Printers

Epson appears to be targeting photo enthusiasts with its new Stylus Photo 1410 printer, which replaces the long-lived Stylus Photo 1290 model and delivers some significant improvements. However, it lacks some features that many photo enthusiasts would like. One positive feature is use of Claria inks, which have been developed to deliver ultra fine detail in prints plus high print durability. On Epson's glossy photo paper, the molecules in Claria inks' colouring agents claim to have a stronger and more stable structure that makes them more resistant to the fading effects of light and atmospheric chemicals.

The Stylus Photo 1410 printer has similar styling to Epson's more expensive desktop printers.

The first missing feature is the Advanced B&W Driver, which is found in Epson's R2400, 3800, 4800, 7800 and 9800 printers and give you tremendous control over monochrome printing. If you want to make monochrome prints with the 1410 you must use the strategy we outlined in Issue 30 (and which is also posted in the Tips section of the Photo Review website). The level of control and predictability of the results is significantly less when you make B&W prints via this route.

The second is a lack of support for ICC profiles, which means printing on third-party 'fine art' papers is something of a trial and error exercise. The driver contains only 'canned' Epson profiles for plain papers and seven popular Epson papers (although neither Ultra Glossy nor DuraBrite) plus settings for stickers, CD-DVD media and envelopes. Why an envelope setting is required in a photo printer is beyond us!

Finally, the ability to make large panorama prints is severely restricted. Although the 1410 lacks a roll paper feeder, with some other similarly deficient printers it is possible to set a custom page width and length and feed a long strip of paper into the printer via the normal sheet feeder. This allows you to print panoramas up to a metre long with an A3+ printer. Unfortunately, although you can set the paper length to a metre (or slightly more) via the User Defined Paper Size menu, you can't save the setting for the printer to use. Consequently, it always defaults back to the previous paper size setting (which is generally a standard size).

Design-wise the new model has the familiar Epson styling and resembles other Epson A3+ printers. A lift-up panel covers the paper feeder, which can handle up to 10 A3+ sheets of Epson's Premium glossy, semi-gloss and matte papers or up to 20 sheets of Ultra Glossy photo Paper. Double-sided matte paper, photo stickers, self-adhesive and transfer paper must be printed one sheet at a time. No provision is made for heavyweight fine art papers.


Loading the printable CD or DVD is simple and straightforward.

The printed disks emerge from the printer with professional-quality labels.

However, you can print on envelopes and a dedicated tray is provided for printing on coated CDs and DVDs. The front panel pulls down to accept the tray. On the test printer we had minor difficulties unlatching the panel but the tray fitted perfectly into its slot and printing on disks was straightforward, thanks to the supplied software.
Although the Stylus Photo 1410 is designed for printing from a computer, a USB port for PictBridge direct printing from a digital camera is located on the front panel. But there are no slots for memory cards and no LCD screen to enable you to input or check printer settings.

For business users, the 1410 can be set up for use as a shared printer on a small computer network and it's compatible with both Windows and Mac operating systems. It also has driver settings for printing on plain office papers.

Setting Up
Setting up the printer is straightforward and takes less than 15 minutes. After removing a couple of strips of packing tape and plugging the power cord (supplied) into the mains, you simply switch on the power, unpack and install the six ink cartridges in their clearly-marked slots and allow about three minutes while the ink lines in the print head are charged. This uses some ink but is a once-only event.


The ink cartridges slot easily into bays in the print head.

Next you install the software. During this process you're instructed to connect the printer to your PC via a USB cable (not supplied). The bundled Epson software, which includes Epson's proprietary Print Module, Web to Page, Easy PhotoPrint, Creativity Suite, Print CD, Image Framer and Camera Raw plug-in for Creativity Suite can then be installed, a process that takes about five minutes. The computer must be restarted before you can begin to print.

Printing
The Stylus Photo 1410's driver resembles the drivers of other general-purpose Epson inkjet printers and contains Basic and Advanced pages that allow users to choose 'canned' paper profiles, adjust printing speeds, select colour management options and preview images before printout. It also supports both the Adobe RGB and sRGB colour spaces and allows you to print from Photoshop using the Print with Preview dialog box. However, you can't use Print with Preview with the beta version of CS3, which we have been trialling recently, although you can make prints via the printer driver. (Doubtless an update will be released when CS3 is launched.)

Epson provides two dedicated photo printing settings on the Basic menu page - Photo and Best Photo - so we decided to explore their differences. (Epson actually recommends using the Photo setting for photo printing.) The main difference we observed was the time it took to produce the print. An A3+ print produced on the Best Photo setting took 14 minutes and 28 seconds to emerge from the printer, while the same sized print created with the Photo setting took 6 minutes and 21 seconds. When both prints were compared, we found it impossible to see any difference between them.

We can't say definitively whether the Best Photo setting uses more ink - although we suspect it does - because there is no way to accurately monitor ink usage. The best indication you get it the monitor screen that pops up when you initiate printing and shows you a line graph tracking the progress of the printing plus bar graphs indicating the ink levels in each cartridge. We found the time indicator on ink monitor to be somewhat optimistic; you need to multiply the time displayed be a factor of three or four to obtain the real time remaining for the print to emerge.

It took between three and eight seconds to produce a preview of images to be printed, with preview times depending on the size of the image file. Thereafter we recorded the following average printing times:
- 5x7 inch: 1 minute and 3 seconds for print on Photo setting; 4 minutes and 13 seconds on Best Photo setting;
- A4 print: 3 minutes and 54  seconds for print on Photo setting; 7 minutes and 48 seconds on Best Photo setting;
- A3+ print: 6 minutes and 21 seconds on the Photo setting; 14 minutes and 28 seconds for Best Photo setting.

 Paper Handling
At no stage in our testing did we have any problems related to paper handling. The Stylus Photo 1410 was easy to load and papers passed through the printer in an orderly fashion, without requiring and special adjustments or precautions (beyond ensuring that they were right side up and right way round). No ink marks were found on papers during the course of our tests.

Despite a lack of provision for thicker 'fine art' papers, we obtained some interesting results when we printed an image file that contained a wide tonal range on heavily textured 240 gsm paper that was 15.9 mil thick. The printer had no problems handling the paper but, because we were unable to input an ICC profile, we had to select the nearest equivalent from the drop-down menu in the printer driver. This was not a particularly good match. However, the resulting print was much more vibrant than a print on Epson's glossy or matte paper, although its tonal range was somewhat compressed.

Print Quality
Colour prints made on glossy paper clearly demonstrated the differences between dye-ink and pigment-ink printers. When compared with prints of the same image from the HP B9180 and Epson R2400 printers (both pigment-based), glossy prints from the 1410 had more vibrant colours and slightly finer detail, although close inspection was required to see any difference in the latter category.

In fact, the overall appearance of colour prints was very impressive. Colours were richly rendered and tonal nuances were elegantly preserved. Blacks were rich and deep, while whites were clean and pure. On pure white papers, such as Epson's Premium Glossy, prints of full-colour images were hard to fault. On matte papers, where pigment inks traditionally excel, the prints from the 1410 still appeared to be slightly more vibrant than prints from the pigment-ink printers. Nevertheless tonal gamut reproduction was very similar for all three printers on each type of paper.

Our B&W printing tests showed the pigment-ink printers to be clear winners, largely because they have much more competent monochrome drivers. With only four monochrome settings to choose from, the Epson 1410 printer gives users little room for experimentation. Our test prints showed the Neutral Grey setting to be almost free of colour casts (although we found traces of red in shadowed areas and green in highlights). The Sepia setting delivered brownish prints that were slightly redder than true sepia tone - but would still be acceptable to many photographers. However the loss of contrast associated with this setting may not suit some subjects.

The Warm Grey setting added a slight brownish cast without compromising image contrast, while the Cool Grey setting biased tones slightly towards blue. In both cases, the colour bias was very subtle and both settings produced results that would be acceptable to everyday photographers.

We noticed traces of colour instability in images printed on glossy paper as they emerged from the printer but these disappeared within 30 minutes. No evidence of gloss differential was found and prints had the look and feel of high-quality photo prints. No surface flaking was found on prints made on matte papers.

Although we were unable to apply profiles for any fine art papers to the 1410 printer and the printer is not set up for heavier papers, we nevertheless decided to see if users could print on these paper types. Heavyweight 240 gsm textured matte paper that was 15.9 mil thick was handled with ease by the 1410. However, the tonal nuances we could see when the image was printed on Epson's Archival Matte paper were partially lost on the textured paper print, although colour saturation was slightly enhanced.

At no stage in our tests did we experience paper jams or mis-feeds of sheets, although we printed on a range of paper sizes from 15 x 10 cm up to A3+. Nor did we detect any evidence of ink leakage on any test prints.

Running Costs
It's impossible for us to give precise figures for the cost of making prints with the Stylus Photo 1410 because there is no way to gauge how much ink is used when a print is made. The ink monitor graphs that appear when you make a print provide only an approximation of how much ink is left and the first warnings that ink levels were low appeared when the gauges showed approximately 30% of ink still remained in the cartridge.


The ink monitor graphs at the beginning of our tests. Note: the blue line above the Ink Levels section tracks printing progress.

The warning screen that appears when ink levels are very low. Note the text below the cartridge indicators showing that some ink still remains in the highlighted cartridges. You can continue to print until the ink level is too low to produce a print. The printer stops before the ink is completely exhaused so you don't run out of ink halfway through a print.

We ran the printer until it would no longer print unless we replaced the empty cartridge and then measured the difference in weight between the full cartridge and the one it replaced, obtaining a difference of 10 grams. We don't know what that translates into in millitres but, at an RRP of $26.50 per cartridge, it works out at $2.65 per gram!

Epson does not state the ink capacity of its consumer printer cartridges, preferring to give yield figures that it considers 'more useful for the user'. The problem is defining the user. If you look at the print patterns used for testing (http://www.epson.com.au/news/technologynews/yieldtesting.pdf) you can see that they represent the types of prints produced by general business users. No typical photo prints are included. Even the Photo 8" href_cetemp="">http://www.epson.com.au/news/technologynews/yieldtesting.pdf) you can see that they represent the types of prints produced by general business users. No typical photo prints are included. Even the Photo 8" href_cetemp="">http://www.epson.com.au/news/technologynews/yieldtesting.pdf) you can see that they represent the types of prints produced by general business users. No typical photo prints are included. Even the Photo 8" (http://www.epson.com.au/news/technologynews/yieldtesting.pdf) you can see that they represent the types of prints produced by general business users. No typical photo prints are included. Even the Photo 8" x 10" sample image used to measure printing speeds (and reproduced on the Specs page for the 1410 on Epson's website, lacks the typical tonal distribution of an average photograph! So we advise readers to view the claimed 470-page yield for A4 printouts with some scepticism.

In our tests we were able to print five 5x7-inch prints, 18 A4 prints and 17 A3+ prints before the first ink (light cyan) ran out. The light magenta ink level was below 5% at this point, although the other cartridges were not showing low ink levels. We estimate that represents a rough equivalent to 88 A4 photo prints, which works out at approximately $1.50 for the ink per A4 print - or $6.00 for an A3+ print. Paper costs vary, with Epson's A4 photo paper ranging from $1.50 to $1.70 and A3+ paper at around $5.50 per sheet. 

Conclusion
While Epson's Stylus Photo 1410 will not suit photographers who want to make lots of monochrome prints, it's still a very competent colour printer and its affordable price is sure to attract enthusiast DSLR photographers who would like to make big prints of their best colour pictures. Colour output quality is outstanding and prints on Epson's Glossy and Matte papers have lightfastness ratings of just under 100 years when framed under glass and over 200 years when stored in albums.

Quiet and relatively economical to run, the Stylus Photo 1410 is an excellent starting point for a digital darkroom for any photographer who makes mainly colour prints. Monochrome quality is good enough for the occasional B&W printer but the lack of colour and tonal adjustments in the printer's driver will be frustrating for B&W enthusiasts, who should look at a more capable alternative. 

 Two Dye-based Inkjet Printers Compared

Printer type: Dye-ink thermal inkjet
Resolution: 5760 x 1440 Optimised dpi using Resolution Performance Management (RPM) Technology
Paper sizes: A3+, A3, A4, A5, A6, Letter, B5, Legal, Envelope, Half Letter, 4" x 6", 5" x 7", 8" x 10", 12" x 12", 3.5" x 5", 11" x 14", 11" x 17"
Max. paper weight: 255 gsm
Ink cartridges: T0811 Black, T0812 Cyan, T0813 Magenta, T0814 Yellow, Y0815 Light Cyan, T0816 Light Magenta
Ink yield:
Interfaces: USB 2.0 Hi-Speed
Power consumption: 18 W (printing); approx. 1.3W in sleep mode
Acoustic noise: 47dBA (ISO 7779)
Dimensions (wxhxd): 615 x 223 x 314 mm
Weight: 11.5 kg