Setting Up.

The front high capacity paper tray comes in two parts. The base paper holder will accommodate paper sizes from A4 through to A2. The maximum capacity of the holder is 250 sheets of plain paper, this figure is for 64gsm paper (which is of no practical use for anything). You can load up to 50 sheets of most photographic quality media (A3, A4 & Super A3). The top part is for receiving the printed media. Unlike other Epson printers, the media on the 4000 has to be loaded face downwards, once it is drawn in it does a U turn to print. Media thickness for tray feeding is 0.08 to 0.5mm, card media up to 1.5mm can be manually fed - I will cover this later in the review.

The paper tray just slots in to the printer, there are three guides to assist you. Once fitted it is as secure as it need to be with the amount of flexibility. The tray has three telescopic sections, you would need to fully extend if you were printing with A2 media, for A3 printing the tray could be pushed in to meet the paper edge and for A4 the tray can be fully pushed in. Paper must be loaded in portrait mode, i.e. shortest edge must go in in first.

Fitting the paper tray	Paper tray fully extended
The paper catcher fitted	Fully extended paper catcher

The second part of the paper tray is the actual paper catcher. This also doubles as a dust cover for the loaded media. The collapsed catcher fits on top of the paper tray, the front sits on two raised pillars so when you extend the paper tray then the catcher extends with it. There is an extra section at the front which extends beyond the tray. The whole unit seems to be quite sturdy, although I wouldn't want to leave the printer in a fully extended mode in a busy studio.

I will continue with media on the next page, including the roll media.

Connection.

The Pro 4000 can be connected via USB (2.0 & 1.1 compatible), Firewire IEEE1394 or by fitting an optional EPSON Net 10/100 Base Tx Ethernet card. I will use USB 2.0 for this review, on most reviews I have found very little difference between Firewire & USB speeds - certainly not enough to warrant spending time and paper testing. The connection ports are located at the rear of the printer, once this printer is set up then there shouldn't be any need to access them again, however a spare port in a more accessible place, i.e. on the front wouldn't go amiss. There is only one Firewire "In" port, this means that the printer would have to be the last unit in a chain, again a second port on the front (or side) would be a useful feature for any studio, especially if you shoot with a digital camera directly to the computer. To use a Ethernet connection you have to purchase an optional card which fits in a covered bay at the rear. Whilst on the rear, there is also a removable back cover that allows you to clear a paper jam (should they occur). The power socket is also located at the rear.

Rear of printer	Firewire & USB port