Product review – Epson Artisan 700 all-in-one inkjet printer

by Scott Carmichael on

In this product review, I’m going to give you a quick look at the newest generation color all-in-one unit from Epson.

The Artisan 700 combines a photo printer, regular printer, scanner and CD printer in one stylish unit. As you can see from the photo above, the Artisan 700 does not look as boring as most other printers, and will certainly help brighten up your office/desk area.

The printer can be connected to your computer using three different methods; USB, Wi-Fi or Ethernet (wired). This also means it can be shared by multiple computers in the household, which is perfect if you have a personal computer as well as a work PC that needs access to a printer.
The front of the Artisan 700 has a tilting control panel with a fairly large display. On the panel you’ll also find 16 buttons, used to select the various features of the printer, and take advantage of the printing and scanning options that can be performed without a computer. To the right of the panel is a card reader and USB connector for connecting to a digital camera. The card reader accepts Compact Flash, SD, XD and Memory Stick formats.

Below the control panel is the paper tray, and that brings me to one of the best features of the Artisan 700; the paper tray holds both regular paper and photo paper at the same time, which means you will no longer have to keep replacing paper every time you want to switch between media.

The third printing tray is hidden inside the printer, and holds CD’s. When you press the CD tray button on the control panel, the machine makes a bunch of clicking noises, and out pops a CD printing tray. To print on a CD or DVD, you will need to purchase special printable discs, these are fairly easy to find, and only cost a few bucks more than a normal 25 or 50 pack.

As I mentioned earlier, the printer has several features built in that can be performed without a PC, these include a copy function, photo viewer (with greeting card option and CD print option), scan to memory card and an option to print ruled papers or graph paper.

Of course, the most important thing a printer can do, is print. And that is one thing the Artisan 700 does quite phenomenally. The machine impressed me both in speed, noise and print quality. Regular documents (I used a full page Word document) print in under 10 seconds, photos on 4×6 or 5×7 photo paper are done in about a minute, full page photos take about 3 minutes when printed on premium paper in the best quality setting.

Included in the retail package is of course the printer itself, as well as 7 ink cartridges. The printer holds 5 color cartridges and one black cartridge, and Epson includes one spare black cartridge as it tends to run out first.

The ink retails for just under $50 for the color multipack and $25 for the black cartridge. After several hundred prints, in various sizes, the printer is down to about half its ink capacity.

The scanner on the Artisan 700 was equally impressive, Epson has a long history of making high quality scanners, and it shows in this product. Photo scans are vibrant and very sharp.

Despite all the great features, there is one area where the Artisan 700 does not always perform as it should – the Ethernet and Wi-Fi interfaces are no very reliable, and I regularly ran into problems connecting with the printer, or kept getting errors that the printer was in use by someone else (I was the only user connected to it at the time).

Of course, these issues could be resolved by a software update in the future, or by connecting the unit to USB and ignoring the network ports.

The Artisan 700 has an MSRP of $199, but can often be found for as little as $149.99. At this price point, it is one of the cheapest network enabled all-in-one machines on the market. The Artisan 700 has a big sister, the Artisan 800. The 800 adds the ability to send and receive fax messages, as well as a sheet-feed scanner.

I’m quite impressed with the Artisan 700, there is no denying that the cost of ink may be a deal breaker for many, but for day to day work at home with the occasional photo or CD print, it will not disappoint you. The print quality is outstanding, and almost on par with the commercial prints you pick up at the local drugstore. CD prints are absolutely fantastic, and allow you to do quite a bit more with your photos than just let them collect dust.

Photo of the Day (12-17-08)

by Jamie Rhein on

It’s not usual that a person’s handiwork makes Photo of the Day two times in one week. This week Lola Akinmade‘s shot of this woman in Peru caught my attention. How could it not? Isn’t that vivid red gorgeous?

I also love the way the purple of the woman’s shawl pops against it and how the other reds are just enough of a difference to be distinct. This is a perfect example of the principles of a color wheel.

If you have your own examples of popping colors, send them our way at Gadling’s Flickr Photo Pool. One or two could be chosen as a Photo of the Day. Just ask Lola.

Through the Gadling Lens: great gifts for the travelling photographer

by Karen Walrond on

I don’t know about you, but this holiday season has completely gotten away from me (note to self: do not travel again anytime between Halloween and Christmas, particularly if Thanksgiving comes late in the year). We’ve managed to get our holiday decorations up, but we’ve hardly done any Christmas shopping so far, and time is running out and …

… *sigh*.

Anyway, if, like me, you’re starting to run out of time, and you happen to have a photog in the family who likes to travel (or happen to be the travelling photographer, and are looking for some ideas for hint-dropping purposes), here’s a list of some great gifts you might want to consider:
1. A camera bag. Even if your favourite photographer already has a camera bag, trust me, s/he wouldn’t mind another. The trick about buying a good camera bag however, is to ensure that (a) there’s enough padding inside to cushion the camera from any possible impacts, and (b) it doesn’t scream “camera” while walking in crowded public places or airports.

Personally, I enjoy my Crumpler backpack (shown here) — it’s got a padded section for my camera, my laptop, and a bit of room for other things — and it doesn’t look like a camera bag. In addition, Loewpro also has a great selection of camera backpacks and other bags, and some of them don’t look very distinguishable from any other type of non-camera bag.

And for those who use point-and-shoots, there are some great small padded pouches out there for you to toss in your bigger bags, but still keep your camera (or other camera-related stuff) safe. Check out Etsy for handmade, unique options.

2. A small travel tripod. Until recently, I thought of a travel tripod as a sort of gadgety luxury — but last month, when I taking a photograph of the Houses of Parliament in London at dusk, trying to balance my camera on a rain-slicked banister, and petrified the camera would take a tumble into the Thames below, I realized that perhaps a travel tripod might be something great to have at the bottom of my camera bag.

Travel tripods come in all shapes and sizes (and capabilities) — check out Pedcopods and Gorillapods for two more popular versions.

3. Mailable photo frames. This idea actually comes from one of my colleagues, Sarah, at Shutter Sisters — these handy little photo frames that are actually customizable postcards. Says Sarah: “When I was on vacation in September, I sent my daughter Cadence’s best friend custom postcards using the mailable photo frame from Photojojo (I’d print my shots at a local Wolf/Ritz and mail the postcard from wherever we happened to be).”

This seems like a great stocking stuffer for a loved one who is planning an extensive trip in 2009, and is intent on taking a camera along — a great way to receive very personal news from far away, and then display it immediately! Awesome.

4. A subscription to a magazine known for its photography. I don’t mean this in a read-Playboy-for-the-articles way, I’m talking about periodicals that are famous for their cutting-edge imagery and contributing photographers. Shutterbugs are always looking for inspiration, and I, for one, would love a subscription to a magazine like American Photo, National Geographic, or Vanity Fair, to name a few. Figure out what type of photography your loved one is inspired by, and shop accordingly. Not only will the magazine provide some cool ideas for capturing images, your recipient will have some good reading to take along with them on those interminable flights. Bonus.

5. A cool camera strap. Earlier this year, I went on a trip with 12 other women — we all rented a home on the Oregon coast for a 4-day getaway. As it happened, a large percentage of us were photographers — which meant that cameras were everywhere. I have to tell you, whether you’re a Nikon fan or a Canon fan or a whatever-other-brand fan: cameras look a LOT alike. At times it became damned near impossible to tell the difference from one camera to the next — and God help you if you just rested your camera somewhere for a minute. Sometimes I thought I’d never see my camera again.

A few of the more savvy of our group, however, had replaced their camera’s store-issue camera strap with some really distinctive straps, making it easy to spot their camera from 10 paces. When I returned home, I purchased a couple for my own cameras. I think they’d make a unique gift — and as with the camera bags, Etsy is a great place to find some unusual ones.

6. Picture frames. I have to say, I’m awful about displaying my photographs in my own home — yet there’s nothing I love better than visiting someone’s home that has tons of photographs around, chronicling their travels and their lives. If your favourite photographer is similar, why not buy a few cool frames to nudge her into showing her work with pride? And on a related note, consider a gift of this book, with all sorts of great ideas on how to display your photos. I purchased it a couple of months ago, and it’s truly inspiring. I haven’t actually used any of the ideas yet, but maybe if someone buys me some picture frames …

7. Practical paraphernalia. It’s not particularly romantic or clever, but photographers can never have too many memory cards or polarizing filters, batteries or microfiber lens clothes for their cameras — just make sure you know the size of their lenses or the make and model of the specific camera, and go for it. In the alternative, if you’re afraid that all of this sounds far too technical to trust to your own judgment, a gift certificate to a local camera specialty store would always be welcome.

8. Fun stuff. And finally, there are some really cool things out there that a photographer might not think to purchase for himself, but would love to t
ry. Consider purchasing a Lensbaby, a lens which focuses one point of an image, and then warps the outer edges, creating a cool effect (see Willy Volk’s example to the right). Or, how about a super-secret spy lens: this handy contraption allows you to point your camera in any direction, misleading your subject into thinking you’re taking a picture of something else. Fantastic.

And finally, although this is technically not for still photography, it’s unreal how many photographers I’ve spoken to who said they want the Flip Video Camcorder for Christmas. And starting at US$ 149.99, for a camcorder, this is a real bargain.

Happy shopping everyone! As always, keep sending your great questions to karen.walrond@weblogsinc.com, and I’ll try to tackle them in upcoming posts. In the meantime, keep clicking.

Karen is a writer and photographer in Houston, Texas. You can see more of her work at her site, Chookooloonks.
And for more Through the Gadling Lens, click here.

Through the Gadling Lens: your questions answered!

by Karen Walrond on

As promised, this week I thought I’d answer some of the really great questions many of you have sent in. I’m going to try to do this monthly, so keep sending in those great questions to karen.walrond@weblogsinc.com.

Let’s get started!

Question 1:

I have a nice Canon Digital Rebel XTI and I admit I mostly use it on the automatic setting. My question is… what do you do when you go in someplace where the flash is not allowed? For example, we went to visit Graceland this summer and I turned the flash off but almost all of my photos are blurry. My camera has a “flash off” setting then it autofocuses and auto sets the apertures and shutter speed.

Is it my lens? Is it me?

Signed,
Judy (a fellow Texan)
Hi, Judy —

You’ll be happy to learn it’s likely not you or your lens. It’s probably your ISO setting. You might remember in an earlier post, I talked a bit about ISO — the number of “light catchers” you might need to capture light. The more light you have, the fewer light catchers you’ll need; in less light, more light catchers are required. If you have your camera set to a low ISO (i.e., too few light catchers), the slightest shake is going to give you blur. In this case, you need to figure out how to really crank up your ISO — to, say, over 1000 — and the blur will likely disappear.

Once you’ve figured out ISO, you might find you prefer your shots without flash — they tend to be a much closer representation to what you actually see, rather than completely washed out in the light of a flash. The image below as taken in a dimly lit coffee house/art gallery here in Houston, without a flash:

See what I mean? A flash would’ve created a white light without any shadow nuances — but in the above, you notice the warmth of the available incandescent light, communicating the ambiance surrounding the painting far more accurately than a flash would. The above image was shot at an ISO of 1000.

Good luck!


Question 2:

I have a question. How much processing do you do? Do you crop a lot of shots (or otherwise process them) or do you WYSIWIG (“what you see is what you get”)? And do you rename them all or leave them numbered in your files on the computer?

Signed,
Wanda

Hi, Wanda —

The other day, I was surfing the web and came across a photographer who promised her clients “an hour of post-camera processing on each image.”

An hour?!?

Don’t get me wrong, her images are beautiful, but I can’t imagine what she must be doing for an hour on each image — I certainly don’t process my images that much (I spoke of how I process most of my images in my last post); I spend maybe a minute or two on each image — five minutes at the most.

As for cropping, I only crop for size, but not to edit. My reason for this mostly has to do with standard print sizes: in normal mode, my camera shoots images at 4288 pixels x 2848 pixels at a resolution of 300 dots per inch — all a fancy way of saying that if I want to print an image it sizes down nicely to 4 inches x 6 inches, with no cropping necessary. If, however, I want to print a 5×7 or an 8×10, some cropping will be necessary to get the size right.

I don’t, however, crop an image to get an objectionable item out of a shot — as I mentioned here, when I look through the viewfinder, I scan to see if there’s anything I wouldn’t want in the shot first, before I squeeze the shutter.

And finally, when it comes to archiving my photos, I pretty much leave them named as they are, and file them in a folder titled with the date I took the shot. And that’s it. Isn’t that awful? I am, however, in the market for Adobe Photoshop Lightroom, which I hear allows you to tag images and do all kinds of other wonderful things related to archiving — as soon as I purchase it, I’ll let you know how it goes.

Wanda followed up her question with another:


Question 3:

In your Gadling post, you talked about sharpening the images you take. Being new to digital photography and not having any experience with Photoshop … or the like .. I really don’t know what that means.

Signed,
Wanda

Hi again, Wanda —

Sharpening an image means what it sounds like: using Photoshop (or your favourite photo-editing software) to make the details of an image sharper, or more distinguishable. Paradoxically, however, in Photoshop, the way you sharpen an image is to “unsharp mask.”

I know, I know, it makes no sense.

To show you how it works, though, here’s an image of my friend Sam, taken late last week, before I sharpened the image:

Can you get over those eyes?

Okay, so here’s the same image, “sharpened” — a bit more than I’d normally sharpen an image, but I wanted to make sure you saw the difference. To sharpen an image in Photoshop, I go into the toolbar and click “Filter,” and then under “Sharpen” I click “Unsharp Mask.” After playing with the range a bit, I get this:

See how you can see more detail in his hair, his eyes, and each little freckle starts to pop? Sharpening an image takes some practice — too much sharpening, and the image starts to look downright scary — but done properly, it can make your images look really clean and detailed. It’s a lovely little photographer’s “trick.”

Question 4:

Can you give suggestions on how people can get pictures taken of them that don’t show that “deer in the headlights” look of complete and utter terror at being photographed because they hate how they look?

Signed,
Green Yogurt

Ah, yes, Green Yogurt, the age-old question: how to take a “natural” looking photograph. Unfortunately, I certainly can’t give advice on how to pose to have your photograph taken — people either tend to be comfortable in front of the camera, or they’re not. I
do, however, have a few tricks that I use when I’m taking a portrait to get people to relax:

(a) I lie.

I attended a conference earlier this year, and I knew my friend Kristin would be there. I wanted to take her photograph, and she describes herself as being “notorious for having that deer-in-the-headlights look” in photographs. I knew that I was going to have to make her feel a bit more comfortable in front of the camera in order to get a good shot.

So I lied to her and told her I wasn’t taking her picture.

Basically, I said something vague like, “Don’t worry, I’m not shooting now. I’m just testing the light.” And I kept talking to her, all the while furrowing my brow and fiddling with the camera after each shot, and pretending not to be paying any attention to what she was doing — in the meantime, of course I was taking the shot:

And I love how it turned out.


(b) I talk and joke incessantly.

This is related to the above: Once I’ve lied and told my subject I’m not taking their picture, I don’t ever tell them when I do start taking their picture. And then, basically we start joking, and laughing, and I’ll purposefully say something outrageous, and hopefully they’ll laugh in shock, and I’ll shoot.

One particularly memorable occasion was during a few days away with some friends on the Oregon coast, and I asked my friend Brené if I could take her portrait. She reluctantly agreed. We walked out on the beach, and were joking about nothing in particular. She sat down, we kept talking, and one of us said something outrageous. She threw her head back in laughter, and I took the shot — resulting in one of my favourite portraits ever:

(c) When it comes to children, I have them tell the jokes.

Everyone knows that when it comes to photographs, no one can do “Cheese Face” better than a kid. But I recently learned a trick: rather than me trying to tell a kid a joke, I have the kid tell me a joke. The image of Sam at the top of this post was taken while he was telling me a joke, and the image below? Taken last year while my daughter Alex was telling me something she found exceedingly funny:

The fact is, kids totally crack themselves up. (For what it’s worth, Alex’s joke wasn’t that funny.)

And finally:

Question 5:

I know that in an ideal world, I’d rather shoot in shade or filtered light, than in bright sunlight. But if I must shoot a subject (person, scene, etc.) at high noon with harsh light, what tips do you have for a successful shot?

Signed,
Jen

Hi, Jen,

You know what? While convention does say that you should shoot in shade, and in truth, overcast skies are lovely for avoiding weird shadows and that sort of thing, I’m actually a fan of shooting in harsh sunlight (see Brené’s image, above). In harsh-light circumstances, I think the best thing to do is embrace the sun as a tool, and use it to help create your image. A couple of ideas:

Have your subject close his/her eyes, and look into the sun:

Or use the sun to illustrate translucence:

Or better still, break all the rules and shoot directly into the sun, and capture some of that great lens flare, or a cool silhouette:

So I maintain it’s possible to get great images in harsh sunlight — it just means sometimes you have to get creative.

So, that’s it for this edition of Through the Gadling Lens — but please, keep sending your great questions to karen.walrond@weblogsinc.com, and I’ll try to tackle them in next month’s FAQ post. Next week, we’ll be back to our regular scheduled programming.

Karen is a writer and photographer in Houston, Texas. You can see more of her work at her site, Chookooloonks.
And for more Through the Gadling Lens, click here.

Through the Gadling Lens: SLRs vs point-and-shoots, and how to edit photos without feeling like you’re cheating

by Karen Walrond on

One of the common statements I hear from people is, “well, of course your holiday images are great — look at that huge camera you use!” The truth is that with as much technology as is crammed into those tiny little point-and-shoots these days, it’s absolutely possible to take images with a point and shoot of close to equal quality to an SLR.

Don’t believe me? Then let’s try an experiment: take a look at the following three pairs of images, all taken in Bath, United Kingdom, during my recent vacation. In each pair, one of them was shot with my Nikon D300 digital SLR camera (a serious bad-boy, if I do say so myself), and the other was shot with my Nikon Coolpix (a very respectable point-and-shoot). See if you can guess which of each pair was shot with the SLR. Ready?

(A) The Royal Crescent, Bath


(B) Susannah, a local artist and photographer


(C) The Circle

Have you guessed?

Here, I’ll give you a minute.

Okay.

So, in each pair, the first image was taken with the digital SLR, and the second with the point-and-shoot. Now you might argue that the colours are warmer in the images taken by the SLR than the compact camera, or you find that you notice more contrast in one set, but I’ll wager that in each case, the clarity of the images is on par with each other, and in fact, in the pair of the Royal Crescent, I think the point-and-shoot resulted in a better image.

Besides, issues like colours and contrast can be taken care of with Photoshop.

I can hear some of you already gasping in horror, and I admit, when I first started shooting with a digital camera, I was very anti-Photoshop. “Hmph,” I sniffed, “Photoshop is used by people who don’t know how to take photos. Besides, the digital manipulation of photography is just plain dishonest.” And then I would turn my heel and vanish in a cloud of self-righteousness, all the while secretly lamenting the fact that every photo I shot didn’t look anything like I thought it looked like when I first framed it in the viewfinder of my camera.

Then one day, I was at my local camera shop, confessing to one of the guys that I worked there that I really wished I could get the kinds of images other people got. “Like that one,” I said, pointing to the display image behind him. “Why don’t my photographs look like that?”

“That?” he smiled. “It’s a great shot, agreed, but you realize that that’s been digitally manipulated, right?”

“NO!” I responded, in horror. “Seriously? That’s not just the shot he took? How… how… disappointing!”

“Why?” he asked, genuinely confused. “There’s nothing wrong with Photoshop, Karen. It’s just processing – similar to what we used to do with chemicals, back in the olden days. I mean, do you really think Ansel Adams really shot those beautiful pictures without dodging and burning and manipulating the processing of the photograph?”

That’s when it dawned on me: digital processing doesn’t have to be about deception, and it can be all about artistry. It can be a tool to help communicate what you saw or felt at the time you took the image. But if you were amazed by the colours, or the sparkle in someone’s eyes, or the moodiness of the sky, then why not make sure that people who see your images are struck by the same things?

Eventually, over time, I’ve come up with a few unofficial rules for myself when using Photoshop (or any other photo-editing software) that helps ensure I’m using the tool as honestly as possible. Understand that I’m not suggesting that others using the tool in a different way are being dishonest — again, art is in the eye of the beholder. I’m just saying that for my own warped sense of morality, using Photoshop in this way feels the most honest to me — and in fact, once you read the following, you might feel that I’m the cheatingest cheater who ever cheated. I just offer these as a jumping-off point of discussion.

1. I don’t delete pixels. I was admiring the image a friend of mine shot when coming out of a Tube station in London a few years ago. “This is great,” I said. “Thanks!” he responded. “And the best part? There was a person standing right over here,” he motioned to a substantial portion of the image, “and I just Photoshopped him out!”

Now, obviously, this didn’t change the fact that the photograph he’d taken was still beautiful; however, for me, the fact that he’d removed an item from the image made the photograph feel a bit more contrived. So my rule is that I don’t remove objectionable objects from my images — I’d much rather check through the viewfinder before I take the shot to see if it there are people or things in the way, and fix it that way, before I squeeze the shutter.

2. I don’t blatantly change colours. Let me clarify: I do sometimes bump up the hue of a colour, or accentuate the contrast in an image — because frankly? Sometimes my camera just can’t capture how amazingly blue-green the ocean is, or how shockingly yellow the fall foliage happens to be without a little help. I won’t, however, change someone’s red sweater to blue, just because I think she’d look better in that colour. All colour-clashes remain as-is.

3. I do sharpen and increase the contrast of almost every image I shoot. Not a lot, you understand, but I think it pretty much enhances every image.

4. I sometimes manipulate the lighting so that the viewer focuses on exactly what I want them to focus on, creating a “vignette” effect.

To help illustrate my point, here’s how I processed a couple of images, step-by-step:

Ellie:

This is Ellie, my niece, sitting on a large rock on Maenporth beach, in her native Cornwall, England. This image was taken right out of the camera, with no processing whatsoever:

This is a perfectly acceptable image; however, the thing is, I know that in real life, when you see Ellie, you can’t help but notice her piercing blue eyes, possibly more than any other physical characteristic. For this reason, I think a bit of tweaking might help make this point.

First, as I do with every shot, I enhanced the sharpness and the contrast a bit:

The changes are subtle; however, the added sharpness shows a bit more detail in her hair, and her eyes are starting to look more striking — more like she actually looks in real life.

Finally, I’ll use a gradient tool to “burn” the colours around her face a bit more (i.e., warm up the colours around her):

The final result, while not drastically different from the original image, communicates a bit more about her spirit-filled eyes and the warmth of her personality. In my opinion, therefore, this is a far more “accurate” image of Ellie than the original.

One more, more elaborate example:

St. Ives:

Again, the following shot of the little town of St. Ives, Cornwall, was taken straight out of the camera:

Again, not a bad photograph, but really nothing special. Still, what I remember about the moment I took this picture is that after a really beautiful day, the clouds were beginning to accumulate, and we could tell we were on the verge of seeing the last of the sun, as the rain settled in for the rest of the day. The moment actually seemed rather magical, as we watched the weather in transition. And so, in processing the image, I wanted to capture the mood of that transition.

First, as with almost every shot I take, I enhanced the sharpness and the contrast:

Already, this photograph is starting to look a bit better to me — the clouds are beginning to capture the transitional mood, and the additional sharpness has brought out the detail in the windows of all the little buildings in the town.

But watch what happens when I pull out the gradient/colour “burn” tool again:

Now the image, with the deepened hues of the sky and the ocean, really communicates the moment when the image was taken: the sky was beginning to get gloomy, the sea was mirroring the sky’s atmosphere, and the town was dearly hanging on to that last bit of sunshine. It’s exactly as I remember.

The tweaks I’ve done above are relatively minor, but for me, they make a world of difference in honing the feeling I was trying to communicate with the images. In certain cases, I modify the images even more; however, the final results still feel very honest and true. So if you’ve been reticent about trying Photoshop (or Lightbox, or Picnik — which is free! — or any other photo editing tool), perhaps what you’ve seen here will make you consider trying to add some digital magic to your photos. And once you’ve handled that, if you start to feel like you’ve finally found the artist in you, there are some really wild things you can do with textures and filters and all kinds of other treatments — go nuts!

In the meantime, if you have any questions you’d like to ask, please e-mail me at karen.walrond@weblogsinc.com, and I’ll do my best to answer them in future posts.

Karen is a writer and photographer in Houston, Texas. You can see more of her work at her site, Chookooloonks.
And for more Through the Gadling Lens, click here.