and it was a lot of tinkering and fussing with it, with settings, with the rips...

...the 4800 is quite robust for an inkjet printer which I typically find to be built like cracker jack prizes.  Everything Pierre says is spot-on. 

In fact, I was just praising ours because it does give you back a lot of time.  Use the roll and get a decent rip.  You can set your output and walk way as it prints, cuts, stacks your film up and come back and get it later. 

I'll add that repairs are surprisingly do-able on these machines.  I successfully installed new heads and some other parts whose names I do not recall.  It's still an Epson, still an inkjet (I had to jb-weld some parts back together that snapped when re-installing) but, again, impressed with the way it's built.  The 4800series on up are the professional units and it does show. 

The 1400 is in an entirely different category but I picked one up for backup and was highly impressed with the films it printed just with the Epson black that came with it.  Absolutely the best bang for the buck and readily available just about everywhere so you can get a damage/replacement plan on it and just return it if it's down for a fresh one.
 
One thing, that anyone who uses Epson's knows about, is that the roll feed loves, I mean absolutely rejoices in wasting as much media as it can.  Accurip keeps it under control but when resetting or switching films it just pumps it out for no goddamn reason.   This makes having two rolls on-hand - a 14" and 17" let's say - in an effort to swap and conserve film kinda pointless.  I can't imagine what photographers using very spendy roll media think about this lovely habit but I can barely tolerate it wasting my $0.70/foot fixxons film.  This is probably a flaw of all epson's, maybe they think you're always using epson media and though it a clever way to increase sales of consumables for the machines, I dunno. 

[Printficient]

Canon is really trying to get into this market.  I priced out a Canon comparable to an Epson 7880 and it was a lot less money.

[blue moon]

 
One thing, that anyone who uses Epson's knows about, is that the roll feed loves, I mean absolutely rejoices in wasting as much media as it can.  Accurip keeps it under control but when resetting or switching films it just pumps it out for no goddamn reason.   This makes having two rolls on-hand - a 14" and 17" let's say - in an effort to swap and conserve film kinda pointless.  I can't imagine what photographers using very spendy roll media think about this lovely habit but I can barely tolerate it wasting my $0.70/foot fixxons film.  This is probably a flaw of all epson's, maybe they think you're always using epson media and though it a clever way to increase sales of consumables for the machines, I dunno.

Film Maker does not seem to have that issue. I did struggle with similar problems before switching. . .
We do have a copy of Film Maker coming up as a prize so might want to keep some good prints to yourself for the next few weeks (should be Jan or Feb). I attached an image of the interface for the roll film. The images on the right are the two films it is printing on 17" wide roll. I will probably switch to the 13" as that is the width of most things I print and it should save a little bit of film. Images can be auto nested or placed by hand. I find that I can do better than the auto feature, but it is not bad on its own.

Also agree on the 1400. For the Golden Image competition, we used the 1400 as the dot quality is much better.

pierre

 

[ZooCity]

Hey Pierre, it's a habit I noticed of the 4800, not the rip.  Accurip does a good job of taming it but when you do roll changes or a reset it likes to waste the media. 

FilmMaker looks pretty slick.  Making me consider running a vm to run it. 

[blue moon]

Hey Pierre, it's a habit I noticed of the 4800, not the rip.  Accurip does a good job of taming it but when you do roll changes or a reset it likes to waste the media. 

FilmMaker looks pretty slick.  Making me consider running a vm to run it.

actually, you could buy a $99 winblows system and set it up as a print server. Play with it until you have it set up right and than just make it print without any input on your end. Sort of like AR. Nice thing is, you have the option of playing with it if you need to.

pierre