Epson 1400

[Killjoy]

Okay Boys and Girls,
In my Epson R380, the ink was pretty much out on four out of the six cartridges, and low on the other two. I was dreading running to the store and spending over $80 for ink for this thing, so I thought I'd give that (almost) Free Ink think a try.

I ordered a set on Monday. It consisted of the six replacement cartridges as well as six ink wells in the cartridges.
It also came with ten additional replacement wells, for a meager sum of $63 shipped to me.

It arrived today.
Now it says right on the web site that you can't just replace one of these things at a time as they may not work with the original Epson cartridges.
That's why with four empties, I thought it would be a great time to do this swap.

So I took out all my old Epson Cartridges and replaced them with the new ones.

I tried to do a test print. No dice. The printer wouldn't feed the paper.
So I took out all the paper, and put in one sheet. Still not feeding.
I tried photo paper. Still no go.
So I called the ink company and actually spoke with a live person without having to jump through a bunch of hoops and button presses. Kudos to them for that.
They guy told me that he's been doing this for years, and has never ever run into a paper feed issue and suggested I call Epson.

So I did that. Now THERE I had to jump through some hoops to get a live person.
While speaking with him, I did leave out the part where I wasn't using Epson original inks.
He had me check for a jam inside the machine. I didn't see anything.
He had me read the serial number to him. He had me unplug it.
As I was leaning over the printer to get to the plug, I noticed something I had missed.

The Cowboy Hat for my Camel had fallen into the paper feeder and that's what was stopping the paper from feeding.

Duh. I felt stupid.

I turned the printer back on, and tried a test print of my Golden Gate Bridge image using Lightroom.
Apparently I didn't have the settings correct. There were lines all the way through the image.
So I tried again using Photoshop.

Ahhhhhh.

Okay folks, what I can say for my review is, if you gotta change your inks in your printer, give these folks a try.
They are reasonably priced, they are friendly, and they have a product that works.
A winning trifecta in my book!

[lvolkjr]

Alan, thanks for the review.

If anyone else has had experience with these inks please share your experience with us.

[RochinPhotography]

Do they use archival inks though? Through our lab printing thousands of images a week Ive seen first hand that the cheaper inks work, and look good. But overtime they don't hold up like genuine epson inks.

So as far as personal prints. Id go that route for sure. In the case of selling the prints to clients do you think Id be better off going with Epson ink?

[Killjoy]

I don't know about archival ink. Here is their site.
If you don't see the info there, call them. They actually answer the phone. :w00t:

But as far as selling images to customers, I would probably still go with a print house rather than print at home. Even with actual Epson cartridges.

[RochinPhotography]

Going to a print house is hard when printing on site :) I have some images both from the print lab I use and from my own prints (side by side) and you really can't see any difference.