Archive for August, 2011

I get asked my opinion about different equipment quite a lot and being a helpful sort of person I always try to answer any questions I get about the gear I use.

For this reason I have decided to start adding some reviews on the photo equipment I use in the hope that some of you will find it useful.
I’l try to avoid pages of technical specs as these are easily available elsewhere. Instead I’ll concentrate on what the equipment is like to use day in and day out and the performance and quality that can be expected.

If it proves popular I may eventually purchase equipment purely to review so if you have any gear that you really want reviewing then let me know.

The Epson Stylus Pro 3880

Ok so the questions I was asking when I was looking for a printer were, do I have the available space, can I justify the cost, and most importantly how good are the prints produced on this printer?

As you can see from the above image the Epson 3880 comes in a sizeable box which I just about managed to take up the stairs in my house on my own. I would recommend getting someone to help you if you can though.That is a meter ruler in the shot by the way.

Thankfully it is nowhere near the size of the 7xxx and larger series of printers which come on their own pallet :0

When set up the Epson pro 3880 doesn’t actually take up much more space than a Canon pro 9000 13″x19″ printer which is a pretty impressive feat considering the Epson outputs upto 17″ in width.

Here you can see the printer setup next to a Canon IP4500 A4 size printer. Although the Epson dwarfs it they both fit comfortably on fairly standard size computer desk in the corner of a room which makes them unobtrusive if you dont have a dedicated print room. Which of course means you wont have to persuade your partner to allow you to have a dedicated print room, unless you think you can of course
You can see the space it occupies while in action here

Set up of the printer is very straightforward, just a case of unboxing, removing some tape and then installing the ink cartridges. To install the inks you have to turn the printer on and press and hold the up direction button for 3 seconds and the lid will pop up.

Once you’ve done this the printer will begin charging the print lines which basically means drawing the ink out of the cartridges and into the lines and print head. This process took about 10-15 minutes. It is a fully automated process once you have physically installed the ink cartridges so you can go away and make a cup of tea while the printer does its thing.

On your return you can then run the head allignment tests, after which you will be good to go.

Costs

The cost of the printer hovers around the £1000 mark but you have to remember this does include a considerable amount of ink in those large 80ml ink cartridges compared to the much smaller cartridges found in 13″x19″ printers.

Once you allow for this extra ink the price difference between the 3880 and r2880 or r3000 becomes much less.

However there are several points I would make on cost, firstly how often will you actually print above 13×19″?

Once you have filled your walls and your family is struggling to find space for your “gifts” what will you do with those large prints?

Another question to ask yourself is how much do you actually print? If you only print your shots now and again then the £1000 cost of this printer pays for an awful lot of prints from an online printer.

Whether you can justify the cost depends entirely on your own circumstances and the strength of your marriage

If you do end up plumping for the printer then I find Amazon
very reasonable for inks and supplies and they always deliver quickly too.

The Prints

Ok so now for the important part, the print quality. There are several quality settings on this printer but the only ones I use are 2880×1440 dpi (super Photo) for photo black prints and 1440×720 dpi (Super Fine)for mat black prints.

I print on Canson, Hahnemuhle, Harman, Ilford and Fotospeed papers. (I dont use Epson papers but by all accounts the standard Icc profiles and epson papers produce superb prints.)

The prints that this printer produces are superb. Using any of the Baryta papers on either superfine or superphoto settings produces beautiful prints with rich colours and smooth tonal gradations. The level of detail rendered is very impressive, with a slight improvement shown on photo black papers using the Super Photo setting although if I was only printing for myself I would be more than happy with the Super Fine setting and saving around 10% in ink and almost halving the print times.

Now I also have a Canon Pixma Pro 9000 printer which is capable of producing equally stunning colour prints but the Epson in my experience is much more consistent with colour output. Occassionally i would notice colour casts on the Canon but this has never been an issue with the Epson. Obviously I would not consider selling prints from the Canon Pro 9000 as it uses dye inks which will not have the desire longevity of the Epsons pigment inks.

Using standard paper manufacturer supplied ICC profiles produces prints that are consistent and accurate in their output. I have tweaked these slightly by getting custom print profiles for my printer.

However I wouldn’t deem this necessary for personal use due to the fact that all “Pro” models in the Epson range are calibrated by hand at the factory which means there output is more consistent and in turn the ICC profiles are generally a better match.

One of the main selling points for me was the black and white output of the Epson 3880 printer. It uses 3 black inks at any one time, photo black or mat black, light black and ligh light black. This enable the 3880 in combination with Epson’s ABW black and white driver to produce outstanding black and white prints.

I recently printed off a 24″x16″ print called Incoming storm and the results blew me away. The blacks were incredibly deep and the subtle variation in tones throughout the range produced a print which had real impact.

The black and white prints produced on this printer are nothing short of incredible and I have to restrict myself from printing too many just for fun

If you really like black and white printing then Eric Chan has created some excellent black and white profiles that you can download .

In Use

The Epson Stylus Pro 3880 has been extremely easy to use, I print straight out of Lightroom 3 most of the time and the software seems to integrate well with the Epson driver.

Paper loads into the sheet feeder easily but when printing 24×16″ prints on 25×17″ paper which I cut from a roll the paper does not always feed into the machine perfectly straight which can lead to skewed borders. Basically you have the option of trying the sheet feeder again and hoping for the best or you can use the rear manual feeder

Using the rear manual feed is not always straight forward, it can be temperamental so I usually stick to the sheet feed.

These small gripes apart using this printer to print several hundred prints so far this year has been a pleasure. The prints produced are beyond anything your average photo lab could ever dream of producing and I am delighted to put my name to them.
Ink usage seems very reasonable and after 8 months use I have only replaced 3 ink cartridges.
The printer also provides statistics on ink usage, previous print jobs and how many printable are available with the current ink levels. This gives you a nice indication of what your using and when to buy replacements.
So far im averaging about 1ml of ink for an A4 print and 1.75ml for A3 prints.

One point to note is that this models predecessor, the Epson 3800 was replaced after approximately 3 years and the 3880 is approaching a couple of years old now so a replacement might be in the works. However if you can justify the cost of this printer I wouldn’t let that stop you from buying the Epson 3880 now.

The new Epson HDR inkset does improve colour gammut somewhat but you would have to look very closely indeed to notice any tangible improvement and there is no doubt that the prints produced by the 3880′s k3 with vivid magenta inkset will put a smile on your face.

Verdict

Pros

Print quality
Larger 80ml ink Cartridges
17″ wide printer with a small footprint

Cons

Expensive initial cost
Requires a reasonable volume of printing to be cost efficient

I have spent the last few weeks testing several new products to see if they fit into my range and offer the same high quality that my existing products do.

I have been extremely pleased with the quality of some of these top end products and I should be adding the best of these to the website within the next week so keep your eyes peeled.

In the meantime you can still buy our existing range of fine art prints which will not be changing. Dont forget if you require larger prints than available as an option then just email us with your request and we shall get back to you with a quote.

Here is a chance for you to win yourselves a brand new DSLR in a nature photo competition that I am judging. I’m posting details below so go ahead and enter and a brand new Nikon DSLR could be yours.

I’m looking forward to seeing what everyone comes up with. Good luck.

Win A Nikon D3100 DSLR Camera With Review Centre

Review Centre is on the hunt for amazing and inspiring nature photographers. The consumer review website has just announced a photography competition , giving photography enthusiasts the chance to win a digital SLR camera! The competition is open to amateur photographers only.

Review Centre have chosen “Nature” as the theme for the photography competition. You can take part by sending images of landscapes, wildlife or anything that else that relates to nature.

Those who wish to enter must send their photographs via email to competitions@reviewcentre.com Images can be black and white or colour, and of any size between 1MB and 2MB.

Photographs will be showcased on Review Centre’s blog, and the best image will be chosen by the professional landscape photographer David Fleet. The winner will receive a Nikon D3100 digital SLR camera, which comes with a 18-55VR lens kit. The competition ends on 9th September 2011.

About Review Centre

Review Centre is a community of real people sharing their product and service experiences. The website was founded in 1999, and now has over 500,000 reviews, covering 100,000 products and services such as digital SLR cameras, sat navs, mobile phones and laptops. Review Centre is based in Richmond, London.

A lot of people have cameras these days and so beautiful scenes are being photographed all the time but why is it were so often dissapointed when we look at the image? So often it doesnt reflect the beauty of the scene we witnessed.

What we often see with the naked eye makes for a beautiful scene but why doesnt this always translate into a great image.
Below I will outline some of the reasons for this and give a few tips that can help you to create images worthy of the scenes before you.

Cameras dont see like humans. They only record the information at one focal length. When we see a beautiful scene we scan around it with our eyes focussing on different areas, zooming in and out on different parts of the scene to create a mental image that isn’t actually how it would translate into a photograph.

To overcome this obstacle we need to look for objects in a scene that can draw the viewers eye through the image to give it depth, otherwise it will be flat and lifeless.

Use interesting elements in the foreground to catch the viewers attention then use lines and shapes to draw the viewers eye through the photo and towards your focal point.

Yes you need a focal point. Something that is the main subject of your image, it can be an interesting rock formation, cloud pattern, a little house, a flower, virtually anything but you must have something to say this is a photograph of …. whatever you decide. Just a flat image of a sunset usually wont make a great photograph on its own.

In the pictured image my aim was to capture the light rays that were bursting through the clouds. However just a straight forward shot of those rays of light would have been an interesting record shot but it wouldnt have created a very interesting image.
so what did i do to try and avoid making a flat and lifeless image. Firstly i looked for something interesting in the foreground, I found the rocks.I didnt just randomly pick this section of rock. I chose it for the interesting textures and patterns on the rocks.
I then placed the Sun in position to take advantage of the perceived circle created by the shape of the rocks to the centre left. Circles hold attention and using gestalt theory I know that the human eye completes perceived shapes in the mind. So in theory your mind should create a circluar shape out of the rocks and the area of the Sun. This will in turn result in your eye being drawn to and held upon my focal point which is the Sun and the interesting clouds and light surrounding it.

The image also requires a sense of dynamism and this is created in several ways. I have captured the wave as it splashes over the rocks which creates some motion in the scene and also something interesting to draw your eye away from the focal point. This creates interest as the viewers eye flits between the interesting elements in a scene and one of the main reasons you dont just plonk your subject in the middle of a picture as the viewers eyes would rest on a centrally placed focal point too easily and the image may become static and lifeless as a result. (note for wildlife shots and if you want this result then its fine, just not generally advised for landscapes)

The main subject, the Sun has also been placed near to one of the intersecting lines of the golden mean which is similar to the rule of thirds. This again adds a sense of dynamism to the image as the viewers eye does not just fall and rest upon one place but is encouraged to move between elements.

Finally to create some balance I have counteracted the Sun which is positioned slightly to the left with the larger mass of rocks being positioned equally to the right. Now balance isn’t an exact science so dont go measuring things but just be aware that balanced photos are more aesthetically pleasing to the human eye and therefore generally create more pleasing images. Finding balance takes a little bit of judgement on the photographers part so just experiment and see what feels right.

The other reason why people are so often dissapointed with their shots is that the human eye can perceive and record a far greater dynamic range than a camera. The human eye can record very dark through to very bright light much better than a camera. So a beautiful contrasty scene to you might actually push modern cameras beyond what they can record. This is why you often see shots where the sky looks right but the ground is too dark or the ground looks ok but the sky is bleached out and too bright.

To overcome this you can use graduated neutral density filters
(See my Lee filters review) All these do is place a bit of dark resin or glass over the bright part of a scene to darken it and lower the contrast level between the brightest and darkest parts of the scene. Its like putting sunglasses on the camera but just for the brightest parts of the scene. This allows the camera to record all the areas of the scene more in line with what the human eye can see.

[singlepic id=54 w=320 h=240 float=none]

There are also other techniques including High Dynmic Range photography (HDR) where you take several shots exposed for different parts of the scene and then merge them in post processing .
Alternatively you can shoot in Raw format and process the same image twice, once for the highlights( bright parts of the scene) and once for the shadows.
Whichever technique you use the end aim is to allow us to record the scene as we saw it with our human eye. (With HDR we can actually record much more but thats another story).

So next time you witness something spectacular happening in nature if you use these tips you may just come away with an image that captures the moment in all its glory.