Epson SP1280 Inkjet Printer
Whether you're a professional photographer or a talented amateur, you want your best photo prints to last. That's precisely the thinking behind the Epson Stylus Photo 1280, the fast and friendly ink jet printer that brings you true, lightfast and water-resistant Photo Quality printing.With the Epson Stylus Photo 1280, your best shots will beam in brilliant, 6-color Photo Reproduction Quality on fade-resistant media rivaling anything you've seen on standard photo lab prints. You'll be in control as you conveniently print out everything from portfolios and soft proofs to panoramic and exhibition prints.
Epson SP1280 Inkjet Printer Accessories
Epson SP1280 Inkjet Printer Reviews
Since then, I have used it as a freelancer for various design projects and it has always produced wonderful prints. I purchased this printer while I was still in college (in 2001) and it saved me a ton of money on large-format printing costs. I'm able to use papers of all sizes and also print on other various medias (such as watercolor paper and even stiff fabrics). It's been about 5 years and I'm considering buying another SP1280 rather than upgrading to the newer model. Every once-in-a-while, the heads tend to clog, but I've usually been able to fix that. That's common for all ink jets, especially when printing in large quantities.
It doesnt matter how I put them in, whether i fan the sheets, nothing. As long as you print ONE sheet at a time it works very very nicely. I wish Epson would change the technology on this because the 780 had the same problem. The bad: . I repeat: ONE.
The good:. This thing has a horrible sheet feeder from hell. It wants to eat a whole stack of paper at once.
so you end up babysitting it when you are doing 10 prints or 20 prints, whatever. I'm doing a multi-print project right now and i think it can hear me because it just ate another stack of paper.
I love the color and the fact that I can get ink cartridges for cheap to fit it and they work fine. argghhhhhh. I have had the 1280 for about 7 months now.
I only use aftermarket Abacus Ink and have yet to have a glogged printhead issue. I use this printer to print images taken from my Olympus C 8080 widezoom at 8 megs. The printouts are perfect. I have owned my Epson Stylus 1280 for over a year and a half now and have never once experienced any type of problem with this unit what so ever. Epson has just released a new driver for XP which can be downloaded at the Epson site to bring this 1280's resolutions all the way up to 5620 x 720.
I never print glossy stuff (longevity considerations), so don't consider me to be any kind of authority on glossy stuff. My Bic pen that marked the sample faded in two weeks of sunlight, but not my printed image. If you've used other Epson printers, the 1280 might have slightly different color rendering. [MARCH 2, 2006 The gimp-print drivers have gotten much better. One other thing I like about the 1280: you can print very close to the bottom of the page. This is very helpful.
So I did some shopping and bought an HP Photosmart 7760. I sell what I print for $185 a page. The gimp-print drivers don't come close to matching the Epson Windows drivers for color quality. (I put a control in my filing cabinet to compare to). With framing, more. For two years. Epson doesn't seem to sell any. Not one little bit.
At least with my Epson 1280, I have a little printing support (albeit with crummy colors). I used it for everything normal documents, and lots and lots of digital artwork on matte paper. I had a Stylus Photo 820 which produced beautiful blues for sky and water. I used my first one hard.
I figured I'd save some money and wait to get a larger-format printer later. I will not buy compatible cartridges, because I've already investigated the quality of the Epson ink and paper myself. Amazon currently has about the best price on ink cartridges and matte paper around. I haven't found a supplier for paper that size.
The HP is going back, and I've ordered a second 1280. One warning; Epson claims that the 1280 can print up to 13" x 44". Bug Epson about this. In my view, they don't.
Not all the way, but closer than many other printers. My 1280 died over the weekend. Sometimes a little less. I wish the 1280 came with the 820's coloring. It couldn't even center the image on the page, Gimp didn't work at all, and neither did OpenOffice. I don't suggest going to the HP side to fix the Linux problem. I wish Epson made an affordable six-color printer like the 1280 with a wider format, perhaps 17" or 22".
If you are a Linux user (and if you don't know what that means or you aren't sure, you can disregard this), you are in for a tough trip. You'll be happy now]. I did my own tests on the inks both water resistance and ultraviolet light resistance. At least not in matte finish. There are some adjustments possible with gimp-print, but it would be entirely trial-and-error. HP says they "support" over 200 printers with Linux drivers, but the one I happened to try was abysmal. It was a bad move.
On the Stylus Photo 1280 (under Windows we're no longer on the Linux subject), these blues were more grey.
The Epson is painstakingly slow at any setting other than draft mode. Even at it's highest resolution settings. The $100 price difference for the Canon is well worth it. The Canon is lightning fast.
The Canon has vivid, and true color, the Epson prints couldn't come close to the Canon prints no matter what I did. I'm returning the Epson and re-purchasing the Canon i9100. I was really hoping the Epson would work out for me, but no such luck. The Epson did, so I bought it.
I'll just have to print out at 11x17 and trim off three inches when I need 11x14 prints. I just bought the 1280 and I am extremly disappointed. Upon comparing the Canon i9100 to the Epson 1280, there really is no comparison. I had a Canon i9100 for a couple of weeks, but returned it because it didn't print 11x14 borderless prints.
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