Epson or Canon, who makes the best printer for the money?

I second that. The 3rd party ink naysayers are usually basing their opinions on anecdotal data or their personal experience with badly formulated cheap ink. And in the cases of clogging are very often mis-diagnosing missing nozzles from air introduced when re-filling (which is easily overcome by allowing a sufficient wait time between refilling and printing).

As an aside, I recently submitted Injetfly's IMA36 V3 to Aardenburg (printed on Canson Baryta with no OBA's and an Epson 3800). If you look at Aardenburg's test results of IJF's ink substitute for Epson HDR ink (used in the R1900) it's as good (and in the case of skin tones better) than Epson OEM in terms of longevity.

Like yourself I am prone to respond to people's posts that are willy nilly condemning of 3rd party inks. They never present any direct user experience nor any meaningful data. Of course you can find this sort of prejudice in virtually every quarter of human existence. They are the people that believe that cold water comes to a boil quicker than hot water, and that a dog's warm dry nose is an indicator of poor health, because their doddering old great aunt said so. Scientific scrutiny will not convince them otherwise. The major printer manufacturers perpetuate the myths because they are utterly addicted to the insane margins. Someone once said that ink formulation ain't rocket science. In fact, given what we know about rockets today, even rocket science ain't rocket science. String theory is.
 
As I assume you mean the frame becomes the "border" as well (i.e. no white or other mount showing) I assume that means you have the print surface touching the glass Robert.

Not a good idea at all. Glass contains some acidic residues which will affect the print and any shiny surface of prints (if photo type plastic papers used) will in time stick to the glass.
Modern soda lime glass used for windows and picture frames is not acidic in any way. It is comprised of silica, earth alkaline oxides, and alkali (sodium). The mixture of these components dictates a compromise between glass stability and cost of manufacturing. When soda lime glass deteriorates, sodium leaches to the surface. Any residue thus becomes highly alkaline as the sodium reacts with water vapor in the air to form sodium hydroxide.

As for prints sticking to glass or acrylic glazings, traditional photos are made with swellable polymer coatings (i.e., gelatin). When the air gets humid (approx. 70-75% RH at typical room temperatures), the gelatin reaches what scientists call the glass transition temperature (Tg), and the coating reverts from a hard dry polymer to a gel state where it will indeed start sticking to any cover glazing if in contact. The phenonemnon is often called "ferrotyping". FWIW, the Tg properties of gelatin are what makes gelatin so unique for photographic processing. The processing chemistry diffuses rapidly into the coating when the gelating gets wet and therefore climbs above Tg. Some inkjet media suffer from this ferrotyping issue, others do not. That said, because most professional framers cannot know for certain whether any particular print can safely tolerate contact with the picture frame glazing the prudent policy is to assume the worst case and thus frame with some spacer that keeps the print surface safely away from the cover glazing surface.

cheers,
Mark

--
Mark McCormick
 
So Im curious, is there a ways to protect your prints from fading?

I'm pretty much sold on the Epson 3880... what are some things I can do to save money regarding printing, ink purchases, maintenance, etc... if 3rd party inks are truly good, where do you recommend buying them from?

Thanks for everyone's input, very helpful!
 
especially with their new IRK4-nano ink set. The carts are larger than OEM so you have a lot more ink before refilling is required. The lid doesn't close with these big carts.

The kit is quite costly but not much different from others when you look at cost per mL.

http://www.inkrepublic.com/3880-iRefill.asp

The bottom line is how much you are going to print in square inches over time....

I was looking at this printer , I didn't buy it as I don't believe that I would be printing anything over 11 x 16, and any larger would go to my lab of choice WHCC.com. I also prefer the larger color gamut of the Canon PRO9000 MKII dye printers. So I bought the 3880's little brother R2880. That along with Precision Colors' refillable carts than contain Image Specialists ink, and I am ordering the 3880 IRK4-nano ink from InkRepublick to refill the PC carts. This way I can evaluate the same prints with 3 different ink sets.

I plan on running a fade test over the summer using the following conditions.

OCP ink (Canon PRO9000 MK II, CLI-8 compatible)

OCP ink (Canon IP4700, CLI-220 compatible)

Epson OEM ink (Epson R2880)

Image Specialists ink (Epson R2280 compatible)

InkRepublick IRK4-nano ink (Epson R2880 compatible).

The following 2 papers will be used with all 5 ink sets...

Kodak Ultra

Red River Artic Ploar Luster

In addition another set of both papers with the 5 ink sets will be protective sprayed with Krylon Digital Print UV spray.

The prints will be placed in a south facing window and I will report at 1 month, 3 months, 6 months, 12 months with scanned photos to compare.

Bob P.
 
For the Nth time, here is my list of reliable people selling good stuff, this list is from several yrs of asking--on and off the Web--from Brooklyn to Bombay. And my own personal experiences.

Please note: Those who have tried refilling and failed for ANY reason have never let go, even after I would demo personally (club members, friends). Worse they continue to spread their vitriolic whenever and wherever possible. Those who succeeded or felt they did were very grateful, the drastically reduced costs permitted the entire family to enjoy this wonderfully creative generator.

These are some of the vendors that are most recommended:
rjettek.com OCP ink cartridge plugs and much more
inkjetreset.com ink,carts,chips and more
http://www.inkjetcarts.us/support/ ink,carts,chips and more
octoink.co.uk/ ink,carts,chips and more
Hobbicolors ink,carts,chips and more

Image Specialists ink,carts,chips and more image-specialists.com/about_us.aspx

Inkjetfly: ink,carts http://www.inkjetfly.com

Precision Colors inks http://home.eol.ca/~mikling/

Cone Inks color & B&W inks conecolor.com inkjetmall.com

Inkrepublic inks, carts http://www.inkrepublic.com/IRK4-nano-3880.asp

For more info and to build a working knowledge of this subject go to:

dpreview.com good set of forums, especially the inkjet printing forum

Inkjet Printer Forum http://www.nifty-stuff.com/forum/index.php

Northlight Images: http://www.northlight-images.co.uk/arti … mages.html

Luminous Landscape: http://www.luminous-landscape.com/forum/index.php?PHPSESSID=9aa25d5f64026fd76b713110d3630317&board=6.0

Naturescape framing, sealing, UV Protect stuff, sprays....etc DO VISIT!! http://www.naturescapes.net/phpBB3/viewforum.php

The Canon, Epson, HP Printer forums on Yahoo, Google

To repeat, this is a resource list for serious printers not a 'spamalot'!

irv weiner
 
True, but it's what one wants, great color or fade resistance. I personally coat my dye prints that are hanging on a wall and don't see much, if any, fading after a year. I rarely keep my prints after that length of time and if they do fade just print another one.

Bob P.
I mention it as a concern for people selling editioned prints - if they fade in a year that would be a major problem.
If they fade in a year, if there's a fire, if there's a flood. The latest dye inks are tested for longevity & get reasonably good results but not as good as Pigment inks which aren't as good as photographic prints. If archival is your main concern you should use a Fuji lab, why sell people second best archival properties on limited edition prints by using pigment ink when you can get much longer lasting prints using the Fuji method?
Te implication that inkjets don't have good color is misleading. The color on my z3100 is very very good.
The implication that dye inks will fade away in front of your eyes is also misleading as they have a very long life behind glass. Most of the shots sold nowadays for $100 - $200 will be thrown out in the trash when people redecorate or when the kids come home to clean out when the buyers have grown old & died. I don't think you should kid yourselves that your Limited Edition Prints done with pigment ink will become family heirlooms like an Adams or Bresson.

I have dye ink prints that have been hanging up behind glass for over 8 years & they still look great as do my darkroom prints which have been hanging up for 37 years.

Regards Rod
Your reply is odd. Look - on a factual level the lamda process is less archival than a properly done inkjet. My work that's done with film is on fuji crystal archive and processed RA4.

Regarding kidding myself - I may do that, as we all do - but my stuff sells for multiple thousands and is in museum permanent collections - I 'd like to think it'll all be around for a while.
Nice to see you're being well rewarded for your shots but all I have to do if I'm worried about longevity is put the file the print was made from on a CD & stick that behind the print then they can knock out a nice new shot every 30 years if they haven't got fed up looking at it.
Regards Rod
 

Keyboard shortcuts

Back
Top