Hi Helen,
I would be interested in learning what B&W ink set you use, and where to get it, none of the Australian outlets know anything about them.
At the moment I use an ink set that is not very different from the one in an Epson K3 series printer - the R2400, 4800 etc, but I use it in an Epson 2200. I wouldn't recommend my system to someone starting out or to someone who didn't already have a 2200 - I'd suggest getting one of the K3 series printers, or maybe waiting until next year for the 3800. Those printers have the Epson 'ABW' (Advanced Black and White) software which is much easier to get excellent results with than the method I use. There are attractive Canon and HP printers available, but I have no direct experience of them.
Though the K3 system only uses three blacks - Black, Light Black and Light Light Black (I know, it sounds daft) - it achieves fairly good highlight tonality. Before using them I used proprietary systems with four blacks (Cone and Septone) and experimented with my own mixtures with five and six. I decided that three was enough for what I wanted. There's a tradeoff between highlight brilliance (eg K3) and highlight smoothness (eg Cone Piezography K6 and K7).
The seven slots in my B&W 2200 are occupied by the following inks, with the source in brackets:
MK - matte black (4000/4800)
PK - photo black (4800)
LK - light black (4800)
LLK - light light black (4800)
LC - light cyan (4800)
LB - light blue (R800, diluted 1+4 with MIS base)
Krystal Topkote
This means that I don't have to switch inks when going from matte to glossy paper. All the people I print for like matte paper; I like glossy. If I had more space I'd just get two printers, but I am desperately short of space in New York.
The LC and LB are there to cool down the warm-ish black inks.
I use an
i-Ink CIS. It is the third CIS that I've used, and the best so far. Previously I used a Niagara II which was OK, and a Flux-1 which was not OK. The Flux-1 may be sold under other names.
The cartridges for the 4000 and 4800 series are just bags-in-boxes, containing 110 ml or 220 ml. To get the ink out you just prise off the top of the cartridge, lift out the bag and snip off the corner. For genuine Epson ink it works out at about half the cost of R2400 or 2200 cartridges.
You can get third-party ink sets.
Dead Link Removed and
MIS seem to be very popular. I bought ink systems by mail order off both of those companies when I lived in Singapore, so shipping to Australia shouldn't be a problem.
There's a lot more that I could write, but I'll stop there for the moment.
Best,
Helen