Customer Rating: 
Summary: Epson Stylus R2400 Photo Printer
Comment: Summary:
I had been using the Epson 2200 for about a year, and it has given me great prints and reliablity. The only drawbacks were it's print speed and it's use of only two black inks which made printing in b&w less than ideal, but still acceptable.
Well, here comes the 2400 to finally replace the old industry workhorse. It sits in the same tight spot on my desk as the 2200, so the footprint is close to the same, however the 2400 looks to be a bit taller. The machine is a rugged looking, handsome unit, silver and black in color. It has a new paper catch tray that slides out with the touch of a finger similiar to a giant CD player tray. This new unit does not come with the paper cutter and fabric paper catch bin that the 2200 shipped with. I never used those accessories and found most people did not, and so I guess Epson figured it was not worht equipping with any longer.
After firing it up and using it now for a couple of months, I can say that this latest entry into the world of fine art printing is everything it should and needed to be to improve upon the already great 2200. Everything from the software , hardware, and inkset has been improved upon.
First off, and most importantly, the inkset has improved by the addition of a third black ink called "light, light black. ( thus giving the name of the inkset K3) What this does is allows the printer to reproduce the nuetral grays without having to use color inks to do so. This virtually eliminates metermerism, which is the shifting of color tints when viewing a print under different light sources. The b&w prints take on a nuetral tone and resemble traditional b&w prints. And in addition to this third black ink it seems Epson has improved the dmax of the black set. The black from the 2400 is noticeably deeper than that of the 2200, and i can only guess that Epson has added some more dye to the black ink ( Dye ink obtains deeper dmax than pigment) as black ink is less vulnerable to fading and therefore will not hurt the archival abilities that the Epson pigment inksets are so famous for.
Secondly, the hardware has been improved upon in many ways. The 2400 printer is almost twice as fast as the older 2200, and I have printed full 12x18 at highest resolution in about 6 minutes. A 5x7 or 4x6 in under a minute. And very quiet at that. The resolution of this printer has been brought up to an astouding 5760x1440 dpi. However, it is almost impossible it seems for the human eye to tell the difference between 2880 and 5760 dpi. But more is more, and who should complain. Next, the printer now has three paper paths. I print quite often on heavy fine art paper and with the 2200 I had to feed it through a straight paper path at the rear of the printer, which was a bit awkward to do. The 2400 allows you to feed heavy art paper through the top like a regular sheet, except it uses a different path located just behind the normal, or sheet path, as Epson calls it. Also is the ability to now print on heavy board type media, which I do not think i will ever use, but the option is there. It feeds through a feed path at the very front of the machine which is revealed by opening a cover at the front. The media feeds in through the front and the printer prints it in reverse sending it out the rear. Quite convenient and versatile.
Finally, there is the improved software. Similiar to the older software is the user-friendly look and set-up as well as all the options for paper sizes and printing enhancements and features. It seems Epson is very aware and ok with the fact that many users of the 2200 liked using different media from different manufacturers, even though Epson offers a wide variety of quality papers. I myself, have found the line of Moab papers, especially the Entrada fine art and the Kayenta matte, to be what I prefer to use. After much experimenting I have found these papers to produce excellent results with Epson inks and they are acid and lignin free as well. However, the Kayenta matte, which is not a heavy fine art paper and therefore should feed through the sheet path, uses the "Watercolor-Radiant white" epson paper setting for best results. however, Epsons "Watercolor-Radiant white" paper is a heavy stock and needs to go through the heavy paper path. When I set the software for "Watercolor-Radiant white" Epson software tells me that I am using the wrong path. however, it gives me the option to ignore the warning. This is great because what that tells me is Epson is aware that we will be using third party papers at times and they require different settings than what Epson suggests for their own and thus allows it's software settings to be side-stepped. Big thumbs up for them on that note alone.
Next is their b&w printing option in the software. I had truly underestimated this feature as I like to do evrything as far as editing in my PhotoShop software and do not touch a photo in any other way. I convert to b&w,ready my image and then send to the printer to print as it is, with the appropriate profile for the paper I use. Well, b&w prints look very good this way, but I soon found out that by using the b&w setting on my already converted b&w images , I get far beter results. It seems to be that this is a sort of built in RIP software which actually throws down a different combination of inks when using the b&w mode. It also enables one to easliy adjust the tonal range and to tint a b&w photo to give warmer or cooler, and of course, nuetral tonal quality I have printed the same b&w image in both ways and the b&w mode setting in the software gave me very noticeable benefits.And lastly, the bronzing condition when making glossy prints on the older 2200 has been tackled by an adjustment that can be made before printing which eliminates any pure white areas and covers them with a fine light gray ( I would guess) which supposedly greatly reduces the effect. Bronzing is when you would look at a glossy print from a side angle and it would seem to shimmer or glisten like a holographic effect. I have not tried a glossy print yet, as i print almost exclusively on matte and fine art paper so I cannot confirm this situation has been remedied. As for reliability, I cannot give any opinions as I have only owned this machine a few months, but
I can say the 2200 never gave me a single problem and I never even found the need to run any of the maintenance utilities. I would be willing to bet that this machine will fare very good in that respect as Epson has proven to be the best in the business, and for good reason. Ink consumption actually seems to be a little better, but I'm guessing this is because of the additional ink cartridge putting less of a drain on some of the other colors. I would guess overall it comes out to be the same as the 2200 in the end. So there you have it. I'm sure there are other additional benefits and improvements that I have not uncovered yet, but I am enjoying this remarkable machine and am always eager to print on it.
Strengths:
Speed Improved inkset with third black ink and deeper Dmax ( Archival) 5760x1440dpi resolution Three convenient and easliy accessible paper paths Improved software Beautiful styling and rugged build. firewire cable included
Weaknesses:
None that I have come upon at this time, other than no USB cable provided. I use USB 2.0, not firewire. Relatively steep price
Customer Rating:
Summary: The Epson R2400 lives up to it's billing
Comment: I have been very pleased with the R2400. It prints absolutely great photos in color and in b/w. The details really stand out. The only negative is the waste of ink when you change out the glossy black for the matt black catridges.
Customer Rating:
Summary: Wonderful Prints
Comment: I have always used Epson printers, I am a professional photographer and i am very happy with its over all performance. Afew little faults, but things i can live with. (swaping out inks) For consistent quality i would recomend colour managemant. i.e. icc profiles for the papers and moniter calaberation regularly.
Customer Rating:
Summary: Great B&W prints on Epson velvet
Comment: I bought an Epson R2400 from Amazon a week before Christmas during a brief sale for a total of $749.00, including 3 day shipping. The outer and product box were a little beat up, but the printer was intact. It works well.
I loaded the Matte ink and have dedicated the printer to producing B&W images on matte papers from scanned 4x5 B&W (and larger) negatives--for the time being. Results are very good. It won't turn a badly taken, developed and scanned negative into a great picture, but if one is using a negative able to produce a good B&W print the old chemical way, the printer will give you very pleasing inkjet print results.
I haven't run it through very many of all possible functions. I will just comment on some of the refinements of the R2400 over the Epson 2200 (which I also have and intend to keep, as it works reliably and so well for color reproduction of original art work). The R2400 has a tighter dpi pattern--the resolution has grown from the 2200's 2880 dpi to 5760 dpi (in one direction--it remains 1440 for both printers in the other direction).
Anyone familar with old silver-based papers knows that inspection of a photographic print with a lupe can show astounding detail even as the image vanishes into the silver grain pattern--something inkjet reproduction cannot duplicate. However, using an 8x power lupe, I simply cannot see any obvious inkjet dots in large, finished B&W prints on 13x19 Epson velvet paper printed with the R2400. Also, the degree of fuzziness of the image on velvet paper at 8 power is only slightly more than in the digital image seen on my Apple Cinema display. It seems the paper resolution has increased dramatically over results from the Epson 2200 (where 8x inspection of prints shows the image demolished in noticable dots). So, the R2400 produces prints that appear wonderfully sharp with the naked eye.
Another surprise is that my 20" Apple Cinema's LSD image provides a near dead-on means of determining the appearance of the print on velvet paper. For printing color on my Epson 2200, it is necessary to use a CRT monitor and still make guesses based on experience. The Epson R2400's functions all work on Apple OSX 10.3 using a G5 2.5 gHZ Powermac.
The R2400's paper loading is more sophisticated than on the Epson 2200. Heavier Epson papers can be loaded into a second steeply tilted single paper loader--not needing be fed in straight and level as in the 2200. Other brands of heavy matte papers must be fed straight in, but through the front. In all cases, whether using the single sheet loader or the front end loading, the printer eventually grabs the paper and positions it prior to printing.
Nice printer. Gives me reason now to start loading my old cut film holders again and hauling big camera's around without the need of launching whole hog into a chemical darkroom other than what is necessary to just develop film.
Customer Rating:
Summary: Almost a 5 star except...
Comment: I would give this printer 5 stars except the ink cartridges are ridiculously small and very very expensive. The prints are very nice and fast. Don't know about fading yet...will tell over time.
Summary: Epson Stylus R2400 Photo Printer
Comment: Summary:
I had been using the Epson 2200 for about a year, and it has given me great prints and reliablity. The only drawbacks were it's print speed and it's use of only two black inks which made printing in b&w less than ideal, but still acceptable.
Well, here comes the 2400 to finally replace the old industry workhorse. It sits in the same tight spot on my desk as the 2200, so the footprint is close to the same, however the 2400 looks to be a bit taller. The machine is a rugged looking, handsome unit, silver and black in color. It has a new paper catch tray that slides out with the touch of a finger similiar to a giant CD player tray. This new unit does not come with the paper cutter and fabric paper catch bin that the 2200 shipped with. I never used those accessories and found most people did not, and so I guess Epson figured it was not worht equipping with any longer.
After firing it up and using it now for a couple of months, I can say that this latest entry into the world of fine art printing is everything it should and needed to be to improve upon the already great 2200. Everything from the software , hardware, and inkset has been improved upon.
First off, and most importantly, the inkset has improved by the addition of a third black ink called "light, light black. ( thus giving the name of the inkset K3) What this does is allows the printer to reproduce the nuetral grays without having to use color inks to do so. This virtually eliminates metermerism, which is the shifting of color tints when viewing a print under different light sources. The b&w prints take on a nuetral tone and resemble traditional b&w prints. And in addition to this third black ink it seems Epson has improved the dmax of the black set. The black from the 2400 is noticeably deeper than that of the 2200, and i can only guess that Epson has added some more dye to the black ink ( Dye ink obtains deeper dmax than pigment) as black ink is less vulnerable to fading and therefore will not hurt the archival abilities that the Epson pigment inksets are so famous for.
Secondly, the hardware has been improved upon in many ways. The 2400 printer is almost twice as fast as the older 2200, and I have printed full 12x18 at highest resolution in about 6 minutes. A 5x7 or 4x6 in under a minute. And very quiet at that. The resolution of this printer has been brought up to an astouding 5760x1440 dpi. However, it is almost impossible it seems for the human eye to tell the difference between 2880 and 5760 dpi. But more is more, and who should complain. Next, the printer now has three paper paths. I print quite often on heavy fine art paper and with the 2200 I had to feed it through a straight paper path at the rear of the printer, which was a bit awkward to do. The 2400 allows you to feed heavy art paper through the top like a regular sheet, except it uses a different path located just behind the normal, or sheet path, as Epson calls it. Also is the ability to now print on heavy board type media, which I do not think i will ever use, but the option is there. It feeds through a feed path at the very front of the machine which is revealed by opening a cover at the front. The media feeds in through the front and the printer prints it in reverse sending it out the rear. Quite convenient and versatile.
Finally, there is the improved software. Similiar to the older software is the user-friendly look and set-up as well as all the options for paper sizes and printing enhancements and features. It seems Epson is very aware and ok with the fact that many users of the 2200 liked using different media from different manufacturers, even though Epson offers a wide variety of quality papers. I myself, have found the line of Moab papers, especially the Entrada fine art and the Kayenta matte, to be what I prefer to use. After much experimenting I have found these papers to produce excellent results with Epson inks and they are acid and lignin free as well. However, the Kayenta matte, which is not a heavy fine art paper and therefore should feed through the sheet path, uses the "Watercolor-Radiant white" epson paper setting for best results. however, Epsons "Watercolor-Radiant white" paper is a heavy stock and needs to go through the heavy paper path. When I set the software for "Watercolor-Radiant white" Epson software tells me that I am using the wrong path. however, it gives me the option to ignore the warning. This is great because what that tells me is Epson is aware that we will be using third party papers at times and they require different settings than what Epson suggests for their own and thus allows it's software settings to be side-stepped. Big thumbs up for them on that note alone.
Next is their b&w printing option in the software. I had truly underestimated this feature as I like to do evrything as far as editing in my PhotoShop software and do not touch a photo in any other way. I convert to b&w,ready my image and then send to the printer to print as it is, with the appropriate profile for the paper I use. Well, b&w prints look very good this way, but I soon found out that by using the b&w setting on my already converted b&w images , I get far beter results. It seems to be that this is a sort of built in RIP software which actually throws down a different combination of inks when using the b&w mode. It also enables one to easliy adjust the tonal range and to tint a b&w photo to give warmer or cooler, and of course, nuetral tonal quality I have printed the same b&w image in both ways and the b&w mode setting in the software gave me very noticeable benefits.And lastly, the bronzing condition when making glossy prints on the older 2200 has been tackled by an adjustment that can be made before printing which eliminates any pure white areas and covers them with a fine light gray ( I would guess) which supposedly greatly reduces the effect. Bronzing is when you would look at a glossy print from a side angle and it would seem to shimmer or glisten like a holographic effect. I have not tried a glossy print yet, as i print almost exclusively on matte and fine art paper so I cannot confirm this situation has been remedied. As for reliability, I cannot give any opinions as I have only owned this machine a few months, but
I can say the 2200 never gave me a single problem and I never even found the need to run any of the maintenance utilities. I would be willing to bet that this machine will fare very good in that respect as Epson has proven to be the best in the business, and for good reason. Ink consumption actually seems to be a little better, but I'm guessing this is because of the additional ink cartridge putting less of a drain on some of the other colors. I would guess overall it comes out to be the same as the 2200 in the end. So there you have it. I'm sure there are other additional benefits and improvements that I have not uncovered yet, but I am enjoying this remarkable machine and am always eager to print on it.
Strengths:
Speed Improved inkset with third black ink and deeper Dmax ( Archival) 5760x1440dpi resolution Three convenient and easliy accessible paper paths Improved software Beautiful styling and rugged build. firewire cable included
Weaknesses:
None that I have come upon at this time, other than no USB cable provided. I use USB 2.0, not firewire. Relatively steep price
Customer Rating:
Summary: The Epson R2400 lives up to it's billing
Comment: I have been very pleased with the R2400. It prints absolutely great photos in color and in b/w. The details really stand out. The only negative is the waste of ink when you change out the glossy black for the matt black catridges.
Customer Rating:
Summary: Wonderful Prints
Comment: I have always used Epson printers, I am a professional photographer and i am very happy with its over all performance. Afew little faults, but things i can live with. (swaping out inks) For consistent quality i would recomend colour managemant. i.e. icc profiles for the papers and moniter calaberation regularly.
Customer Rating:
Summary: Great B&W prints on Epson velvet
Comment: I bought an Epson R2400 from Amazon a week before Christmas during a brief sale for a total of $749.00, including 3 day shipping. The outer and product box were a little beat up, but the printer was intact. It works well.
I loaded the Matte ink and have dedicated the printer to producing B&W images on matte papers from scanned 4x5 B&W (and larger) negatives--for the time being. Results are very good. It won't turn a badly taken, developed and scanned negative into a great picture, but if one is using a negative able to produce a good B&W print the old chemical way, the printer will give you very pleasing inkjet print results.
I haven't run it through very many of all possible functions. I will just comment on some of the refinements of the R2400 over the Epson 2200 (which I also have and intend to keep, as it works reliably and so well for color reproduction of original art work). The R2400 has a tighter dpi pattern--the resolution has grown from the 2200's 2880 dpi to 5760 dpi (in one direction--it remains 1440 for both printers in the other direction).
Anyone familar with old silver-based papers knows that inspection of a photographic print with a lupe can show astounding detail even as the image vanishes into the silver grain pattern--something inkjet reproduction cannot duplicate. However, using an 8x power lupe, I simply cannot see any obvious inkjet dots in large, finished B&W prints on 13x19 Epson velvet paper printed with the R2400. Also, the degree of fuzziness of the image on velvet paper at 8 power is only slightly more than in the digital image seen on my Apple Cinema display. It seems the paper resolution has increased dramatically over results from the Epson 2200 (where 8x inspection of prints shows the image demolished in noticable dots). So, the R2400 produces prints that appear wonderfully sharp with the naked eye.
Another surprise is that my 20" Apple Cinema's LSD image provides a near dead-on means of determining the appearance of the print on velvet paper. For printing color on my Epson 2200, it is necessary to use a CRT monitor and still make guesses based on experience. The Epson R2400's functions all work on Apple OSX 10.3 using a G5 2.5 gHZ Powermac.
The R2400's paper loading is more sophisticated than on the Epson 2200. Heavier Epson papers can be loaded into a second steeply tilted single paper loader--not needing be fed in straight and level as in the 2200. Other brands of heavy matte papers must be fed straight in, but through the front. In all cases, whether using the single sheet loader or the front end loading, the printer eventually grabs the paper and positions it prior to printing.
Nice printer. Gives me reason now to start loading my old cut film holders again and hauling big camera's around without the need of launching whole hog into a chemical darkroom other than what is necessary to just develop film.
Customer Rating:
Summary: Almost a 5 star except...
Comment: I would give this printer 5 stars except the ink cartridges are ridiculously small and very very expensive. The prints are very nice and fast. Don't know about fading yet...will tell over time.