Well, well, well.

I did it. After all. Going into much larger printing. Well, not super large printing - but i consider 30x40 cm / 32x48 cm images already being pretty large. I rarely printed bigger than 30x40 cm in the darkroom. A few times 50x60 cm - and that was a chore (due to the 3x huge sized 50x60 cm chemical baths required)

One thing i have noticed is that when I printed my super macro images onto 10x15 cm sized paper (Canon Selphy 1500) - that many of them "failed" to impress. I mean there were gorgeous seen large on the screen - but on a small print, they just looked... meh !

Another reason is, that the mediumformat camera Fujifilm GFX 50s II has so much of details and quality - that you don't really see much of that in small images. Sometimes not even at A4 sized images, either. Albeit those are generally better than 10x15 (Canon Selphy 1500 prints). I do have the Epson ET-1810 for A4 prints. Those photos turn out beautiful which is impressive for a 3-color printer !

Sometimes however... I do think it would be awesome to go larger.

Black & White Photos also in mind

I also would like to have more reliable quality in black & white prints. Therefore I chose the Epson ET-8550 instead of the ET-18100 printer. It appears that the ET-8550 does better job when you wish to use matte and / or art papers in black & white due to the additional use of pigmented black ink.

Ink Potty (External ink pad)

I also ordered a "Ink Potty" to install, so that the ink overflow can easily flow into a "potty" for collection )instead of going into a "pad" which eventually fills up and needs replacement) (costs every time 30 €). So, ordered a special reset-device, so that the chip will be rest, while the overflow ink with help of a tube can flow into an external "potty" tank for collection.

That way, no more costs get added, and the printer can live beyond its normal maintenance cycle. That is at least the idea.

This already works excellently with my Epson ET-1810.

With the ET-1810 however, i need a software key instead of a hardware key device. To internal chip for 11€. I already have a software key good for one use. So far, the printer hasn't come up with a maintenance message yet. The ink usage of the ET-1810 printer is really low - making it extremely economical (as it will be economical with the ET-8850 printer as well)

That is a joy, to be honest.

I'll keep the smaller ET-1810 printer

mainly for printing text documents and such. The bigger ET-8550 will be more for fine art, B&W portraits and other selected photos in the larger A3 or A3+ sizes. Even panoramas are possible with this one, if i so wish. Since there is an internal A4 scanner included - it can be used to scan documents, images etc to files or directly for printing. Not that i really need that - but sometimes it does come in handy to scan/print something directly from an integrated scanner.