ET 8550 printer Q and A - Using the 8550 A3+ EcoTank printer

hi my name's keith cooper and in this video i'm going to be doing a short q a based on questions i've been asked about this the epson et 8550 now the 8550 is an excellent printer i've got a detailed review of it i've got quite a lot of other videos i've produced about various aspects of using it but i get asked a lot of questions about it and i was happy to answer questions on you know the comments for the videos but there are certain themes that come through so i thought i just put this together to try and address a few of those issues that i get asked fairly often so the 8550 13 inch a3 plus printer has an interesting mix of inks in that it has dye inks and a pigment black ink as well as a dye black ink now come back to that as to why that's an important feature of the printer in a bit but in general questions i get asked about the front feed for example the front feed as far as i'm concerned is for well it will take cds or dvds but who prints those these days i'm going to ask it's the storing plain paper there is a smaller tray for small photo paper what i would say is that these trays are for plain paper use and for thin photo paper and i mean thin photo paper don't try and put any high quality photo paper through these front slots here because they have to be returned a u-turn at the back through the duplexer unit don't even think of trying to print photos double-sided if you want to do photos double-sided you will need a double-sided media of course but they go in through the top here and you have to manually reverse them which probably means you have to work out how to turn them around when you put them back in because it's very easy to get that wrong no superficially people think oh well it prints double-sided yes it prints office paper double-sided copies great if you want that onto plain paper uh not for photobomb essentially for any quality media um it goes in through the back slot here with the back slot you can use custom paper sizes there is a rear slot where if you take the duplexer unit out you can get access to that as well now i've covered that in how to print on uh on card on heavy card or poster board but essentially i would say nearly all the printing i did on this printer has been through the top here whether that be for greetings cards for longer prints or just ordinary photo prints so that's the paper feed on it on the top feed here i've had one or two people say uh they've seen marks on paper caused by rollers now some papers are soft and easily marked going through a printer mechanism it varies by printer varies by the particular uh the model and the actual printer as to just how things are set up what i would say is that if you try a thick soft faced paper in this and you get some marks on it try it with an epson paper if it marks an epson paper and this is a new printer then contact epson because it shouldn't if you ask epson and you say i'm using paper brand xyz and i'm seeing marks on the paper their answer is going to be to you we'll try an epsom paper so if you've got problems make sure before you contact lipson you have actually tried using an epson paper in it because the printers are designed for their papers their papers are not any better um because you know like many major manufacturers they don't make their own papers they get paper to their specifications and it's made with their label on it so um their printers should work with their papers just remember that if you have some problems with it um so and and you might want to and i would say if you get problems with a printer [Music] one of the slight issues with these printers today modern printers i've tested is that they are so light that the parcels they come in are very light and they are very prone to getting thrown around in the back of delivery vans now i had a printed bag not not this one but i have had a printer turn up for test for review and i could tell straight away there was a problem because there was a dent on the cardboard and the foam plastic inside was cracked you know the foam filling around it um just beware of the fact that um what may have been a perfectly good printer out of the uh where it was shipped from has had to go through the shipping process and lightweight boxes and busy delivery drivers don't make for the most careful of delivery um just because you might handle your printer very carefully doesn't mean somebody's gonna handle the cardboard box that's coming to your house in the same way check that when you get it if you have problems check your manufacturer or uh or your supplier it depends where you are as to what the sort of best return route is for it it happens with the best of printers i test a lot of printers so i see it occasionally so why if i get a printer i don't blame the printer to start with if there's a fault um i've had enough printers over the years that have been damaged in transit they're well packed but that's no proof against the most you know dedicated delivery drivers now media choices i mentioned the inks now this sprinter has eight tanks and that's one of the popular bits about the printer dye based inks most of them except one which is a pigment black ink now this is unusual in mixing pigment and dye inks and what it means is that certainly if you print documents and you print on plain paper black comes from the black ink here and it prints very well on document papers that's great for that something some dies have difficulty with gives you better looking text on it or a black text i should say since that's the only pigment in this um it means that the characteristics of this printer in that how it behaves with different papers is subtly different to many other printers now what i would say is to get best photo results you need paper profiles now some manufacturers um some some paper suppliers are starting to produce profiles for this printer some paper suppliers i know several in the uk if you buy some paper off them they will let you print a test target send it off to them and they will make your custom profile that's the way to get the best results out of this printer because the ink mix and i met the the black pigment ink that makes a difference for some papers so if i choose the velvet fine art vfa media setting some black from the of the pigment black is mixed in at dark colors just and blacks to give a more intense look now that works on some art papers if you print photo papers lustre paper berita for example you're going to be just using the dye inks and the characteristics are quite different there now that depends on the media setting and the profile you're using so what i'm saying is yes you can get great results from this but you need profiles now if you have a look at the written review i've done for this printer on the norflight images website you'll see a big long list of papers for which i've produced profiles for now if you drop me an email and with either specific requests or whatever for the profiles they are free for non-commercial use if you want to use them commercially well also drop me an email but they may not be free um yeah remember i just you know i'm a professional photographer and i've not had much work over the last few years so due to the pandemic and you know things like this do make a difference i need to put food on the table however they're free for most people certainly if you want to use them commercially that uh you know i don't charge much for them even commercially but what does pro all this stuff about profiles mean well it means that with a printer like this if you're new to it don't just go off pick a paper because you like the name it's a big manufacturer it's a famous paper you think it should be good somebody on a forum somewhere or at your camera club has said oh this is a great paper check whether it's supported with profiles now i always suggest with any pa every new printer try some paper from the manufacturer so for this i would try some epson paper if it was a canon printer i'd be trying some canon paper just to start off with you don't need much it could be some small to get the hang of using the printer and to know that it's actually working properly so basically do not pick your papers before you pick your printer it's the wrong way round what you need to do is you pick your printer and then you find the papers that work best in it and the fact that their famous name on the box makes no difference whatsoever it's about what the paper is and the profiles that make make all the importance there um few other little bits and pieces just to round off die sub inks can i convert this printer to die sub inks well you could try when you start it up you could put some dye sub inks in it um i wouldn't um it will you know voyage your warranty for starters i'm sure some people will try out and some people will happily sell you inks for it but do it at your own risk and i would not vouch for the long-term reliability of the printer if you've put um a completely different type of ink into it who knows it might work it might not depends whether you've got a printer you want to spare try and start finding out i'll finish off on a bit about software when you've installed the printer drivers if you install them on a mac do make sure you've not accidentally selected the air print version now i cover this in setup articles and various other things but if you find that your printer driver doesn't have a lot of settings you're expecting this is on a mac make sure you're not using air print there should be a proper driver for it as well and lastly have a look at the epson print layout software the epl software i used it quite a lot i use it for testing um this is this is one of the test images i use because it has some very strong colors it has some gradients in it it shows up profile ability and it also shows that um and this is a glossy paper you can get very nice results from the printer and that's it so there you go there's the 8550 um if you've got any more questions please do ask in the comments please do subscribe to the channel i cover lots of other things not just printers so it will vary as to what i'm publishing depending on what i'm doing but i have got another printer uh coming back from epson on wednesday of this week um when they are going to swap this one i'm not allowed to live in a printer warehouse line and i certainly can't afford to buy lots of printers they're going to swap this one back for the p700 that i did a review for a while ago because i only had that for a short while and it's just coming back for some more testing so i shall be doing some um videos concerning using the x and p 700 and p 900 coming up anyway thank you very much and thank you

Channel: Keith Cooper

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Id: PZskP8VXSVY

Length: 12min 58sec (778 seconds)

Published: Wed Dec 01 2021