About four years ago I was encouraged to try home printing with a decent quality photo printer. The logic was that, after an initial outlay, the printing costs were small, and you had the satisfaction of seeing your photographs in beautiful hard print not just on a screen.

So I bought an Epson R3000 A3 printer, and got a lot of use out of it for a while. But, when I changed computer, and realised the costs of getting replacement ink for nine, yes nine! ink cartridges, I found myself using it less and less.

During lockdown I decided to update the printer software, which was difficult as it is already an older machine now. I replaced a couple of cartridges, recalibrated my laptop screen and bought some new Epson 6×4 and 7×5 paper to test it out and try again.

I also decided to try using the black and white mode more, as changing three ink cartridges is a cheaper option, and the black and white quality with Epson printers is supposed to be excellent.

So geeky bit out of the way … as blogs are supposed to be about ongoing development and current projects, here are the results of three prints, two colour and one in the black and white setting:

You can’t tell from this snapshot, but the colours are vibrant and the paper good glossy quality. It is a good step up from supermarket kiosk self service printing.

The black and white one had a border to it, and is a favourite of mine from last year, afternoon sun at St Annes beach. Very pleased with it although the print comes out darker than on my monitor. I’ll need to adjust that in my settings.

All told I’m quite satisfied with these and with making the effort to get the printer up and running again. It might come in handy for some photo prints as gifts to people in the coming months. Lockdown can have some creative benefits.

Thanks & bye 🙂