Colorspace, file size, and printing frustration

[jeffkohn]

I have found a number of ink manufacturers that are 50% less than Canon and the quality is indistinguishable. The life is about the same as the Canon ink. The ink is really where you overhead is because it is easy to find paper cheap.

There was a guy on the Printing forum at DPReview who did extensive long-term fade testing of Canon OEM versus 3rd party inks. What he found was that for the Black ink cartridge, none of the third-party inks were nearly as good as the OEM ink. For the color catridges, the best of the third-party inks were on par with OEM. The really cheap stuff just wasn't any good when it came to fading.

I stick with OEM inks in my printer, consistency is important as I don't want to have to be reprofiling all the time. And the best of the third party inks are really all that much cheaper if you're buying cartridges; to really save much money you have to buy bulk and re-fill (or use a CIS), neither of which I've been willing to do for the amount I print.

[jeffkohn]

Originally Posted by Jay Henley

I was afraid that I would not use it enough to keep from having problems with the heads and the ink. Please give advice regarding that. I don't know much at all about printing. If you do not use your printer often do you have problems?

My 2400 hasn't had any problems. I tend to print in spurts, I might not print anything for a few weeks and then print a lot over a period of several days. I turn the printer off when I'm not using it, and it has set for as long as 6 weeks without printing. I've never had a clogged head that wasn't taken care of by the automatic cleanings it does on occasion (in other words I've never had a print ruined because of a clogged head). I think the newer printers have gotten much better in this regard.

[pippin]

deleted

[billbunton]

Originally Posted by Jay Henley

I was afraid that I would not use it enough to keep from having problems with the heads and the ink. Please give advice regarding that. I don't know much at all about printing. If you do not use your printer often do you have problems?

I used to have an Epson 2200 (actually, I still have it, it's been sitting in the closet for the last two years. Anyone interested? :-) that would occasionally have problems with clogging during a print. I'd run a nozzle check after not using it for a while, the nozzle check would be okay, then I'd lose a color during a print. Didn't happen too often, but was pretty frustrating when it did.

I've had the Epson 4000 for a bit over two years now, I guess. It's required one power cleaning in that time, and two or three times it's needed three successive runs of nozzle checks to get it printing clean again. I generally leave it on all the time, I've never found any real difference turning it off or leaving it on. I've probably gone as long as two months without printing a couple times, but I usually manage to run something through every couple weeks or so.

As Jim said, I like to print big for anything I'm going to frame and hang. I also print what most people consider big for working/proof prints -- I never print anything smaller than 8.5x11 for myself (though I do occasionally print smaller for print orders). I tend to buy paper in large batches (250 or 300 sheets at a time), or rolls, either of which is cheaper than smaller batches.

[iCe]

Originally Posted by pippin

on the whole jpeg level 10 vs level 12 -

there's so little difference in compression between the two (i've done 20x30 prints from a level 10 and level 12 jpeg) that it doesn't warrant the difference in filesize.

as for srgb - there are printers out there that will only read srgb. Frontiers are one of them - especially the lower end ones - we get AdobeRGB coming through our lab and they'll turn the prints blue when printing. Not fun when we have to individually correct 200+ wedding photos for a customer (when the photographer asked us what to use ignores us anyway).

I can't speak for the noritsus or chromiras, but frontiers can be finicky (and I gotta fix them!)

Then Canon and Nikon can step away from the ring. No more mega pixel wars are needed. We can all go back to 3 or 4 meg sensors. There is no point in using a sensor that is going to give you 7 - 12 times too much data...

RAW file size- 13,479k
Do nothing. Save as 16 bit TIF- 97,370k
Convert to 8 bit and Save- 48,703k
Save as Level 12 JPG- 7,063k
Save as Level 10 JPG- 2,551k

The image is supposed to be the same? Except there's a huge amount of data missing as we lower the bar to JPG and save? Sorry. I'm not convinced. I see that you do this for a living. Maybe for wedding images it works fine. Maybe for everything it works fine. I'm convinced that less is not more. The 1st law of thermodynamics goes against it... Onward thru the fog...

[Jim Victory]

Originally Posted by jeffkohn

There was a guy on the Printing forum at DPReview who did extensive long-term fade testing of Canon OEM versus 3rd party inks. What he found was that for the Black ink cartridge, none of the third-party inks were nearly as good as the OEM ink. For the color catridges, the best of the third-party inks were on par with OEM. The really cheap stuff just wasn't any good when it came to fading.

I stick with OEM inks in my printer, consistency is important as I don't want to have to be reprofiling all the time. And the best of the third party inks are really all that much cheaper if you're buying cartridges; to really save much money you have to buy bulk and re-fill (or use a CIS), neither of which I've been willing to do for the amount I print.

Sorry Jeff but my experience has not been the same and I have printed 1000's of shots and have not seen any fading at all. Will they last a 100 years? I have no idea and really don't care because I won't be here anyway.

I have not had any complaints in the last 5 years from customers that I have used these inks or any copies I have in my portfolio. I have read all of the test by so-called experts and all I can go by is what I'm seeing. If it was a problem I would look at other options but the problem just hasn't occurred.

Jay,

If you are not using your printer it is best to turn it off. It will reduce the heat that will add to the drying out of the heads. If you don't use it very often any printer can possibly have a problem with the heads clogging.

[pippin]

removed.

[Clint_Smith]

if you guys have one...Cartridge World will refill Canon OEM cartridges with genuine canon inks for 1/2 the cost of new ones...just a thought...I have been using them for about a year now with my 8x10 canon printer.

[iCe]

This is somewhat helpful - LINK

Well, that's nice, you may say. But by doing this the image looks really crummy. Sort of washed out. That's because paper simply can not reproduce the dynamic range that a monitor can. The range is about 100:1 to 150:1 for a print, and as much as 300:1 or even 500:1 for a screen. Also, the gamut of the screen and the paper / ink combination are different.

"Sort of washed out" describes the problem that I had with one of the prints.