The fact that you have to waste $100 worth of ink practically every time you turn on the 4800 just shows how completely out of touch with reality the people at Epson are. The amount of ink wasted in making prints on the 4800 would keep me going for months on a 1280.
And aren't you glad that Epson took a poll from all of us professionals and found out that we were all willing to sacrifice the darkness of our blacks, so that our prints wouldn't fade between the years 2082 and 2112? Oh, that's right, they didn't take a poll. They just made the decision themselves, based, presumably, on their great intimate knowledge of fine photography and printing.
Sincerely, John Saxon
This stuff is just "over-the-top". There's no way you waste 100 dollars of ink practically every time you turn on the printer. To state the FACTS, as I've been using the 4000/4800 family for several years now and keep a very close track of these things, after several days of idleness, or after 7.5 sq.ft. of printing, the 4800 does an automatic cleaning cycle. These cycles consume either 4.1 or 8.9 ml of ink. At about 57 cents Canadian per ml including taxes we're talking at most 5 dollars. With every three months or so of sustained use, these machines need to be power-cleaned in order to minimize clogging. A power-clean uses 96 ml of ink, therefore about 55 dollars. Any professional who knows their business simply builds these costs into their pricing structure. Ink sounds expensive, but when you look at everything else that builds a cost structure in a business, it's quite trivial. The cost of ink for an A3 print from an Epson 4800 is about 1.50 Canadian dollars. How much would sell that print for? What's the value of your time producing it? If you are using a high-end fine art paper, the paper is worth 3 or 4 times the cost of the ink.
Now let's discuss the longevity issue. Again, get real. Seiko-Epson is big - like REAL big. Companies don't get where they got by having their heads in the sand. They were the pioneer developers of pigmented inkjet technology and there's no question it cost them a bundle. Do you know why they did it? Because they're dumb? No, it's because serious digital photography was headed for no-where without it. Much photography is about images that maintain their integrity for generations. Sure, for pictures that you need to keep no longer than several months or several years, a 1280 and quality paper is fine. Beyond that, you need pigments, they were the first to fill that need, and that gave them the commanding heights of the inkjet printer market. The market does speak.........listen to it.