Epson 7900 - please help me buy

[Wayne Fox]

Wayne,

This is interesting, something I wasn't aware of.  So, if you are sitting at your computer and the printer is in the other room you can advance the paper a few inches and cut it off with the auto cutter and then start printing?  Do you leave the roll paper in your 7900 all the time?  I had intended on using the barcode.

I believe you have to be at the printer to advance/cut.  Easy to do, press a couple of buttons.  If you need to do this from another room, you certainly could send a "dummy" file a few inches long.  I move between sheets and rolls quite a bit, and I do use the barcode to track remaining paper length.  However, I have left paper in for more than a day, such as Hahnemuhle FAB and not seen a problem.

[Mussi_Spectraflow]

Just spoke with MeridianCyber and waiting for Kirk to call me back.  I don't use a lot of high gloss media but obviously in the beginning years of pigment the results on gloss were not so great (putting it nicely) and now it seems that the prints on glossy media from the latest and greatest aren't too far off.  I just wonder why Epson doesn't use the GO on their large format printers and then it's capable of anything (My ignorance is showing here since I don't know how good the 7900 is on gloss).  Naturally I'll keep my other printers and use them for gloss if the 7900 doesn't prove to be as good as even a 1280.

I believe that you will find the 7900 gamut to be noticeably larger than the 1280 in almost all areas. The pigment printer has come a long way. Also I will say that the HP gloss handling is better than the Epson. There is still some bronzing evident on the X900, it is quite well controlled without the use of a gloss enhancer, but it is still there. The HP inks without the GE have fairly noticeable issues with bronzing and gloss differential, and so the GE is really a solution to a problem imposed by the inks. Two different approaches, two slightly different results. All said though I think the 7900 will serve you well.

[Ryan Grayley]

The HP inks without the GE have fairly noticeable issues with bronzing and gloss differential, and so the GE is really a solution to a problem imposed by the inks. Two different approaches, two slightly different results. All said though I think the 7900 will serve you well.

Glossy prints without GE on my Z3200  are terrible but with GE, the prints are indeed a little nicer than glossy prints on my 7900.

[Gemmtech]

Can I get clarification on what everybody means by "Glossy" in other words the semigloss papers or Epson Semi-Matte do these fall into the same category or are you just talking about the very glossy papers?

[Gemmtech]

I received the Epson 7900 sample prints from Meridian today and I have to admit I'm very impressed.  I had him print on Epson glossy media and though the GD is there it really is slight.  I'm going to scan the prints and print them with a 1280 just out of curiosity as well as a Canon I9900.  The dye printers definitely have more gloss, but I'm not sure that it matters.  You definitely have to look closely at the print to see the GD; it's not readily apparent.  I think I'll be very happy with the 7900, I just wished I would have ordered the identical print using the Z3200.  I'll probably continue to use the dye printers for the glossy work and the 7900 for everything else.