A new photo printer for my office

R800: not the new printer

For years I've had an Epson R800 A4 printer in my office. This 8-ink pigment printer has been great at producing high-quality images (with a few limitations). I've printed a few 20cm-high panoramas using the roll paper attachment, and occasionally printed batches of DVDs and CDs with a logo template for use in delivering files to customers, but most of its work was in printing photos on A4 paper. Using my i1 Pro spectrophotometer I've generated custom profiles for a variety of papers.

Its lack of a grey ink (it has matte black and photo black inks, along with cyan, magenta, yellow, red, blue, and gloss-optimiser) has meant it's not great at monochrome prints (although at one stage I loaded it up with 8 shades of black PiezoTone ink for printing monochrome with QTR, with great results). But even so, for general-purpose photo printing it's been great. Prints from my R800 have been sold mounted and framed, and have even won prizes in international photography awards.

For images larger than could fit on A4 paper I usually print the images on larger printers such as at ImageScience, but over the last few years most of my images have been delivered in digital form and this has only occasionally been necessary. Being able to produce a quality result in-house on short notice is wonderful. I've occasionally considered getting a bigger (A3+) printer, but that's a big investment in both money and physical space. If I constantly produced prints larger than A4 it could be worthwhile though.

Time for a new printer?

Around the office we also have other printers for general printing, but the R800 was always the "photo" printer. But for most of 2011 the R800 sat idle. The cumulative months I spent abroad in South America, Antarctica, Norway, and east Africa with LuminOdyssey Photo Expeditions probably didn't help with that! Anyway, in late October I cleaned up the printer (surprisingly the nozzles came clear after just one cleaning cycle) and started printing again. I'd upgraded my profiling software to X-Rite's new i1Profiler, and used the printer to bed down the new profiling workflow.

In November I offered to print some custom CDs for a client, but then when I tried to do it I ran into all sorts of errors. I followed the usual procedures, but the printer always reported a mis-feed. It turns out the last time I printed CDs with the R800 was at least one OS version ago: I don't know if it's a hardware issue (I don't think so) or a software one. So I decided to finally look into the options for a different printer that could print CD/DVDs as well as generally replace the R800. I was aware that the R800's life was limited, as Epson's support for older printers under OS X Lion has been slow to arrive (unless we use the Gimp-print drivers, which is possible but different). I'm still running Snow Leopard, but the day will come...

I couldn't find any appropriate models in Epson's range unless I stepped up to much larger printers, and I'd heard good things about Canon's Pixma printers (and had got decent results with some that I'd profiled for customers). So I looked into Canon's range and drew up a list of the likely models and their features. I also compared this list to the models available at several nearby stores. At this point the printed CDs needed to be delivered to the customer in just over a day!

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October presentations (all free): workflow and polar travel photography

Star trails above the Hunter Valley, NSW (A2_102872)

On the evening of Thursday the 13th of October I will be talking with the Corio Bay Camera Club in Geelong about my image processing workflow (the chief software tools I use are Photoshop and Lightroom, but the talk's about more than just what the software can do). I'll be working with images from my recent travels.

Local camera clubs (or photographic societies, or whatever name they choose) are always welcoming of visitors: they hope you'll stick around and become members. So if you'll be in the area on the 13th, please drop by and introduce yourself! The meeting starts at 7:30pm.

Also, I've got several other club presentations this month: on Monday the 10th I'll be visiting the Essendon Camera Club to provide critique on their photographs, and on Tuesday the 25th I'll be presenting a slideshow and commentary at Williamstown Camera Club about my Arctic and Antarctic travels (several Williamstown members came on my 2011 Antarctic and African LuminOdysseys). Continue reading "October presentations (all free): workflow and polar travel photography"...

Update your clocks. ALL of them!

For those of us in south-east Australia, Daylight Savings Time has just kicked in, with the time jumping forwards an hour at 2 AM this morning. If we're lucky our computers and phones will have automatically adjusted, but other devices have no concept of timezone so will need to be adjusted by hand.

Having your clocks correct makes a lot of things easier, especially for photographers.

Passing Humpbacks (A2_104411)

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On the road, having slight adventures

Hi Mum! (A2_102310)

This week I'm travelling through New South Wales, on my way to the Australian Photographic Society's 2011 APSCON photography convention. I've been staying on a horse stud for a few days, doing things like photographing foals being born, heading out to visit a nearby wildlife rehab centre, etc.

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Look for details!

Unexpected nose (A2_055219)

When travelling I'm usually encountering new locations every day, and am constantly looking for ways to capture interesting images. And many days I'm also encountering locations I'm familiar with, and still I need to find interesting images. Whether you're in a new or familiar location, in the search for images it's worth keeping an open mind.

The photographs in this post were made in the Recoleta Cemetery (in a suburb of Buenos Aires). It's a fascinating location, full of sculptures, geometry, and textures. I've usually visited it at dawn, before the crowds arrive, and before the rays of the sun reach down into the laneways. This particular morning I was using an EOS 5DmkII with the 70-200mm/4 L IS lens, with a monopod to add stability (tripods are not allowed in the cemetery).

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Drake Passage crossing

Cold, windy, and wet (A2_068535)

I made this image in late March 2011 while on a ship crossing the Drake Passage, going from the Antarctic Peninsula up to the Falkland Islands. In fact this was the same LuminOdyssey expedition that we were heading to when I made the recently-posted images in the Buenos Aires cathedral. As you hopefully sense, I was trying to capture a sense of the wild conditions this stretch of sea is renowned for. The deck of the ship is covered with snow and ice, while the wind has whipped the waves into a frenzy. I made the image through the bridge windows on our ship (Aurora Expeditions' Polar Pioneer). I went through some unusual contortions to get it, which is why I'm telling the story now.

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National Cathedral, Buenos Aires (2)

Led by the light (A2_061963)

Like the image I showed several days ago, this image was made inside the National Cathedral in Buenos Aires. In fact, it was made from almost the same location within the building. But rather than looking across, it looks towards the altar. The beam of light immediately caught our attention, and I think we each experimented with different approaches to capturing it.

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