A Series of Articles About the Development of a Photography Business
- continued

It’s pretty self-evident I guess that to be a new entrant in the business of selling photographic prints online, then a reliable and high quality printer is a fully primary requirement. I’ve long been a fan of the Epson Stylus Photo line of digital inkjet products - not just the printers themselves, but also of the media available directly from Epson as well as selected products from third-party suppliers.

However, just a year ago, I was beginning to struggle regularly with a balky Stylus Photo 2200 machine, originally purchased new and only recently then beyond the warranty period. Three trips to the local repair specialist and a final solution in the form of a replacement printhead assembly convinced me that this machinery was not in the production-grade category. During some initial research into potential replacements and an upgraded capability overall, I found a really enthusiastic review of the then brand new Stylus Pro 9800 model printer. It was written by Joseph Holmes and it is still available on his Natural Light Photography web site here: http://www.josephholmes.com/news.html (it has also been updated and corrected since it was first posted).

The review itself covered several critical points, most centered on the improvements both seen and measured above the performance of the predecessor 9600 model printer. For example, an expanded color gamut was one of these topics - and, given the beautiful tonalities characteristic of the reviewers own photography, it seemed it would be hard indeed to have found a better test case. But more instructive to me was the description of the self-diagnostic capabilities and operator-controlled setup, adjustments and monitoring. This, it also seemed to me, place the printer into a production-quality, production-grade category, well above anything I had used myself at that point. In the end though, I did not purchase a 9800 model machine, instead selecting its “baby brother”, the Stylus Pro 7800 (since it appeared unlikely that I would regularly need to use the full 44 inch wide printing capacity of the larger unit).

I’ll be posting some details of my own findings from the pre-production usage of this new printer a little later on. But, just to conclude here for now, I think that Epson did themselves a great favor by assigning one of the early production units of their newest model printer for such a practical review in a real-world and exhibition-grade studio environment.