Printer Staggers Experts
Sun Herald
Saturday May 3, 1997
"I CAN'T believe I'm saying this about a thousand-dollar printer," Alan Ward, director of Sydney commercial graphics studio Vision Graphics, said on Tuesday at the unveiling of Epson's new Stylus Photo printer.
"It is a damn good printer and we could use it as a proofing device."
Mr Ward had test-driven one of printers at his studio and he had been blown away by the quality. The affordable quality.
He seemed embarrassed to be heaping such praise on the machine, which fared well in an environment where printing equipment costs about $35,000.
The Stylus Photo was easy to set up, he said, and within four test prints it was producing "reasonable quality".
"I could pick holes in it, but it was dangerously close ... it looked great," he said.
He used the printer to present a proof to a customer who was paying $3,500 for a job and the client was satisfied - "that's pretty scary".
I've shown a print from the Stylus Photo to graphic reproduction specialists and colleagues in The Sun-Herald office and their comments had a similar ring ... "unbelievable", "amazing", "wow, that's beautiful ... it's fantastic", "less than $1,000?".
It takes a close look to pick the inkjet print from a traditional chemical process photograph; an untrained eye might not spot the difference at all.
Unfortunately you can't see the "amazing" picture here because producing it on newsprint will, of course, defeat the purpose.
Australian Photo Marketing Association president Terry Rimmer said interest in hobbyist home photo graphic darkrooms had dwindled in parallel with the rise in colour mini-labs catering for the point-and-shoot photographer.
The quality of print output had been holding back people who might have become interested in a hobbyist digital darkroom.
The new printer solved the problem, Mr Rimmer said. "PC photography is now an option. This and other wonderful innovations spawned by computer technology will bring back the magic to photography." With the rise of digital cameras and affordable scanning devices (Epson is releasing one for less than that magical $1,000 figure in June) and truly high quality printing, a home digital darkroom is fast becoming a viable option.
However, the printer is not aimed at the home user, rather graphics professionals, in-house marketing departments and busi
nesses, such as real estate agencies, which regularly use photography.
At around $4 for a glossy 10x15cm print (and you only have to print the pictures you want, not the whole roll) it makes it very affordable.
The printer has a new inkjet printing technology using six fast-drying inks (cyan, light cyan, yellow, magenta, light magenta and black) and super mini-dots using Epson's new Micro Piezo printing technology. It will plug into a Mac or a PC (or both simultaneously) and comes with an array of software bundled so that you can manipulate the images before printing.
Earlier this year Epson released a range of inkjet printers which were also surprising in their quality and speed.
This new printer confirms Epson's place up front in affordable printing technology.
© 1997 Sun Herald