Hi Ian, Oribi and fellow Pentax users,

The Epson Cyan cartridge has resolved the gross problem. The supplier of the re-cycled cartridge is in the procss of replacing the faulty cyan supplied by them.

I do know the importance of colour tuning and will experiment with aternating allowing the printer driver to control the output colour on the one hand and using Photoshop to manage the colour printing out put

Thanks for all your thoughts and guidance

Kind regards
Geoff

The comment about the multipoint focussing is really relevant. I did conclude that I could both get better shots and have more control if I used the centre point for focussing. I also now use the AF button rather than the half press of the shutter. This seems to give faster response and instant shooting which is ideal for my hobby of taking football pictures.

I will check the AF accuracy as it does seem that a number of forum members have benefited from this adjustment.

thanks all, Geoff

Good to see more pics of lady football players. I congratulate you on the reality of these. I find its like we are standing nearby rather than just seeing the 2D image.

Hope you'll be able to post up some action shots.

regards
Geoff

Well guys..an update.

I just shelled out the full asking price for an Epson cyan cartrige - made in Brazil and well and truly overpackaged. The actual ink contents must work out to £1000 per litre!

Still you guys were 100% correct that the results now look much more encouraging.

The recyled cartridge was printing at nearly double the depth!

This does beg the question that if its possible to make a stronger ink (ie higher concentration of dye) why don't Epson do this and thus allow us to print more saturated cyan colours?

I will take this up with the supplier of the recycled cartridges.

And now to the fine tuning of the printer...Adobe RGB..Adobe sRGB etc

Kind regards
Geoff

At the severe risk of seeming simplistic can I ask why such adjustments have to be made at all - or is this an advantage of digital over the old film slrs?

Could one say that if any adjustments are required (eg due to less than expected image quality) then this is indicative of a manufacturing fault?

Does the same need arise with those other manufacturers of dslrs?

Thanks again all
Geoff

Hi Guys.

This is really a very interesting (to me anyway) thread.

Could someone tell me if the adjustments are only going to affect AF. In other words if I manually focus the results should not change before and after adjustment?

Thanks
geoff

Indeed I'll pop an Epson cyan cartridge in and check again.

So far I have found that the settings in both the printer driver software and also in PS can make big differences in the output colours on Epson photo paper.

Thanks for your help and suggestions guys.

Cheers, Geoff

Hi Guys
Thanks for your really helpful advice. Having printed off the charts and briefly read the other links I can see that the process will take time and should not be rushed.

For my better understanding does any focus issue only effect auto-focus? If I were to use manual focus in my daily photography, might I then get the results one would expect of the camera and the lenses in use?

As it is I nearly always use centre spot auto-focus (with the AF button) and then reframe as required. I can tell the difference between my 50-135 DA* and the Sigma glass but both are not quite "crisp" when compared with shots shown on the gallery here.

Thanks again
Heoff

Thanks Graham, The nozzles are all firing 100%.

Do folk find colour differences depending on whether you set PS or the printer driver to do the colour management? I have used both RGB and sRGB colourspaces but I think the level of blueness is more fundamental.

Only one of the colour cartridges is a non-epson one (supplied by IJT if anyone knows them) but since that was only just changed I doubt it is the actual issue-but if all else fails I will certainly swap for an original cyan.

There are a bewildering selection of colour management options and a good selection of help files on the Epson website. Maybe I'm being a bit simplistic to expect an inkjet printer to have a go at reasonable photo printing straight out of the box.

Is there such a beast as a colour chart which causes the individual cartridges to fire one at a time and then in combination?

I am thinking that there are two blue cartridges (cyan and blue) and only one yellow so of if all colour mixtures are too blue then this would indicate a printer driver/setup issue rather than a single cartridge being faulty?

I'll keep trying the options.

Thanks, Geoff

Thanks Peter.

For some reason I'm struggling to get the links to work. I guess its to do with my web browser. I'll try again tomorrow on a different PC.

I appreciate your prompt reply. Hope I can sort it tomorrow.
Cheers
Geoff