Epson Stylus Photo 1280

The Epson Stylus Photo 1280 is a discontinued model. The printer utilizes 2 inkjet cartridges, the T007 and T009 which can still be purchased at any office supply store and online from Epson. The inkset is dye-based. The printer has a 13" carriage, meaning that is can print paper 13" and up to 44" long with the Epson driver. If you can find one with all the original parts, the printer comes with a roll paper adapter (no cutter.) Generally, my favorite paper sizes are 8.5"X11" and 11"x14" so the 13" carriage is ideal. I can print a larger 13"x19" if I have an image that really calls for a larger print.

I found my 1280 on Craigslist a couple years ago for $30. Quite a bargain considering the original price was around $500. (Not to blow smoke, but Craigslist is an excellent place to find a used printer. Sometimes people get printers as part of a computer package for "free" and they sell the printer cheaply. This is a great place to get a printer for not a lot of dough to experiment with.) I purchased a few spongeless refillable cartridges, a chip resetter and the MISPRO inkset from MIS. (Due to an Epson lawsuit, MIS, and other US companies, no longer sell spongeless refillable cartridges. I have been able to buy these kinds of cartridges off of Ebay.) I eventually dedicated the 1280 to black & white printing and switched to the ultra tone (UT-FSN) black & white inkset.

One thing that needs to be noted is that Epson strongly discourages the use of non-Epson inks in their printers. I have not read the fine print but I would wager that by using 3rd party inks, I am voiding some kind of warranty. This should be taken into consideration if you plan on purchasing a new printer that has a warranty or an expensive printer where the cost due to possible damage may outweight the cost savings of using 3rd party inks.

One of the first things I noticed were the head clogs. It generally took me a couple head cleanings every printing session to get a good nozzle check print. Printing sessions were infrequent which didn't help. Also, my computer is upstairs in the house and during the summer months it can get pretty hot during the day. While I haven't done any experiments, I have a feeling that the high temperatures can dry out the print head and lead to clogs. Another theory is that the Epson inks are dye based with smaller particles and the pigments based ink particles are larger and can clog the head. Based on the information on the MIS website, the size of the pigment particles is not an issue with the 1280.

The UT-FSN inkset is a carbon based pigment set that has four shades of black to it. The "color" of inks are black (K), cyan (C), magenta (M) and yellow (Y). The black can either be the "photo black" which can be used on glossy papers or the "eboni" which is recommended for matte papers. I chose to use the eboni and print on matte paper. It took me a few tries to find a matte paper that I liked. One lesson learned is to buy sample packs of paper if they are available. This helps reduce costs if you end up not liking the paper for some reason (I have given away lots of paper and trashed others that I would consider fire starter.)

The refillable cartridges have small plugs that are removed to fill the chambers. This is best done with a syringe and blunt needle. I arranged the inkset in the recommended order per the MIS website. The order of the inks is CMCMY. Looking at the image to the left, you can see the chips on each cartridge. On these particular cartridges, the whole yellow piece slides off making it easier to replace the chips if you need to. Cartridge design from other suppliers may vary.

The chip resetter is used to reset these chips each time you fill up the cartridges so the print driver will indicate the approximate ink levels in the cartridges. The print driver may tell you that you have a "foreign" cartridge and "Do you wish to continue?" each time you reset and install the cartridges. As you can see from the picture of the cartridges and the chip resetter, the contacts and pins on the resetter are in the same pattern. When the resetter is properly held against the chip contacts, it blinks red a couple times and then green to indicate the resetting operation was successful. If you don't ever get the green, it means something is wrong with your chip and more than likely needs to be replaced. Auto reset chips are available that will automatically reset at some ink level by turning off the printer or removing power to the printer. This way, you can just pull out the plugs and refill the cartridges without removing the cartridge from the printer. I haven't used them so I don't know exactly how they work.


Looking left to right on the T009 cartridge, the color order is cyan, light cyan, magenta, light magenta and yellow. The cartridge is filled with the "cyan" ink in the cyan and magenta positions of the cartridge. The light cyan and light magenta positions are filled with the "magenta" ink and the yellow position is filled with the "yellow" ink. (Again, CMCMY positions.) I filled the T007 cartridge (smaller cart) with eboni. This gives the four shades of black to work with.

I made a 51-step wedge to linearize my prints. (More on how to create your own step wedge in another post.) I use a Datacolor Printfix Pro to read the patches and QTR to create an ICC profile. My favorite paper with this combination was Inkpress Rag Warm Tone 300. This is a cotton rag paper, no brighteners, 300 gsm, 15 mil paper. It is a very heavy paper. There isn't much flaking but I have had a few prints with white spots. I use a drafters brush to wipe away any flakes before loading the printer. In letter size, it needs a little "help" to get it to feed into the printer. (The 1280 has a lever to adjust platen for thicker papers.) The combination of the neutral ink and the warm paper gave a slightly warm print that was lovely.

The reason I chose a matte paper was due to part of the ejection system of the 1280. There are small gear-like wheels that grab the paper and push the print out when printing is done. If you look closely at the surface of the print, you'll see marks on the surface of the print - especially glossy prints. There are methods (here and here) for removing the pizza wheels, but I never tried them. Honestly, I found that the matte paper looks very nice behind glass when framed. You don't have to deal with the reflection off of the print and the glass which can be annoying if you're lighting on the frame is not right. As well, a couple years ago, the dmax of matte papers was much darker than that of the glossy papers. There were no fancy fiber-based glossy papers available, only resin-based glossy.

At times, the 1280 truly frustrated me with head clogging and banding in the prints. At other times, the 1280 with the UT-FSN inkset made awesome prints. I have only had one 1280. I've read accounts of people having no clog problems and other's having worse experiences than myself. I'm currently experimenting with an Epson R220 and an ancient Epson Sylus Photo 2000P. With my preliminary results so far, I'm wishing for another 1280 and UT-FSN inkset.

Last weekend, I took my 1280 to the electronics recycler. I'm regretting that decision. I wish I would have kept the printer and tried to fix it myself. I had nothing to lose as the printer is now in some junk heap. It could have been no worse off after my attempts to repair and could have ended up functioning well again. Who knows?

I don't have any affiliation with any of the above manufacturers and/or products. This really is a "journey" and as there are no 1st party manufacturers of a dedicated black & white inkjet printer, those of us who want one have to turn to 3rd party solutions.

Online resources listed in this post:
www.craigslist.org - online classified ads.
www.inksupply.com - suppliers of bulk ink and other inkjet supplies.
www.inkpresspaper.com - Inkjet paper manufacturer of fairly inexpensive papers.
www.datacolor.com - Manufacturer of color management equipment.
www.epson.com - Manufacturer of inkjet printers.
www.ebay.com - online auction - source of refillable inkjet cartridges.