Field Report
(by Gary Gray)
Background:
I'm a working photographer. I specialize in fine art landscape photography and my studio is in my home near Denver, Colorado. I primarily use Canon digital cameras, EOS 1DsMKII, EOS 5D, EOS 30D, Rebel XT and from time-to-time 35mm film on the EOS 3. My intended use of this printer is for taking control of my final product...the print. I don't intend to use this printer for heavy production runs. I'm expecting I'll be making on average 20-30 final prints per month, mostly for art shows and for framing. My primary concern is a quality print that I can sell, nothing more or nothing less. In my previous life, I managed the graphic arts/pre-press department (amongst other things) for a Wall Street Journal printing plant for 25 year until I retired. My printing experience is heavily technically oriented with emphasis on installation, operation and maintenance of every type of printing device a newspaper uses, up to and including large offset printing presses. I'm not an expert on any particular model or type of printer but more of a jack of all trades when it comes to converting digital images to print. In my studio, the HP Z3100 is connected via 100MB/TCPIP Ethernet to a Mac Pro, Dual Core, Dual Processor, Dual Monitor computer with 2 Terabytes of disk storage. My primary photographic editing tools are Apple Aperture, Adobe Lightroom and Adobe Photoshop CS2. I'm pretty good with all of this technology and nothing in the print world is intimidating to me.
Why am I telling you all of this?
Like me, you may be in a similar situation. You want control of your prints. You want cost efficiency. You want quality. That's why I added this printer to my studio. The big ($4000) question is..."Will this printer perform as advertised?"
HP tells me that the design life of this printer is 4-5 years under heavy production, longer under lighter production. I've had previous experience with the HP-600 large format printer and it was a positive experience. We ran the HP-600 6 days a week with about 40-50 proofs a day, for about 5 years with little more work than having to calibrate the output, replace empty toner ctgs, and replace print heads. It was a workhorse and very reliable. If the Z3100 can perform with anything near the reliability of the HP 600, I'll be a satisfied customer.
Here is my experience with the HP Z3100 24inch Wide Format Printer to date...I'll keep this field report updated until it becomes irrelevant.
March 25, 2007
A few days ago, I had my HP DesignJet Z3100/24" wide format printer delivered and installed. It is connected to a MacPro. Here are my first scores on this new entry into the wide-format printer domain.
Print Quality = Excellent
I've run about a dozen 24" wide prints of different scenes, not a single issue with the quality of the output. I've seen (but not used) the Epson 7800 and this thing is every bit as nice if not better. This printer has a built in photo spectrometer, so profiling your paper is a breeze and takes about 10 minutes. consistency from print to print is dead on, even over a several day period.
Speed= Good
A large 24 inch print at top quality will print in about 15 minutes.
Ease of setup = Very Good
It took about 1 hour to unpack, assemble the stand, install print heads and ink cartridges.
Ease of use = Average
This is relative to the supplied software for Mac OS-X by Hewlett Packard. I've had it lock up a few times, and it seems to be weak with network interface. The software isn't very good. Operationally, when it's working right though, getting prints from Photoshop CS2 is fairly simple and doesn't require much intervention. If they can work out the bugginess of the utility software, it would be almost seamless. Custom paper configurations & profiles are possible. It has a good roll feeder and will also take sheet media.
In general, it seems to have just about everything you'll need in an affordable package.
Overall, I'm very much impressed with this printer. It costs less than the top DSLR's, and if you are serious about making good looking large prints, you should give this a very close look. The B&W quality off of this print is astounding. Dollar for Dollar, I think this thing smokes the Epson’s on the market at the moment. In the dry climate of Colorado, the Epson’s are reportedly having issues with head clogs. The HP's out here reportedly are not having issues with head clogs. This is a big plus, and add to it, you don't have to swap inks when you switch papers, this thing looks like it can't be beat. I'll keep a track of paper/ink usage and report back with additional in depth findings on cost efficiency and other day-to-day operational issues I come across.
April 2nd, 2007
Two weeks later…
I've got a little run-time under my belt now. Here's the experience so far.
Color profile calibration remains steady. I've not had to recalibrate the printer once since I've installed the first roll of paper. I notice that prints were initially a little heavy on the saturation, but with a little tweaking I've found that I get results that are very close to the monitor display by adding a bit of lightening to the print profile (about 20 clicks on the Mac/Photoshop) settings. This can be saved and results remain constant.
Materials usage...with a few dozen more prints under the belt and after tweaking the print settings a little, I'm presently costing about $2.26 per square foot for prints. This equates to an average cost of less than $10 per print for 20x30 prints. I continue to expect this to go down as I get in the groove.
Another issue, and this is important. HP Support has been fantastic thus far. I was having trouble with the network connection from the Mac to the Z3100, the Color Utility wasn't running and after a little round-a-bout, I finally got through to HP support via E-mail. The lady support tech called me on the phone within 2 hours and we spent about another 2 hours going through everything we could think of. End result, the networking is now working great (it was my own fault, I'm so used to PC/Windows world I was outthinking the networking and making it more complicated than it should be). She was very patient and helpful. By the end of the call, I think I could have asked her out on a date...it went that well. Afterwards, I got a nice e-mail describing the problem and resolution in detail for my records and a promise of follow-up if needed. I felt very good about the entire process. I'd recommend the E-mail support over live-chat (no Mac support on live chat)
On a second front with HP support. As I understand from the sales rep, some of the early versions of this printer have a rattle when it prints as the carriage moves across the paper. My printer has this rattle. It doesn't seem to affect anything but it doesn't sound right either and from my experience, any noise of this nature is something wrong waiting to happen. Well, yesterday I got a phone call from a support technician in Idaho, who is flying to Denver with a parts kit and will do a field modification to the printer to fix the rattle thing. HP it seems is well aware of the problem and has a fix for it. What is really impressive is they contacted me about it before I even got around to calling them. The fact that they'd fly out and come to my studio to fix it is just peachy in my eyes. The procedure is supposed to take about 3-4 hours and I expect they'll take the printer apart, which I'm actually looking forward to seeing done because some day support will dry up and I'll be on my own. I think I'll document it with photos as well. May prove useful to future owners if I've got a record of the process of taking the thing apart.
So, in a nutshell, so far so good. Things are getting better too. The print quality continues to astound me, the only things that have ruined a print so far are things I've done wrong. Top it all off with the fact that I get a $1000 trade-in rebate and another $300 worth of free paper and this thing is almost turning out to be a real bargain on top of everything else.
When I read the horror stories about Canon's lack of customer support and about Epson print heads clogging and ink gobbling, I'm feeling like I'm in the catbirds seat with this printer. If HP can do business like this, you should really give them a serious think. I don't regret my decision for an instant. Kudos’ to Hewlett Packard. They've made a great large format printer and they are backing it up with great support (for one old fart at least.)
April 4th, 2007
From the “nothing ever goes as planned department”, the Hewlett Packard tech showed up today to make a modification to my Z3100. The goal was to eliminate a rattle being caused by the trailing cable. The scope of the modification is to replace the trailing cable and the carriage assembly. The parts arrived via UPS shortly before the tech. Within 45 minutes, we had the cover off and the unit disassembled. Another hour into the procedure and the tech noticed that the wrong carriage assembly had been shipped. HP shipped the 8 ink carriage from the Z2100, which is physically like the 12 ink version in the Z3100 but with the extra holes plugged up. We discussed the situation and decided that rather than attempt to order the correct replacement carriage and waste a day, we'd reinstall the original carriage (after all, it was only a couple of weeks old.) With that decided, he disassembled the machine again and reinstalled the original. The installed new trailing cable assembly was supposed to be a little more rigid and not bounce against the frame. We quickly discovered that the new cable was still bouncing and causing the rattle. Okay, we've tore the printer apart twice, replaced parts and now we are back where we started. The printer rattles when it is printing. In comes plan “B”. The tech carries athletic tape in his tool kit. He disassembles the printer again, removes the cable channel and runs a strip of athletic tape down the length of the cable channel. The theory is that it will not prevent the cable from slapping against the channel, but it may dampen the sound. About half way into reassembly, a screw is dropped into the machine. Works comes to a halt and disassembly commences until the screw is found. I'm starting to sweat now. Is this brand new printer turning into a brand new repaired printer or even worse...a field experiment?
Here are a few photos of the unit disassembled.
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HP tech begins disassembly of printer
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Rear view of printer with covers removed
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Another view with covers removed
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Little cotton swabs that help keep ink from globbing up on heads. This is the front left side.
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The naked truth about what you spent your money on.
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Ink lines and carriage area. This is the general area where the rattle comes from.
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See the ribbon cable hanging down in the center of the frame. That's the culprit. |
As the carriage moves back and forth, the ribbon cable droops and then gets tight. It hits the carriage guide (above it) and the frame below it. This makes the rattle.
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The ribbon cable striking the frame above the carriage.
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The tech has the carriage removed for replacement.
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The little round thing in the center is the spectrophotometer. The little T handle moves the cover back and forth over the eye. Nothing complicated here.
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This is the ribbon cable guide (shown removed and upside down), which mounts above the ribbon cable inside the unit. A little athletic tape along the inside of the guide reduces the resonating within the channel as the cable flops against it.
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Another view of the removed guide with field modification #1-alpha (my nomenclature)
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Tech reinstalling the guide after application of athletic tape.
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April 6th, 2007
A little update on the progress here. I received a message from the HP tech today. They are still looking into the rattle problem at HP and they are focused on a new style of carriage for the machine. Since I'm going to Costa Rica at the end of the week, we decided to hold off until their engineers can try a few things in the lab. They'll be rescheduling a visit for early May when I'm back in the country.
On another front, I've heard from a few readers about the printer rattle. Checking the plate on the back of my printer indicates a manufacture date in October, 2006. Seems like most of the reports of this problem are related to Z3100's manufactured in October, 2006. The speculation amongst some is that all the printers in the field were made in October of 2006 and this problem isn't quite as isolated as was first assumed. If you look at the rear left hand side of the printer, there should be a black metallic label that will tell you what date your machine was made. I'd like to hear back from you.
May 14th, 2007
I've finished up my trip to Costa Rica and was waiting to hear back from HP on the printer issue. They contacted me the first week of May and told me they intended to ship me a new printer and have my original shipped back. While I have been waiting the printer continues to run. The rattle is still there, but not as bad as when it was first installed. I've run across the saturated red issue that has been reported elsewhere. It showed up on one of my Costa Rica prints of a Scarlet Macaw. A beautiful shot, the bird is bright red, yellow and blue. The reds just didn't come out right, too light with a slight orange tint. The print looks good but not quite like what I have on the monitor so I'll leave it for later to adjust if need be. I've about used up the ink cartridges that came with the printer and I really don't want to dip into the stock of replacement cartridges if HP is going to be working on the printer. I've noticed that the Gloss Enhancer drains at about twice the rate of the regular inks. I've switched to economy mode on the Gloss Enhancer to see if I can reduce the consumption rate. Also, the Grey cartridge is getting used a little more heavily than the other inks, but not quite as fast as the Gloss Enhancer. The remaining inks are drawing down at about the same rate and I've about 30ml left in each of them, keeping in mind that the install inks are only 69ml to begin with. Ink usage is surprisingly good. Typical prints on photo luster paper at about 24 x 20 inches are costing me about $4-6 per print for ink and paper. I thought this would work it's way down over time and it has. I've done about 50 prints so far.
May 25th, 2007
HP has informed me that they intend to replace my printer with a new one and have the original shipped back. The replacement printer is scheduled for May 31st, which is just my luck. I wanted to travel to the Dallas Divide next week to do some spring photography of the mountain flowers. I'll put the trip off until the first week of June. I'm feeling better though, at least they aren't going to leave me hanging and after all is said and done, I expect to have a rattle free printer, probably a redesigned version. I'll report back when it is installed and on what the differences are. I have no clue what they intend to do with the other printers of the same vintage as mine that have made their way around the world. I'm sure they are working fine for the most part, even if they do rattle.
June 1st, 2007
The replacement printer arrived via FedEx earlier this week and the HP Tech from Boise was here bright and early on the 31st as scheduled. Installation and setup took about an hour, plus I downloaded the latest drivers and firmware for the printer. No problems, no rattle on the replacement printer. The old one will be going back to Spain I'm told. It isn't clear to me what is different about the newer version and we didn't take it apart (thankfully) to examine. HP Spain is very interested in my original printer though, that much is certain. I think they've spent more money on my printer than I have. Plus, I got a fresh load of ink out of it, not bad. I had to recalibrate my paper profiles after the firmware and driver updates. We did a couple of test prints and the results are good.
I did discuss with the HP tech the one remaining issue I have concerning the printer and that is printing of saturated reds and a new issue I've discovered with the printing of a saturated medium blue as well. I've read the HP technical document on the saturated red issue, followed the guidelines in that document and found the procedure to be ineffective. What I'm seeing with the reds is a shift to orange under certain conditions and loss of saturation all together. Going over the prints with the tech, I also showed him a situation I came across on a picture of a Tucan. I wanted to enhance a medium blue area on the bottom of the bird's beak with a slight saturation bump, try to make it more vivid so to speak. With very little bump in the saturation of that particular area, the printer seemed to over-react and turned the entire area blotchy (I can't think of a better way to describe it), and at the same time, the red parts of the beak de-saturated from original. This may well be an issue with the paper though, I'll have to test a different stock. I ended up restoring the original exposure and color levels and did not attempt to recreate the vivid look on screen. The resultant second print of the bird looks very close to the monitor, but the red is still weak. The blotchy blue problem went away. One thing I did observe though was the ability of the printer to handle saturated yellows very well and it occurs to me that the problem with the reds shifting orange are probably a result of some type of non-linear ink curve when mixing in yellow to create reds, thus shifting the red to orange. The red shifting to orange seems to occur with a heavy dose of yellow in the print. There is an obvious problem in the linearity of the ink curves when the saturation levels of primary colors are increased. The prints don't look bad, but the printer isn't responding correctly. Now that I have new drivers and firmware installed, I'll revisit the problems and see if I can recreate the situation. It would be nice to have a utility that could utilize the built in spectrophotometer for analyzing this situation. In the meantime, I'll have to borrow or rent a color densitometer and come up with my own test if this continues. I'd hate to see this continue, not that it's a show stopper, but if you are expecting one thing to happen and something else throws you a curve ball, it wastes time, ink and paper trying to resolve it.
To be continued...