Sorry if this posts twice....sent this through gmail which means probably not.
Im going to throw in my thoughts. I have used large format epson printers up to the 9800. They are very good. When you compare them to the ipf8xxx series though, the canon printers destroy them in resolution and color gamut. 12 inks are a lot better than the 8 the epson 9800 used. Another downside of the epson printers is that to print on matte stock coming from glossy or vice versa, you have to swap the black inks. On a 9800 this involves purging a good 75-90 dollars worth of ink. I ended up buying a canon pixma pro 9500 mk2 a few years ago with a friend. 13x19 cost about $3 in ink. Unfortunately the canon spit ink like crazy in its cleaning cycles, but other than that was good. I wish the tanks were larger though. 13ml is like nothing. Their large format printers take 700ml tanks and they last for a very long time. The newer canon uses 3 gray inks i believe. They are claiming it has superb tonalities with black and white. I would believe them, It also has twice the resolution of the previous 9500. The canon 9500 to me is comparable to the ipf8000 in terms of output, though it is limited to 13x19. The nicer epsons will take rolls. If you mostly print on the same stock and do lots of panos this is a good selling point. I use an ipf8300 for art reproduction as they also have archival inks and i find their newer model is very conservative on ink and is a total workhorse that is much better designed than the older epson 9800 i also use. The color gamut is amazing to me and i get pretty accurate results with just their own profiles. I tried calibrating it and the profiles the software were giving me weren't as faithful. I also use the Photoshop plugin extensively so that is hard to profile with. I am sure the newer epsons are improved but every canon printer i have used has been impressive. The epson is nearly non serviceable, but i can order replacement heads for the canon and their support has always been first rate. Every part i have ever requested for replacement under warranty has been overnighted. My epson 9800 needs a new head so i use it sparingly for a few older files. The best i can order is from china. The sole repair shop that i dealt with before doesn't seem interested in selling me a head. My boss doesnt want to put money into the printer. I don't blame him. I may pay to have to have the older ipf8000 we have rebuilt if i ever get some things going. It is still a great printer in terms of quality. Sorry for the long post. Just a suggestion. Canon's newest 13x19 pro printer is about a thousand. You can find used 9500s for pretty cheap. Just make sure you run something every week or few days if you keep the machine off. If you leave it on, it will self clean but also consume ink. Something to consider. You can waste a lot of ink in a hurry trying to unclog heads and any printer will dry in without fresh ink running through the nozzles. Also....my followup post: On Feb 7, 2013 8:51 PM, "Zos Xavius" <[email protected]> wrote: I would also like to add that you will likely have problem running inks that are not designed for the printer by the manufacturer. As has been pointed out, clogged heads are a problem (those temps are very precisely tuned to the inks) as well as other problems that people run into. From people i have talked to , they all say that color isn't as faithful. Grayscale would of course present less challenges, but you would need specialized drivers for that which can be a whole other sort of problem. I have heard of converting 9800s to pure black for say printing nothing but silk screen films and other solutions, but that is a pretty easy thing to manage. If you ask me you are far better off using the good archival inks. The epson inks are superb and so is canon and a few other even more expensive brands are all good. Good prints are not cheap. Any printer that at least gives you black and two shades of gray should do very well with black and white. Your eyes cannot perceive even thousands of shades of gray, so most printers will produce tonalities that look great. With every added shade of gray to the mix it gets better obviously. You are better off keeping the ability to produce color too imo. Unless your workflow is always 100% black and white. Just some thoughts..... https://www.facebook.com/zosxaviusphotography -- PDML Pentax-Discuss Mail List [email protected] http://pdml.net/mailman/listinfo/pdml_pdml.net to UNSUBSCRIBE from the PDML, please visit the link directly above and follow the directions.
