Posted by alexwh: 
Dear Marcus, I don't know what kind of facilities you have in our Pennsylvania town and how it compares to our Vancouver.

I live on a farm in the middle of noplace. My facilities are whatever I can convince my consulting clients to buy me. That means that, for the time being, I am digital-only. My silver/platinum lab, enlarger, processing gear, etc, is all in bags down in the bottom of the barn, waiting until I sell my Harley so I can turn the milk house (a nice 16x16foot cinderblock fortress) into a darkroom. At that point I plan to have a rockin' good time experimenting with digital-to-contact prints on platinum and silver.

I have a Canon (under $90 printer set on b+w for documents). I have an obsolete but fabulous Epson Perfection 1640 SU.

My scanner is also 1640SU. Great scanners. I also have a medium-format Minolta Dimage that I haven't hooked up yet. Every time I contemplate doing so, the shelf of books of 2 1/4" negatives scares me so badly I put it away.

So I scan my transparencies and b+w prints and save to CD. There are many very good local printers with Epson printers that look like the front end of Audis. I can get giclées on good art paper which in the long run will ammount to less money being spent than getting those damn printers to print after matching the colour of your monitor.

A good service bureau is a fine thing indeed. The nearest good one, for me, is nearly a 2 hour drive. So I figured I'd get an Epson2200. It does a pretty darned good job. Is it as attractive to me as a silver print? No, inkjet prints still look pretty lame compared to a silver print on Ilford Galerie. Of course they don't make that anymore...

The deal is that an Epson (and when you Frenchify that Epson print to giclée) is an art form all in itself.

I've been told that and my experience matches what you say. Someone who knows how to drive a digital printer has just as much skill and craft tied up in doing so as a good darkroom printer. And the difference in output quality appears to be comparable - though a beginner with photoshop and an Epson 2200 that's correctly profiled can produce much better output than a beginner with a negative in a darkroom can produce.

I scan my b+w negs of my nude subjects as colour negs. I manipulate them with Photoshop in levels. The output printed small (4x5 or 5x7 inch at the largest) make the most fantastic giclées that are jewels when properly matted and framed. Best of all those 4x5 giclées will run way under $20. 

Why do people call ink jet prints "giclee" anyhow? Is that for the same reason some artists call their silver prints "silver gelatine print"?? Just to make it sound fancier?

When I get my darkroom going again, I am going to start doing "molecular manipulation platinum nobel metallic contact images"

mjr.

Posted by Ched: 
How does it compare to the R1800?

Totally different beasts. The R1800 has a newly configured inkset (incorporating red and blue inks) and is designed first and foremost for printing glossies, which it does incredibly well. I've seen images and can't tell the difference between a good lab print and the 1800.

The 2000P has been out of production for some time. It was replaced by the 2200 which has since been replaced by either the R1800 or R2400, depending on which direction you want to go. Some people go both ways. (Pause for mental imagery.)

There were serious color shift problems with the 2000P (I know - I owned one) which Justin N Lane mentioned in his post. Google "metamerism" for more info.

Check out the epson website and drill down for more info on the printers. They used to send samples if you asked.

Posted by Ched: 
Thanks, Todd.

You're welcome. Right now I'm still lovin' my 2200, but when Hahnemuhle releases ICC profiles for the new Epson Ultrachrome K3 printers (including the R2400) I'll be there.

Posted by Justin N Lane: 
the 2000p is great until you do a daylight vs tungsten viewing comparison of your prints.  They shift in all sorts of unexpected ways due to the formula of the pigments.  Daylight usually shifts cyan/green ick! 

Absolutely manic detail profiling, and the right paper choice, make the metamerism issues go away almost completely.  John Paul Caponigro, who's got the money and endorsements to use any printer he wants, still is in love with the 2000p, small gamut and all.

If you are at all concerned about metamerism, MediaStreet (www.mediastreet.com) makes pigment inks that pretty much solve the problem.  (Generations Pro is the ink line.)  You can also get them in bulk feed systems that slash your cost per print to an absurdly low level.  They're all Wilhelm tested and certified archival on a wide range of papers besides.  MediaStreet used to be "some guys out on long island" but now they're owned by Hasselblad and really turning up the marketing heat.

Full disclosure, I used to do color management and art printing seminars with sponsorship from MediaStreet - but that came way, way after I had been using their product, getting great results, and being pestered by everybody who saw my stuff to tell them how to do it.  They also make and sell very reasonably priced and excellent quality papers.  For quite awhile, their archival pigment ink was the only broad gamut solution out there, using the Epson 1280 as the print engine, until Epson started doing Ultrachrome.  Now that I have an Epson 4000 I haven't been using their inks or my bulk system Epson 1280, but the guy who bought them from me is still pounding out prints.