Printers
Canon iPF 5000
My main printer at this time is the Canon iPF 5000 printer. I love the results, I hate the process. My computer tells me the printer is off when it isn't. If I have a power failure, the printer wants to do a full ink installation on startup (app. something wrong with the motherboard), and one has to constantly run back and forth between printer and computer to fiddle with things. It is extremely sensitive to malalignment of paper - more so than my eye is. It detests Crane Museo SilverRag because the paper is curved sideways when put in the slot vertically (the normal way). If you were printing with the cassette and want to switch to the tray, you have to do it manually on the computer, oh, and even worse, the other way round too.
It has auto cleaning on a frequent basis but often not until you want to press a setting on the printer, which means you have to cool your heels for five minutes.
If you get the impression of a love hate relationship, you got it in one. The black inks are so glossy that few papers come even close to being as shiny, Harman FBAL Gloss being the closest and even it has a little gloss differential.
It does however make very nice prints, and is quite economical on it's use of ink (dramatically better than my previous printer, the Epson 4000.
Epson 4000
I stopped using this when I got the Canon printer, because it was starting to dirty up the sides of the prints just along the image edge (not the paper edge) and the thought of both lugging and paying for the servicing has prevented me from doing anything with it - it remains sitting here taking up valuable space - sooner or later I'm going to have to do something....
Epson R800
This was picked up a few years ago so I could make gloss prints, but I found that there weren't good papers at the time and the gloss enhancer varnish greyed down the prints considerably - It remains in use for my text documents.
Epson 7600
Is my printer for large prints. I don't think it matters if 24 inch prints are glossy and in fact it's probably better that they not be. Anything this size has to be on a good paper and the matter Moab Entrada Bright White 300 works well with it. The only problem the printer gives me is it drops ink on the white border of prints (and occasionally in the sky of images) which is both frustrating and expensive, wasting both paper and ink. Eventually I will replace it but at the moment, I'm not making any large prints so there it sits.
Epson 2400
I purchased this to make Art Cards - but it couldn't handle the stiff paper used and sat around long for a while till one day I was moving things and it fell off the table - it doesn't work now - another boat anchor =- though I suppose I could at least get it serviced. I have a horrible feeling though that the service cost would just about equal what I could sell it for used, so ...