Photo Speed 7.43 The ESP 3 took a pleasant trend in photo performance to its compared printers. Outside of minor differences in printing 4x6 prints through a PC, the ESP 3 printed out prints at the same speed from source files both small and large. Whether the ESP 3 was printing large file prints or small, it kept the same speed for both. This was a great plus for the Kodak because while other printers like the Canon MX850 produced large filed 4x6 prints at a slower rate than the small filed 4x6 prints, the ESP 3 remained constant. We give the Kodak ESP 3 a bonus thumbs up because this may mean the difference in spending an extra few minutes reducing the size of your prints to save ten minutes in print speed, which can be really inconvenient if you’re pressed on time.  With that said, the ESP 3 also did well in speed performance overall. Although the ESP 3 was slow at printing 4x6 images from a Compact Flash card, it speedily  printed 8.5x11 photographs via both PC and Compact Flash executions. The ESP 3 displayed a major improvement in speed from the Kodak EasyShare 5300, which produced .58 photographs per minute while the ESP 3 produced a really good 2.08 photographs per minute. The ESP 3 was even faster when printing 8.5x11 prints from a Compact Flash at 2.27 photographs per minute.   Photo Print Speeds in Pages per Minute   4x6 8.5 x 11 13 x 19   sml lge sml lge sml lge Kodak ESP 3 1.66 1.70 2.08 2.08 n /a n/a Kodak EasyShare 5300 2.18 1.67   0.58 0.56 n/a n/a HP Photosmart C5180 1.19 1.19 0.29 0.32 n/a n/a Canon Pixma MX850 0.26 0.81 0.44 0.48 n/a n/a     Color Accuracy 2.02 The color accuracy test examines how well the printer can duplicate colors, more specifically the correct shade of colors. This is important in a printer’s performance because it shows how well a printer can copy a photograph’s colors, which can be from capturing the right shade of grass, skin color or wood paneling. It can even mean the difference from taking a picture with white teeth and having them turn a different shade on the printed photograph because the printer doesn’t print whites very white. The chart below is a representation of the chart we use for the test; the closer the printer can get to these colors, the better its score and performance.   The ESP 3 performed poorly on the color accuracy test, with a mean color error of 9.36. This is a large error compared to the Canon MX850 which earned a color error of 4.93 and the HP C5180 which earned a color error of 7.93. It beat the Kodak 5300 by a small margin as 8.34, but again that doesn’t say much when compared to competitors. The graph above shows the results of Kodak’s ESP 3 performance. The longer the lines in between the square and circle are, the less the ESP 3 was able to match the actual color. The ESP 3 had big misses in portraying yellows (box 16), greens (box 14) and the combination of the two. It also swaggered in orange and cyan. It followed by significantly missing reds, blues, greens and yellows. Although the ESP 3 didn’t miss these shades as gravely as others like box 12 or box 16, it missed enough to make a noticeable difference in shade, which isn’t a good thing since it also missed box 2, which is light skin. Color Gamut 1.98 The gamut test is a measure of how much of the standard Adobe RGB color space the printer can reproduce accurately. Printers that can reproduce more of this color space produce a richer color range in images. The manufacturer’s color profiles are used and compared to the Adobe RGB color space. The above graph displays the results of the gamut test and the range the ESP 3 was able to cover.  The overlay grid represents the entire color space, while the solid core represents the space the printer was actually able to cover.  The smaller the core, the worse the coverage and the larger and closer to the grid, the better the performance. The ESP 3 did especially poor on the gamut test.  It was only able to cover 30.47% of the color space.  This score is very poor when compared with the previous Kodak EasyShare 5300 earned a higher 42% matching the coverage of 42%the HP Photosmart C5180 earned as well.    DMax 5.08 The DMax test is a test that shows how deep the blacks are that the printer can produce. This is most important and relative when it comes to printing black-and-white graphics or photographs. If you want a really rich black-and-white photograph, then the printer needs to be able to produce dark blacks, rather than dark grays or light blacks, which some printers do. The closer to a score of 2.5 a printer is, the better and richer the blacks it can produce.  The ESP 3 dropped the ball in the DMax section missing the margin with its score of 2.03. It flunked even when compared to the Kodak 5300, which it was so far beating in every other section. The Kodak 5300 earned a value score of 2.43, even out-scoring the Canon MX850 which came in with a value of 2.35.   Black and White 6.00 The ESP 3 produced good black and white photographs, but tended to be on the darker side. While on the standard settings, it blurred out some detail in the darker regions and didn’t go as white as it could have in the whiter regions. When we changed the settings to best quality, it didn’t make a noticeable difference. If you looked very sharply you might be able to notice the slightest differences, but at first look, they looked identical.

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