Dear Jack, Many thanks for your reply:
"I personally don't want to venture near pigment inks as the colour shifts, to me, simply are not good enough. What is the point in having the longevity but not the colour accuracy under differing light sources? .........So, to answer your question John, I would like the best of both worlds which is why I have an Epson 9600 arriving next week." Jack, the two inkset options we are evaluating is a Lyson pigment+dye inkset, which seems to emulate Epson Ultrachrome in testing, and the traditional Lyson Fotonic dye-based inkset in seven channels, which Lyson have successfully produced for a number of years, and is very much a known quantity.. We took just under 1000 enquiries at Focus on Imaging about the Epson 2100 bulk system. - During this show, we took in a lot of feedback from existing customers who use Epson ultrachrome inks and use the Epson 2100: It appears that this printer, while having great features, is VERY thirsty on ink - we used almost 50ml x 7 channels of ink during the show (more than twice what we would have expected) - Buying Epson cartridge inks at around �1000 / Litre makes this printer rather expensive, whereas when you run it with a bulk feed system, your costs can be as low as �70 / Litre when using bulk inks bought in 1 Litre bottles... Many Epson 2100 customers have been complaining of metamerism with the pigment Epson inks, which we find is virtually eliminated with the Lyson Fotonic ink option. No need to change black cartridges when printing from gloss to matt media. Constantly changing cartridges can upset the nozzle alignment - once you fit a CIS system, you eliminate the need for putting any pressure on the inkjet carrier assembly. Current appearance testing / profiling is showing us that an extremely high print speed is achievable with this inkset / printer combination - we are finding that we are able to successfully profile down to 720 dpi with reasonable print quality. The seven channel Lyson Fotonic inkset (Cyan, Magenta, Yellow, Light Cyan, Light Magenta, 100% Black and dilute Black) is very easy to profile to give excellent smooth neutral monochromes, and accurate colours with the widest possible gamut. Rather than being restricted to a very few fast drying papers, we found that we were able to print on every usual inkjet media (as would be expected from a well-proven dye-based formula) including Ilford Galerie Classic Pearl - he best pearl finish on the market at present, and interestingly, also produces amazing results using Pictorico High Gloss Film distributed from Permajet - The prints we produced at the show showed almost Cibachrome vibrancy, colour range and gloss. The reason for the posting is that we ran two inksets at the show, started running the pigement inkset option, but the moment we started our second Epson 2100 printer loaded with Lyson Fotonic, people really started to get keen - against the expected present - day trend which seems to favour pigment inksets. Bulk CIS systems bring many advantages, but a disadvantage is that you are not able to easily change inkset type once you have committed yourself to a particular type - the donor cartridge contains foam, which is almost impossible to completely clean out.. If we can clearly gauge the pigment / dye preference, we are then better equipped to advise the hundreds of buyers of this system.. Best Wishes - and thanks for the mail.. John Read MD - Marrutt Digital Exclusive UK distributors - Lyson Limited + VTC Software Training Inc ps: To show the benefits of custom profiling (we only use Thomas Holm / Neil Barstow / Udo Machiels), almost every print shown on our stand and gallery was produced from the raw digital file, either Flextight scan, Minolta Dimage 7, Nikon D100, Fuji S2 Pro or Canon D30 with no colour balancing applied at all, most prints sized up to 20" x 36" using photoshop interpolation to 180 ppi, and printing to 1440 dpi. =============================================================== GO TO http://www.prodig.org for ~ GUIDELINES ~ un/SUBSCRIBING ~ ITEMS for SALE
