Recently, I attended a Hasselblad workshop which focused on their H-system of digital medium format cameras. During the workshop we were given access to the newest H4D cameras and a comprehensive set of lenses. Two of the workshop organizers, Oliver Klink and Stephen Johnson, were nature photographers who personally shot with the Hasselblad. We also had a very knowledgable staff member from Hasselblad, Eric Peterson, helping us as well.

My main motivation was to see if using medium format digital is something that I’d like to consider for my own photography which has primarily been with 35mm film and digital cameras. As you can see from my website, I typically shoot travel images, although I have also done a little portrait work. Generally during the day I shoot handheld when there is enough light (I consider IS/VR a godsend) and with tripods for surise and sunset.

The workshop occured over two weeks with a weekend at Point Reyes National Seashore photographing and a review where we looked at images printed in size from 21″x28″ to 30″x40″. I also tested out the camera with a few portrait pictures separately.

The Camera

Figure 1. Hasselblad H4D Camera. Image from Hasselblad.

Hasselblad has three variations of the H4D camera which are refered to as the 40, 50, and 60 depending on the number of megapixels in the back. At the workshop, I used the H4D-40 which has a 40MP sensor made by Kodak yielding a humongous digital file 7304×5478 pixels in size. This is enough to make a 40″x30″ print at 180dpi without any uprezzing. A few other people in the workshop were using the 50MP back where the sensor is made by Dalsa.

Cameras in the H-system are modular which means that you can take it competely apart into separate components for the body, digital back, and viewfinder. Note that although the system is “modular”, the backs are not easily interchangeable as they need to be calibrated for a specific body.

One advantage of the digital back is that the entire sensor is accessible making them very easy to clean. However, by the same token, since the sensors are completely exposed and are vulnerable to scratching. In our workshop, we found that two of the backs had huge vertical scratches in the sensor ruining the images (luckily the folks found out at the beginning). Since the scratches were located in roughly the same spot, we speculated that they occurred during the mounting of the back.

The Lenses

We had access to almost every Hasselblad lens available for the H-system including primes ranging from 35mm to 300mm, two zooms (35-90 and 50-110), and the HTS 1.5 tilt-shift adapter. The first thing you notice about the Hasselblad lenses is their physical size: they are enormous in comparison to 35mm both in terms of size and weight. For example, the Hasselblad 35-90mm zoom is over double the weight of my canon 24-105mm f/4 zoom and is 50% longer. See the table below for some lens size comparisons.

In general usage, I found the Hasselblad lenses very pleasant to use. They were very sharp (none of that mush in the corners that I see with some Canon wide angles), had little distortion, and gave a very warm color rendition.

Hasselblad lenses also have built into them leaf shutters which allow for flash sync at any shutter speed. This is useful if you want to use flash outdoors and overpower sunlight but it is not really a concern for my photography.

Autofocus

For static subjects, I thought the autofocus on the Hasselblad camera was comparable to my Canon 5D mark II. The Hasselblad has only one autofocus spot located in the center of the image so you have to focus and then recompose. However, I use my Canon in the same manner with the center AF point (I don’t find the additional AF points as reliable).

Speedwise, I did not notice any differences from the 5D in terms of autofocus but it’s possible that the Canon could be significantly quicker. I did not perform extensive side-by-side testing, and without that it would be difficult to make a definitive statement about their relative autofocus strengths (other than they seem similar at first glance).

With the H4D, Hasselblad instituted a focus adjustment called “True Focus” whose purpose is to adjust for the slight differences in subject to sensor distances when you focus and recompose. I used true focus for all my shooting simply because the true-focus button doubled as an AF-on button on the back of the camera. For the most part, I don’t think it makes a difference unless you are shooting portraits wide-open.

The only time I had difficulty with the autofocus was late a night after the sun had gone down. While I was shooting the docks and water in the image below, I could only achieve focus on the window and lights in the middle of the image. The AF would not lock on the dock in the foreground. In fairness, at this time it was very dim and the exposure was over a minute at ISO 100.

Figure 2. Docks at Tomales Bay

Shooting Style

Using the Hasselblad meant shooting almost everything from a tripod. Handheld shots were possible but it was difficult to keep the camera steady enough for sharp images unless there was a lot of light. In the workshop, I only have a few shots that were handheld that I kept such as the picture of the cow below.

Figure 3. Holstein cow at Historic E Ranch

I think this may be a problem for general shooting, especially for available light portraits that I like to do handheld. For example, in the picture below I needed to use the tripod to keep everything sharp. Normally with my Canon’s I wouldn’t hesitate to shoot this handheld with IS to ensure sharpness (I would probably increase the ISO and open up the lens somewhat).

Figure 4. Victor Stangenberg and his sculptures. Inverness, California

I also discovered that my tripod setup using an Acratech Ultimate Ballhead, and a Velbon el Carmagne 640 carbon fiber tripod was borderline for the H4D. I would get creep if I didn’t tighten the ballhead as much as possible. Walking around with the camera and tripod over my shoulders was a big no-no and the ballhead would slip to point where the camera would be pointed straight down.

One big benefit of the H4D is the larger viewfinder which made it easier to compose. When I shoot with my DSLR I often have problems with the horizon coming out at an angle (even when shooting off a tripod). but with the H4D almost everything came out level.

Ergonomics

As mentioned previously, the camera is very heavy especially if you are used to holding lighter DSLRs. However, with the exception of weight the camera fits very nicely in my hands and I found the controls easily accessible.

Navigating the camera menus is a different matter and I spent a significant amount of time setting up the camera even with the help of the Hasselblad representative. For example, it probably took me about half an hour to figure out how to set the self timer with a 3 second delay between mirror-up and the shutter firing (because I didn’t have a cable release). Perhaps the most confusing aspect was that I was never sure when a setting would be saved permanently, reset after a single shot, or reset when the camera was powered down.

The H4D has a profile system where you can quickly switch between a group of settings. For example, a landscape profile might have low ISO, aperture priority and mirror-up whereas an action setting might have higher ISO and no mirror-up. Although I set up profiles initially, I did not use them and found it more convenient to simply change the settings manually.

The LCD display on the back was acceptable but not great — for the price of the camera you would think that they would put in a higher quality display. On the LCD, you can zoom in to check sharpness and see most of the information that you would expect. The only thing that I felt was missing was a color histogram which I find useful when photographing highly saturated subjects such as flowers to ensure that none of the color channels are clipped.

RAW Processing

The H4D-40 produces raw files (with a .3FR extension) that are 50-80MB in size depending on the amount of compression. However, once you convert them to 16bit tiffs you get a massive 240MB file. These files are considerably slower to work with on my computer setup (MacPro with 10 GB of RAM) then my 5DII raws.

Hasselblad also has their own software to process the images called Phocus. One of the advantages of Phocus is that it uses parameters specific to each lens, not just the model as a whole, to fix issues such as distortion, vignetting, and chromatic aberration. However, I did not have much experience with Phocus and I found it painfully slow to work with especially for editing. In the end, I decided to use Lightroom to edit and process my images with the idea that I would reprocess my selects with Phocus.

Image Quality

Image quality is the main reason for getting the Hasselblad and it did not dissapoint. With the 40MP back you get a file which supports huge prints at high dpi settings. My initial impressions of the files were that (1) they were very sharp on a per pixel basis, possibly because there is no anti-aliasing filter over the sensor, and (2) the colors were pleasing to my eye and didn’t need much processing or alterations.

I think the lenses also contributed significantly to the image quality. With my Canon DSLRs the first thing I do with a lens is test it to check to see how it performs in terms of sharpness. I have sometimes been dissapointed with the quality and even bought multiple copies of one lens (17-40L) trying to get a better version. In contrast, the Hasselblad lenses all seemed very good even in the extreme corners.

Normally when I test image quality, I begin with static architectural subjects for reproducibility and consistency. However, I didn’t have this option at Point Reyes so instead I will show below a few crops at 100% magnification to give you an idea of what the camera system can produce. For the crops, the images were processed in Lightroom with default sharpening settings (amount = 25, radius = 1.0, detail = 25, masking = 0) to produce to TIFF files. These were then converted to sRGB and saved as jpegs in photoshop with quality level 9.

Figure 5 shows a crop taken from the center of the frame from my portrait picture of Victor Stangenberg (Figure 4). If you click on the image to see it at 100% magnification). Looking at the unresized pixels, I am impressed by how sharp they appear.

Figure 5. Full pixel crop from the center of the image frame in Figure 4. Photo taken with the 80mm lens at f/8 and 1/6 second. Click on the picture to see the image at 100% magnification.

Figures 6 through 8 shows a picture taken at Limantour beach for a flowering bush with 100% crops in the center (Figure 7) and bottom left corner (Figure 8). The image is still very sharp in the extreme corner.

Figure 6. Flowering bush at Limantour beach. Photo taken with 80mm at f/8 and 1/125 second.

Figure 7. Center crop of image in Figure 6 at 100% magnification

Figure 8. Crop from bottom left corner of the image in Figure 6 at 100% magnification.

Figure 9 shows an image of a cow taken Historic E. Ranch. Figure 10 is a 100% crop of the eye area which is very sharp and you can see individual eyelashes. There are also specular highlights just beneath the eye. Figure 11 shows a 100% crop of the hair on the cows head just to the right of the eye. This image is the only one where I can see some undesireable artifacts in the hair. However, I doubt these would show up in a print and it may be that processing with Phocus would eliminate them.

Figure 9. Curious cow at Historic E. Ranch. Photo taken with the 50-110mm zoom at 60mm, f/5.6, and 1/350 second.

Figure 10. Crop of Figure 9 at 100% magnification.

Figure 11. Crop of hair from Figure 9 at 100% magnification.

Thoughts on Image Resolution

In terms of the raw number of pixels, the Hasselblad’s greater resolution will let one to make prints one size larger than with my Canon DSLR system. For example,

• The Hasselblad produces a 7304 x5478 pixel image which at 180 DPI yields a 40″x30″ print
• The Canon 5D II produces a 5616 x 3744 pixel image which at 187 DPI yields a 30″x20″ print

Although this doesn’t sound like much with a linear increase of only 33% in the long dimension, after looking at the larger prints I can say that visual impact is much greater (at least for myself).

With 35mm digital systems, I feel like I am coming up against a limit and further increases in sensor MP will only result in small increases in print detail and quality. When I moved from the Canon 5D with 12MP to the 5DII with 21MP the detail improved but not by as much as you would expect based on the number of megapixels alone. I think this is because with a fixed size sensor size, as we increase the number of MP the lenses and shooting technique become the limiting factor.

Another alternative to get this resolution with DSLRs is to make digital composite pictures by stitching images together. For example, with a tilt-shift lens I can stitch three Canon shots together and get a 40MP final image which is basically the same size as the H4D capture. With a panorama head I can make even bigger captures. While this works wonderfully, there are many drawbacks and it is not appropriate for all shooting situations such as when there is subject movement or rapidily changing lighting conditions. Furthermore, stitching requires more post-processing work which I’d like to avoid if possible.

High ISO

For the most part, I didn’t do much testing of the high ISO capability of the back. Generally the workshop organizers discouraged us from using the higher ISO settings on the camera and I didn’t see much reason to disagree given that we were shooting from tripods. However, I did make a few images at 800 ISO using the 50MP back as shown below. As you can see, the Lightroom processed image shows considerable noise, much more than my Canon 5DII would produce. Processing the same image in Phocus, Hasselblad’s own RAW processor, yields a much cleaner image although there appears to be a slight loss of detail.

Figure 12. Image of leaf at 800 ISO

Figure 13. Full pixel crop of 800 ISO image processed in Lightroom 3 with default settings.

Figure 14. Full pixel crop of ISO 800 image processed in Phocus

Battery Life

I have no kind words for the battery life on the H4D as it was simply pathetic. For example, one morning during the workshop we shot the sunrise of Drakes Estero and after an hour and half people were already running out of battery power. In fairness, there may be a couple mitigating reasons why the batteries dropped so low so quickly:

• The batteries we had were new and I was told that they need a few charges to reach full capacity.
• The power meter on the camera may not have been calibrated properly against the battery. For example after fully charging a battery and checking capacity in the camera I would get varying readings that were as low as 85%.
• People were not fully comfortable with the camera and may have been shooting and reviewing more than they typically would with their personal camera systems.

Summary

Using the Hasselblad has definitely peaked my interested in medium format digital cameras although I am not sure that the H4D is the right choice for me. In terms of image quality and resolution the H4D delivers without question, but the camera would introduce significant logistical problems related to its weight (portability) and cost (an H4D-40 kit with one lens is about $20k). I also haven’t yet explored other MF options such as the newly released Pentax 645D which may be better suited for my photography.

More Images

You can see more images taken with the Hasselblad in my Point Reyes gallery. The H4D pictures are those with a 4 to 3 aspect ratio.

For a while, I’ve started to notice that my HP Z3200 would have connection problems with my computer (Mac Pro hooked up via USB). For example, after a period of non-use, I would not be able to use the HP printer utility to access the paper calibration menu. This printer control panel item would simply time-out after a few minutes and I would need to reboot the printer by turning it off and then on again. Another issue that I’ve had is that some menu items such as the troubleshooting menu were not accessible either (same time-out problem).

Yesterday it occured to me that maybe I should try using an ethernet connection instead of USB. So far this seems to have solved the problem (I can access all of the items in the printer control menu). I am keeping my fingers crossed.

Happy cow at Point Reyes, California.

This previous weekend, I was at Point Reyes shooting as part of a Hasselblad workshop where I was able to use the new H4D camera. This camera is literally a beast weighing 5 to 10 lbs, depending on the lens you have mounted, and accepts a variety of digital backs ranging from 40-60 MP. (fyi the camera costs more than my car.)

For one of our morning shoots, we had selected a point by Historic E Ranch where we could catch the sunlight hitting the coastal coves. After I had shot the sunrise, I was looking around to see what else I could photograph and noticed the nearby cows. I guess they had noticed me as well as this very curious and happy looking cow came up to investigate me. I stuck my camera through the fence boards and took the above shot of the cow just before she came up to lick my camera. Thankfully, she just got the lens hood and not lens element itself.

Although I had gone into the weekend looking to see how I could use the Hasselblad (or any medium format digital camera) for landscape photography, this cow shot turned out to be my favorite image from the weekend.

I have been to Hong Kong several times and each visit has been a wonderful experience. One of my favorite things to do is to simply get lost in the city and walk around and explore without any plan at all (Hong Kong is very safe). There are many unique little stores, restaurants, temples, and memorials that can be a delight to experience. While I am a big advocate of self discovery, here are a few attractions and things to do that I really enjoyed.

Watch the sunset from Victoria Peak. I usually take the Peak Tram from St. John’s building to get to the top and then walk down on one of the many trails.   Visit Wong Tai Sin, the temple for the god of good fortune. You can burn incense for your ancestors and have your fortune told with Kau Cim sticks.   Practice or watch Tai Chi in Kowloon Park. This is an excellent place for a stroll and there is a large public swimming pool as well.   See the Hong Kong skyline from Kowloon. At night, Kowloon provides a great viewpoint for the Symphony of Lights, a laser light show involving many of the building in the Hong Kong Skyline.   Have a prayer written at the Man Mo Temple. The temple is dedicated to Man Tai (God of Literature) and Mo Tai (God of War).   Go shopping on Li Yuen Street or in the many markets scattered about Hong Kong.   Climb 268 steps to see the Tian Tan Buddha on Lantau Island. You can get here by either taking the ferry or riding the Ngong Ping skyrail (a cable car lift).   Ride the Star Ferry across Victoria Harbour. The Star Ferry is an extremely inexpensive way to go from Kowloon to Hong Kong Island and is ridden by many locals and tourists.   Try the local cuisine at Temple Street Night Market. Recommended for adventurous eaters and seafood lovers.

You can see several hundred more pictures of Hong Kong in my galleries including images from the main island, Kowloon, and New Kowloon.

On Adobe’s blog, they just posted that Lightroom 3 and Adobe camera raw are going to have lens correction. I repeat, LR3 and camera raw is going to get lens correction.

This is going to be a huge benefit for my workflow process. Up to this point, I’ve been using another raw converter, DxO Optics Pro, to correct distortion in my architectural images. While DxO does a fantastic job of correcting problems, I absolutely hate the program because the interface is terrible, it has an obnoxious copy protection scheme, and it costs several hundred dollars. I’ll finally be able to dump it greatly simplfying my workflow.

If you check out the video below, Adobe also shows how you can make your own lens profiles. You can’t do this in DxO and I’m very excited about this functionality because (1) I won’t have to worry if DxO is going to release a module for my particular lens, and (2) the profiles can be specific to the distortion in my lens. There is sample variation between lenses of the same make and DxO wouldn’t always eliminate all of the distortion.

Sunday, April 18, is Bay Images day on iwearyourshirt.com – check it out if you are not familiar with what Jason and Evan do. These guys wear shirts for a living – you can’t really beat that! I’m pleased to have a chance to work with them.

Bryce Canyon National Park, Utah

This contest is now closed.

Thank you to everyone who entered! The print winners in the random drawing were Kristal and Grace Hester. It was really hard to decide on the winner of the print for the most interesting comment. But I had to decide, so the winner is Maureen Hall. I will contact the winners directly to arrange shipment of their prints.

National Memorial Chorten in Thimphu, Bhutan.

Last fall, I visited Bhutan and had an amazing experience. Bhutan is small landlocked country located in the Himalaya mountains between India and Tibet (China). In addition to Bhutan’s natural scenery and wildlife, the country is steeped in Buddhist traditions and culture, making it a photographer’s dream to visit.

Tourism in Bhutan is highly regulated by the government. Visitors are not free to simply move about the country and you must go with a guided tour (unless you are a guest of a Bhutanese citizen). Bhutan is also more restrictive about photographing Buddhist artifacts than other countries such as Nepal.

Here are some of my tips for visiting and photographing the country:

• Trip planning. As you are planning your trip, let your tour company know up front that you are interested in photography. They can help you plan your itinerary and give you advice as to the best sites for your interests.
• Rely on your guide. I had the good fortune to have a very experienced guide that had previously worked with photographers such as Art Wolfe. Your guide can be an incredible resource and will likely know the best viewpoints and locations to get you the pictures you want (thank you, Pema). They can also help you plan when you may have only one chance to visit a location.
• Time of year. Spring and fall are generally the best times to visit Bhutan. In those seasons the weather is mild and they coincide with many of the major festivals. If you are a bird watcher, the endangered black-necked crane arrives in Bhutan in October and stays until March. Monsoon season is in July and August (which you probably want to avoid).
• Photographing people. Most Bhutanese (especially children) are very friendly and open to having you take their picture so don’t be afraid to ask. However this is changing especially in the bigger cities and you may get a more typical western response.
• Lens selection. On my trip, I used a three lens kit composed of the 17-40mm f/4, 24-105mm f/4, and 70-200mm f/4 zooms on a full frame camera (Canon 5d Mk II). For the vast majority of my shooting, these lenses provided adequate coverage. The only time I could have used more length is at the Thimphu Tsechu, which took place in a large courtyard, making it difficult at times to get close enough to the dancers. If you are going to photograph wildlife, you will obviously want to use longer lenses.
• Know where you can photograph. You can photograph in most Dzongs and Lhakhangs except in the assembly halls or religious temples. You may need to leave your bags outside before entering these areas.
• Photographing Tsechus. For many people, the highlight of their trip to Bhutan is attending the religious Tsechus which are festivals that can last several days with accompanying dances and music. I attended the Thimphu Tsechu, which lasts four days and is attended by thousands of Bhutanese people. In general, the tsechu is very hectic early in the day with photographers jockeying for the best position. In the afternoon, the competition for the best photo spots lessens as many photographers have already gotten their pictures and break for the day. Generally, you can walk around the edge of the courtyard in front of the audience, but try not to block people’s view. Having two bodies really helps (telephoto, mid-range zoom) as sometimes the action moves fast and you won’t have enough time to change lenses.

Dance of the Ging and Tsholing. Thimphu tsechu, Bhutan.

• Bring high SPF sunscreen. The sun in Bhutan is extremely strong and it is very easy to get sunburned. According to WHO, “at higher altitudes, a thinner atmosphere filters less UV radiation. With every 1000 metres increase in altitude, UV levels increase by 10% to 12%”. Many locations in Bhutan are at seven to 10 thousand feet. Additionally, you are not allowed to wear hats when attending a tsechu, which often takes place in open courtyards with little shade to protect you from the sun.
• Return to sites multiple times. In order to get the best light, it is helpful to return to sites multiple times if you can. For example, my itinerary had me in Thimphu for several days and I went to the National Memorial Chorten three times (once to scout the site, once at sunrise the next morning, and later that same morning). If you are going east from Thimphu, you will probably go through Dochu La Pass twice (outbound and inbound). Unfortunately, both days I was at the pass were extremely hazy and I was not able to get a decent picture of the mountain ranges.
• Pay attention to the sunrise and sunset times. Although you can look this information up online before your trip, the times given may not take into account that your subject is located in a valley and the sun won’t rise above the mountains until an hour later.
• Watch for cobras. Bhutan is home to a number of poisonous snakes, such as cobras, so be careful walking through fields and other rural areas. I discovered this accidentally as I was rushing through a lightly forested hillside trying to get to a good vantage point and ran into a cobra that reared up and hissed at me.
• Hiking. Many of the best photo views involve short to moderately long hikes. Be prepared and in shape especially since you may be at a higher altitude than you are used to. (Thimphu is at 7700′, Phobjikha valley 9600′, and the Tiger’s Nest monastery is at 10200′).
• Weather changes. The weather can change quite rapidly in Bhutan. On the day I hiked up to Taktshang, it was very rainy initially with a heavy overcast and fog occluding the monastery. However, by noon the sky had cleared, allowing sunny shots.

The 108 chorten at Dochu La Pass, Bhutan.

I recently bought a USB hard drive docking station and it totally changed the way I backup my files. Previously, I had a mish-mash of external hard drives, multi-bay drive enclosures (for JBOD), and a RAID array. It was getting very unwieldy: storing the drives was difficult since most had different form factors and they couldn’t be stacked on top of each other, I always ran out of trays for the multi-bay enclosures, and finally keeping all the AC adaptors together with the right external drive was a chore.

This past year, I’ve tried a new tactic by purchasing a USB docking station for my hard drives (Kingwin EZ-dock 2). The way it works is that you simply slide a bare SATA drive into a slot and the dock connects the drive to your computer via USB.

USB hard drive docking station from Kingwin.

This made life so much easier for me. I now just keep my bare drives in anti-static bags (I have a dozen or so) and they fit neatly into an old padded camera bag. I just pull out the drive I need, slide it into the dock, and return it once I’ve performed my backup.

I have the Kingwin EZ-dock 2 which has two slots for hard drives. It is not particularly fast, and when I timed my rsync backups I only achieved a transfer rate of 22 MB/sec for a transfer of several hundred GB. Nevertheless, the speed is more than adequate for my usage and it has greatly simplified the physical storage of my backup hard disks.

Rows of hoodoos at Bryce Point. Bryce Canyon National Park, Utah.

Bryce Canyon is one of my favorite locations in the southwest. The alien landscape with rows of hoodoos (thin spires of rock with variable thickness) never fails to amaze me. I grew up in Ontario, Canada and there is nothing even remotely similar to the unusual rockforms in Bryce.

Taking this picture was relatively easy and the primarily skill involved was patience in terms of waiting for the sun to set. Basically,

• Show up before sunset at Bryce Point and walk along the rim to find a position that will yield the composition you want.
• As the sun sets, the sky will dim and its brightness will eventually match the foreground. You can monitor the relative brightness of the sky and foreground by either using a spotmeter or simply checking the histogram on a digital camera to see if the sky is blowing out.
• Once the brightness of the sky and foreground are similar take the picture. For landscapes I use a sturdy tripod, cable release, and mirror lock-up. On this day, it was very windy so I anchored my tripod with a bungee cord (the bungee cord attaches to a hook on the center column of my tripod and I stand on the other end).

Note that the rim at Bryce Canyon varies from 8000 to 9000 feet. If you are not used to the altitude, walking and any physical activity will be more difficult because of the thinner air.

Photo details:

• Canon 5D with 24-105mm f/4 L lens at 105mm (IS off)
• ISO 100
• f/13
• 2 second exposure
• mirror lockup
• processed in Lightroom

A reader sent me an email asking why I chose the HP Z3200 printer as opposed to the Epson 7900. This was a difficult decision for me to make and I debated with myself for a long time over which printer I should get. Ultimately, both printers can produce superb quality prints and my decision was made based on other factors:

HP Z3200 Pros

• Spectrophotometer. The Z3200 has a built in spectrophotometer allowing me to create my own ICC profiles easily with the press of a few buttons. There is a spectrophotometer available for the Epson but it is expensive (an additional $1500).
• Price. The HP Z3200 usually sells for less than the 7900 and at the time I purchased my printer HP offered a $500 rebate. Both Epson and HP offer rebates (and the details change frequently) so you should check to see what the price difference would be for you.
• Clogging. The HP Z3200 has very little problems with clogging whereas this appears to be an issue for the 7900. In the past, other Epson printers I’ve owned had clogging issues whenever I left them unused for an extended period. I imagine if you have a high print volume and print regularly, this would not be an issue but it is a significant concern for me.
• Replaceable Print Heads. HP Z3200 has user replaceable print heads so if the print heads were ever to clog on the HP, they could be replaced at relatively low cost. The HP print heads come in pairs (about $50) and this adds only a small additional cost amortized over their lifespan. The print heads are rated for a liter of ink (a normal cartridge is 130 ml).
• Size. The HP Z3200 is lighter and physically smaller than Epson which makes it easier for me to move around (143 lbs versus 220 lbs for the Epson).

Epson 7900 Pros

• Consistency. One argument I’ve heard about the HP Z3200 is that it includes a spectrophotometer because it needs it. I.e., there is more variability and drift in the printing process and the Z3200 needs to be fine-tuned more frequently. My experience with having to recalibrate the printer supports this. (The HP driver lets you know when the calibration profile is old and I’ve needed to update the profile multiple times in the past six months )
• Paper Loading. Paper loading on the Epson is superior to the HP Z3200. On the Z3200 you have to reach around the back of the printer to load it. On the Epson you can load paper from the front.
• Build quality. The HP Z3200 is made mostly out of plastic and feels very flimsy. The Epson is a solid piece of machinery. It’s like the difference between today’s $10 plastic keyboards and the old IBM clickety keyboards.

Factors that didn’t make a difference

• Image quality. Both printers can make superb color and black and white images. I couldn’t really tell much of a difference looking at prints and many other reviewers have stated that each printer has some strengths/weaknesses.
• Bronzing. The Epson 7900 may have slight bronzing in its prints. HP deals with this using a gloss enhancer but in my opinion the bronzing on Epson 7900 prints is not an issue in practice.
• Print Permanence. Wilhelm research rates the longevity of the Epson K3 inks for 45 years unframed and 83 years framed under regular glass for the luster paper. The Z3200 achieves 102 years unframed and over 250 years under glass for the satin paper. While the Z3200 has better numbers, the permanence ratings for the 7900 are more than adequate.
• Ink Usage. I’ve heard a variety of claims that the Z3200 is more frugal on ink and has lower operating costs. However, this is difficult to substantiate and even if one printer were more expensive to run than another, the total cost of ink and paper is negligable compared to the sale price of fine art prints.

Although I chose the HP printer, I would probably also be very happy with the Epson 7900 as long as I didn’t run into the clogging problem.