HP B9180 Why not?

[colivet]

Hey everyone. I am just about to pull the trigger on a printer for diginegs and see that the specs on the new HP 13x19 printer as well as some reviews are really head turning. I have at home some test prints that i got from Injektart.com and can see a subtle higher dmax of the black ink and also a noticeable increase of small detail when comapred with tha epson 4000. This stuff I mention is subtle but definetly there.
The HP also has some kind of hi-tech sensors that can tell when a nozzle got clogged and skip that nozzle and use another one to put that droplet where it goes and will run a nozzle clean up cycle only when it is needed. It should save some ink. It has also got a closed loop color calibration system.
Check it out here! http://www.inkjetart.com/hp/B9180/index.html

I had a bad experience with an epson 1280 that clogged up and became useless about an year from purchased. I don't want to get burned again with the epson sindrom.

Is there any reason why I should not get the 9180 for digi negs?

 

[Ron-san]

Is there any reason why I should not get the 9180 for digi negs?

Christian--
Any modern printer, including the 9180, can probably make very good dig negs. Here are a couple of questions I would ask about the printer:
--Is the inkset capable of generating densities in the UV of 3.2 to 3.5? That is the range you need to make a neg that will print pure white on a palladium emulsion with no contrast agent. I expect the HP inks will do that since the Epson inks do it, and actually can go much higher, with no problem.
--It would be interesting to see how fine is the dot pattern of the HP when printed on Pictorico OHP. A dot pattern that looks absolutely smooth on semi matte paper can look rather grainy on OHP. If you do a comparison, I would be interested in seeing it.
--At present you could not use the Quadtone RIP to drive the HP printer. For me that would be a problem since QTR is my favorite driver for dig negs. However, there are certainly ways to use the HP driver to make good negs, so that is not a deal breaker.
--Does the HP driver offer a function where you can dial the ink density (sometimes called the color density) up and down over a wide range? That is a useful tool with which to set neg contrast, in the absence of the ink limit controls in QTR. But, even if this function is not offered by the HP driver, you could certainly control neg density by varying the color of the neg, as taught by the PDN system.
If you get one, let us know how well it works. Cheers, Ron-san