marcomarks Loc: Ft. Myers, FL

The thing I found about HP before I bought Epson was that H-P doesn't specify their droplet size nor horizontal and vertical ppi resolution information. Thus you can't compare to Epson and Canon. Even an employee at Best Buy who was told to sell the hell out of H-P said that disappointed him because he had asked about specs and H-P training specialists avoided the subject. He himself preferred and owned an Epson although Best Buy had dropped them in favor of H-P and Canon. That would mean that H-P printers either waste ink worse than other brands or their print resolution isn't as good.

I also don't think H-P makes a printer with 6 or 8 convenient separate ink-saving tanks and only uses the multi-color single tank method so you are throwing away unused color inks when only one color goes dry. I might be wrong on that because I don't pay much attention to H-P printers for photo purposes.

photocat Loc: Atlanta, Ga

Along with an Epson 3800 I also have an HP 9180 printer. Both are great and it is hard to tell which printer is being used until looking at black and white prints.

The HP uses 8 separate carts and the black and white is ok but not as good as the Epson.

Unfortunatley Hp doesn't seem to be making printers for the serious photographer these days.

I bought an HP printer last year to use as a demo in my beginning class, it was just a basic "office" type printer but it made very nice prints. It was a dye printer, with the above being pigment inks, but it also used individual ink carts, not the usually two (one black, one cym)

marcomarks Loc: Ft. Myers, FL

I'd say they aren't making them because photographers are a very limited and reasonably small market. H-P is good at huge distribution to the masses, bulk manufacturing, and marketing so they're looking to sell millions of printers. Epson and Canon are focusing on photographers because it's a niche market they excel in and spend their research money on, whether they sell millions of printers or not.

Microsoft-Intel-based PCs are a parallel to H-P printers. They own the bulk of the personal computer market and saturate the market with bulk distribution in every kind of store selling electronic anything. Epson and Canon are parallels to Apple. They do what they do better but have a much smaller percentage of the personal computer market that they're happy with.

photocat Loc: Atlanta, Ga

Correct, but too bad.

kintekobo Loc: Maidenhead, England

I have had a Canon i9950 printer for a few years now and have had nothing but excellent results.

Plus points are that it does A3 and that it has seven individual ink cartridges so good colour reproduction and no wasted ink.

Negative points are that it is rather large and heavy and was quite expensive, although I think you can pick them up used for very reasonable prices.

Roger Salls Loc: Stratford, CT

I have used Epson printers for at least ten years and can't say enough about using what I consider the industry standard, excellent! I go to the Epson site and select the printer I want, then go to their Clearance Center. where I can get that printer as a Refurb with the standard Epson Guarantee of One Year. The price is always less and the only drawback is you buy it there is no return unless it's defective and I've never had that problem. These are reurns that get thoroughly check out and are essentialy new printers. Currently I'm using the Epson R1900, a 13X19 printer and it also prints CD/DVD. I never deliver a hand written CD and my clients always remark on the professional look of the disks. While talking printers, ALWAYS use manuf inks, NEVER use off brand or refills, that is the quickest way to plug up a printer.
By the way, I have an Epson 4000 with a new printhead, $700, that I'm looking to sell. Epson didn't upgrade drivers to Vista or 7 so $300 and it's out of here it also runs only on Firewire as the USB port is on the motherboard and is dead. $300, you pick up in CT and happy printing uses 110 or 220 mltr cartridges. Atlex is a great source for supplies.

K2KImages

You're probably right with the specs. I'll check into this a bit further with HP. HP has been using separate ink colors for quite awhile now. I have a 6 color and Black that I have been using for several years now. Thanks for the reply.