Epson Calls!

The phone rings and, and because I'm out in my garage where there's no phone, the answering machine picks up before I can get to a handset. As I walk through the doorway I hear the voice leaving its message; I hear "Epson" and "rebate", so I run a little more quickly to the phone. I pick up and ask the voice to please start over.

It's Teresa, who happens to have a stunningly beautiful, mesmerizing voice. After explaining who she is, she asks about the paper I'd received (in error). If you've missed the background on this, my last posting describes yet another email I sent requesting the status of the rebate, to which I received this reply, which sounds very much like the many other responses I've had during this months-long saga:

Dear Jay Cross 

 

Thank You for your email concerning your rebate.   We are sorry for the  inconvenience.  We resubmitted your submission to Special Handling Team for processing. Please allow 3-5 weeks delivery of your rebate.

 

If you have any additional questions contact us at 1-800-277-6187 Monday-Friday 8 AM - 8 PM EST.

 

Sincerely,

 

Laroylyn

Epson Rebate Center

Three to five weeks. Again. This posting provides links to the entire history, in case you're fascinated by customer service train wrecks and want all the details going back to November, 2011.

Back to the silky-voiced Teresa: She asked if the roll of paper I received was Exhibition Fibre, or Matte. I explained it was neither; it was a roll of Exhibition Canvas, which is not what I wanted, nor what I requested. With that cleared up (again), Teresa promised they'd get this right, and a roll of Exhibition Fibre paper would be shipped. She didn't say when. She said their best guess as to what happened is that the papers were mixed up in their warehouse. Sounds simple enough, and I'd buy that explanation if I didn't have a pretty thorough understanding of production and inventory control (P&IC), how warehouses use "stock locates" so human or robotic stock pickers can put new inventory where it belongs so it can be found again later for order fulfillment, etc. In any case, I was delighted to receive the call, knowing it was initiated by Epson as a response to my nagging. I was also glad for the opportunity to listen to Teresa for a couple of minutes.

Stay tuned....

  --Jay

Matte Paper Print Jobs

A few days ago I made a baker's dozen prints on a Epson-branded matte paper. These were printed on letter size sheets. The prints will go into 11 x 14 inch mats, then into clear bags. These sell quite well, perhaps because I select images of local landscapes (including Glacier and Yellowstone National Parks) and the kinds of charismatic wildlife people see there, or hope to see there. I also display a lot of bird photos this way.

I didn't buy the 7900 to make small prints, but it's a necessary part of my business.

As luck would have it, while set up with MK loaded, I got a call from a client for whom I've printed before. She wanted a large number of prints on her preferred paper, Epson Enhanced Matte. I print most of these from a 17 inch roll.

Her jobs are the easiest work I do. She had several of her watercolor paintings scanned by a service that's no longer in business. The scans are prefect. I only need open the Photoshop files and print, and then package the lot  for delivery. Since the client is local, I deliver the work, so there are no shipping costs. As friend Dean has said, this is like printing money.

When the printer cut the job's last print from the roll, the ink status on the LCD showed the LK ink with a red X, along with a message indicating the ink must be replaced. I replaced that original, 90ml LK with a 150ml cartridge I've had on-hand for a while. I've installed that LK temporarily several times for cleanings.

Also at the end of that print job I found my G and LC inks at 2%. That's adequate for many more prints, but the machine will not clean either of those channels with only 2%. I ordered both, and received the G today. The expiration date is 5/2013.

I've got a new 24 inch roll of Epson Luster, on which I want to make a few prints for an outdoor show coming up in August. I have not used this paper before. I'll be switching from MK to PK soon, and printing a profile evaluation image.

Last comment for today: the weather here in western Montana has been strange. It's been quite humid, and we've had much more rain than normal (whatever "normal" is these days) for this time of year. Relative humidity percentages have been in the sixties, even the seventies, in the mornings. But the printer has shown no more clogs than I've seen when the RH has been much lower. It appears humidity isn't affecting the machine in any obvious way. I'll continue to record the room temperature and RH on each nozzle print, so I'll have the data if the clog situation changes.

  --Jay

5000°K Lighting

OTA*

In earlier postings I've mentioned building a print studio in my home that would include a viewing booth of sorts. This consists of a steel panel on which I can hang prints using small magnets, and 5000 degree Kelvin lights in an overhead track.

I hung the steel panel some time ago; it's working out nicely. I ordered LED bulbs with a GU10 base (MR16 base dimensions, but with larger, "nail-head" like pins). These are 5000°K bulbs made by Lighting Science, ordered from 1000bulbs.com in April, for a bit more than $30 each (including the shipping cost). The day after placing the order I received an email from my rep there, saying these bulbs were not in stock and not expected until June. She said they had no equivalent 5000°K bulbs. I decided to wait. These bulbs are exactly what I wanted, and I had already purchased the fixtures for my lighting track, so I needed the GU10 base.

In the second half of June I wrote the rep at 1000bulbs.com, asking for the status of my order. She said they'd not received these bulbs from Lighting Science, and the company could not provide a shipping date, perhaps indicating a manufacturing problem. She offered to send a different bulb from the same manufacturer, but with a narrower lighting pattern. That wouldn't work in my application. I canceled the order and started the search for another source.

As it turned out, 5000°K, GU10-base, LED floods aren't easy to find!

Eventually I found them on the site of a Chinese distributor. These were not made by Lighting Science, but had the right specifications and were, in fact, slightly brighter, a good thing. I'd never heard of the vendor, "Light In The Box, Ltd.", through their miniinthebox.com site. I was a little skeptical because the price was amazingly low and the vendor paid the shipping cost. But for $6.00 each, the risk was low, so on 18 June I ordered three.

One of the completed fixtures

Two days ago an envelope appeared in my mailbox. The package was in terrible condition, dirty, torn, and flattened. The shipping label included import/customs information along with a block of Chinese characters. Inside were my three LED bulbs, intact and working.

The LED bulb (rear) is slightly longer than
the standard MR16/GU10

These bulbs are about a quarter inch (.6cm) longer than the standard GU10/MR16 lamp. My track fixtures are small, designed for the form-factor of the normal GU10. I had to modify the fixtures slightly so the LED bulbs would fit. A trivial bit of machine work did the job. The bulb extends slightly through the front bezel of the fixture. I think it looks good.

As you'd expect, the lighting on my magnetic board now seems quite blue compared to the normal halogen lighting in the room. If I photograph directly into one of these bulbs, the camera data show the white balance/color temp at 5100°. That's the best I can do to measure the output of the bulbs. In any case, they're certainly better than the typical warm halogen or florescent lighting.

--Jay

*Off-topic Alert: This posting isn't directly related to life with a 7900. It is, however relevant to my printing efforts.

Something a Little Different

Immediately upon returning from several days camping in the rain at Glacier National Park I delivered a  batch of pictures to a local gallery for an all-photography show that opens Friday. If you're near Polson, Montana Friday, 13 July, stop in to the Sandpiper Art Gallery on Main Street. The opening reception is from 5:00—7:00. I'm one of four photographers featured in the show. I helped hang the show a couple of days ago. There's a quite a mixture of subjects and styles, making it a very interesting show. The show will remain in the gallery through 17 August.

For my shows I display a very brief biography and "artist's statement" in a small frame. I'd not updated that in a while. Last time I did I printed it with an ancient HP Photosmart printer, one we used only occasionally for business graphics and other letter-size color prints. I recycled that printer a few weeks ago, leaving the 7900 as the only color printer in the house.

This screen capture isn't readable, but you can see there are several
paragraphs of text, a photo, and a signature .gif, all of which look
good on Enhanced Matte.

I created this document with LibreOffice Writer, and included a photo snapped by my bother-in-law in Badlands National Park; it's the same photo used here on my profile page. I'd never printed to the 7900 from Writer, and I'd never printed a file with text on the 7900. Because there's nothing critical about the appearance of the document, I printed with the driver's  color matching option set to "Epson Color Controls", which is called "printer manages color" in Photoshop. I made the print on a letter-size sheet of Epson Enhanced Matte paper (Ultra Premium Presentation Paper).

The only puzzle I encountered was setting the sheet size. Writer has a Page... option under its Format menu. One sets the page size there; my default is 8.5 x 11 inches (letter size). That option does not set the page (sheet) size when printing. I spent several minutes looking for the page size in the printer dialog. To access this with the Mac driver, it's necessary to check the "Scale to fit paper size" checkbox on the Paper Handling tab. This enables the Destination Paper Size drop-down list from which all of the paper sizes one normally finds for the 7900 can be accessed. Mystery solved.

The resulting print is fine. The text quality is quite good, although less crisp than text printed by my HP LaserJet  1200. The photo looks fine, too, more than adequate for this purpose.

  --Jay