Epson Stylus Pro 4800

For me, the allure of the Epson Stylus Pro 4800 wasn’t only its ability to produce prints up to 17 inches wide. It wasn’t just that it could create dramatic, borderless panoramic prints on roll paper. And although the printer’s UltraChrome K3 pigment inks provide a lightfastness of more than 100 years, it wasn’t what was driving me to quickly set up this large-format printer and put it through its paces. What I couldn’t wait to do was produce black-and-white prints, a process that this printer promised to take to a brand-new level.

Utilizing 110- or 220-milliliter ink cartridges, the hefty 4800 took about half an hour to set up. A third of that time was taken up by charging the ink system, which involves moving the ink levers up and down when prompted by the unit’s LCD panel. The need to stand by the printer waiting for these prompts was mildly irritating, but thankfully, is only necessary when installing and replacing inks which, due to the large-capacity cartridges, shouldn’t be too frequent.

The first thing I noted was that unlike the Epson Stylus Pro 4000, this eight-ink system doesn’t accommodate both photo black and matte black inks simultaneously. Besides the presence of light black and light light black inks, which help provide the subtle gradations of gray for black-and-white prints, and the color inks (magenta, light magenta, cyan, light cyan, yellow), there remains only one slot for a black ink. A photographer must install either photo black or matte black, depending on the paper choice. This likely will be a drawback for photographers who go back and forth between printing on matte and glossy surfaces.