[inkjet] Is 6 ink channels printers a big deal?

[VincentLin]

There're also visible dots upon close examination. All in all, HP printers have improved leaps and bounds over the last 3 years, but uh... I still feel they have a bit of catch up in terms of photo quality, with Canon and Epson.

[RANT ALERT... NOT MEANT TO BE PERSONAL]

Sometimes, I just don't get it.

I have never examined anything that comes out of the printers up close. What dots?

For A4 prints, I tend to just view it at arm's length.

For A3+ prints, I stand a couple of feet away.

For A1 prints, I stand about 10m away.

Anything bigger, I'll probably view it from the end of the football field.

Does any of us really have to view, for example, an A4 or 8R picture so close that it touches your nose?

Of course, we can all say that if there are visible dots on 4R, that printer is probably real bad.

[END OF RANT]

 

[Watcher]

same for my s800 / s820 (s800 with my parents). No fading problems here.

I buy my printers after they become obsolete and save some money that way

Got the S820 for $270 (since it comes with 6 free and full ink cartridges worth $90 (the cheaper Epsons give you half empty cartridges, at least epson 750 & 640 did) that was a steal.

That is actually a good idea, to save money, just like buying a D30 or D60 after the 10D comes out. But I can't stand not getting the latest my money can buy

If you have a pure sRGB workflow, you're still going to get better quality than say sending a slide to Konota for a Fuji Frontier print. And several years back, that was kind of the 'state of the art' for an amateur.

True, but a few years ago, the DCS720 with a F5 body was the state of the art. But who wants to use a 2MP DSLR? Similarly who wants to use a P3-800MHz machine that was state of the art 4 years ago, if for a bit more price/effort, you can get a 300D or a P4-2.2GHz?

If your photography hasn't reached a certain standard, why obsess about colourspace, gamut etc? sRGB will be fine.

I wonder if those people who constantly harp on about the inferiority of sRGB are really fantastic photographers work 'at the limit' and need to maximise quality in every aspect or whether they are just 'technicians' who like to use photoshop.

In any event, given that clubsnap is a forum of mainly 'amateurs', advice should take this into account. I would say stick with sRGB to achieve consistency and work on improving photographic technique.

The reasons are these, take it if you want to:

• Colors missed if you use sRGB (cf AdobeRGB) cannot be recreated, just like if you miss taking a picture, you can't "create" the picture
• The wider gamut allows you to capture a wider range color and produce smoother rendition of tones, regardless of skill of the photographer
• Pictures last forever, technology don't. Now, there are printers that already exceed sRGB (like Epson 2100 and Canon's new printer i990?). In 3 years, printers may all exceed sRGB and match AdobeRGB. When you print 5 years down the road, if you had used AdobeRGB, the image will come out better. This is known as future-proofing

Just like you will still be able to get from point A to point B using 4 gears in a car with the 5th gear (stick shift ), you still can get the job done but not utilizing all your resources. Similar to not using spot metering on a Canon DSLR(pro bodies only ), you still can get the job done, just like thousands of the prosumer users, but the camera is not fully utilized.