(10/24/00)
(10/24/00)
This is a 4 color printer that is not marketed as a photo printer, but which nonetheless produces some very nice images. I tested prints on a few different papers primarily to test Epson's claim that the 1270 inks had "gasfastness" equal to older Epson printers.
I'm testing these Epson 900 samples as a favor for one of my benefactors. In general, prints from this printer look very similar to prints from the 1270 on the same papers. Color, contrast and saturation are very similar. The biggest difference is in the smoothness of continuous tones. In light and medium toned areas of solid color, there's a texture in the 900 prints that just doesn't exist in the output from the 1270. At normal viewing distances, the effects aren't very visible. But close up they're very easy to see.
These tests seem to indicate that the older Epson inks, even the 4 color ones, are also at risk of orange shift. Not nearly as badly as the 1270 inks, but they do shift.!
Epson Semi-Gloss on Epson 900: Interestingly, this paper showed more shift than the PGPP with the Epson 900, but still not nearly as bad as the PGPP on the Epson 1270
Epson Heavyweight Matte on Epson 900: No noticeable fade or color shift after 10 days.
Red River Polar Gloss on Epson 900: Noticeable color shift! In fact, its worse than any of the tested papers on the 900, but not nearly as bad as the 1270 / PGPP combination.
Tetenal Spectrajet on Epson 900: As you may recall, this paper did almost as poorly as PGPP with the 1270 inks. With the 900 inks it does perform better, but its far from the best.
After 10 days in the ozone test, it shows noticeable shift in a couple of steps of the
gray scale, and the lightest blue square shows some fade. In the outdoor UV test, the color shift
in the gray scale is very slight, except in squares A6, which shows moderate shift, and A7,
which is a close match for the brown square C2!! There no noticeable change in the office
window test, however.
Please read my test methodologies and see my disclaimer page.
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