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My printer died. Need a new printer for DNs.

Dan Pavel

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After 3 weeks of resting unused my Epson SC-P600 printer died (after only 2 and a half years of service). The print heads are severally clogged - no black, yellow and light gray inks appear in prints. The service man said it is not recoverable and a new print head costs almost as mach as a new printer. It was a nice photo-printer while it worked and it was my printer for DNs. Its "Advanced B&W Photo" mode was perfect for DNs. I need to buy a new printer now and I am not sure what to get. I don't want to risk to be forced to replace it after only 2-3 years again. What printer would you recommend? I need a good photo printer to be used both for photos on paper and Digital Negatives with an A3 max. format. It shouldn't cost more than 700-800$.
I am looking at a Canon Pixma Pro-100s. Is anybody using a Pro-100s for DNs? How it delivers? Does it has a dedicated B&W mode using only black and gray inks? Is the UV opacity of the inks good enough?
What would be your recommendation?
 

osella

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I have a Canon Pro-1000 which admittedly out of your price range, but the less expensive pro-10 uses the same inks. There is a black and white mode and it seems to only use the black and gray inks based on my ink usage. I get plenty of blocking using the matte black ink, the photo black is slightly less but still acceptable for palladium prints. According to my X-Rite 361t I get a max density of 3.09 or thereabouts.

The epsons have much more support when it comes to DN’s so it will take some trial and error.

As a final thought the reliability seems to be excellent. There are occasions where I am not able to print often, maybe once per week, and I have had no issues so it does handle infrequent use well.
 

nmp

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Too bad, Dan. 3 weeks is a too short of a time for the heads to clog up! Don't you just hate it. The thought of redoing all the blocking colors and correction curves....

In the US, the Pro-100 has $250 off rebate going right now. Anything like that in your neck of the woods will be nice. I got an Epson P400 after my Hp B9180 died which was no good for DN's - not enough blocking for my POPs (but might be good enough for other processes.) I subsequently bought a junky B9180 that had not been used for may be 10 years. Miraculously I was able to revive back to life - had to change only one head out of 4 (which have modular design and cost me $35 expired from Ebay.) So I am back in business. I am not recommending though.

Good luck!

:Niranjan.
 
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Dan Pavel

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Looking at more Canon printers it seams that the older Canon pro -1 is even better for printing DNs than pro-10. It has more gray inks and it doesn't use any color ink while printing B&W, just as my dead Epson used to do in the "Advanced B&W Photo" mode. This was a desirable feature as it ensured that a particular gray level was always printed using the same combination of grey inks. IMO, it acted very much like a Quad Tone Rip preset B&W profile.
Unfortunately I can't find any pro -1 on sale new anymore.
 

jim10219

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Probably most pigment based inkjet printers out there would work pretty close to the same for digital negatives. I had a dye based printer for a while, and while I liked the colors on it, it was terrible for digital negatives.

Those Epson SC-P series printers look great, and don't clog much, but I'm worried about their reliability. I too had a head go bad on my SC-P9000. I also have an Epson 9880 that even though it clogs a bunch, the only thing I've had to replace on it (that wasn't regular maintenance like the blade or wipers) is a ball bearing. It's been bulletproof, if not annoying. You might consider a used one of those series. I see them pop up from time to time for a few hundred bucks. People hate them because of the clogging, but if you can deal with that, they're pretty decent, in my opinion.
 
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Dan Pavel

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Thanks Niranjan.
nmp said:
In the US, the Pro-100 has $250 off rebate going right now. Anything like that in your neck of the woods will be nice.
Click to expand...
Unfortunately I can't find such a rebate locally.
I've spotted an used Canon pro -1. The seller says it is only one year old and it works perfectly. The price is very good, too.
I am tempted to get it and with the difference to get a new set of inks...

jim10219 said:
You might consider a used one of those series. I see them pop up from time to time for a few hundred bucks. People hate them because of the clogging, but if you can deal with that, they're pretty decent, in my opinion.
Click to expand...
I am quite upset on Epson right now and quite frightened about the clogging problem of their printers.
 

Dahod

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Hi Niranjan
I didn't want to sidetrack this thread so I've sent you a PM
Thanks
Dave
 

jim10219

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Dan Pavel said:
I am quite upset on Epson right now and quite frightened about the clogging problem of their printers.
Click to expand...
I can't say I blame you.

You know, I've used laser printers for digital negs before and had pretty good results. If you're doing things like Gum Bichromate and Casein, they'd probably work fine. Laser prints tend to be a bit grainy and max out around 200 dpi. On a Gum Bichromate, that wouldn't matter. If you're doing stuff like Carbon or Platinum printing, you might want to stick to the higher resolution of inkjet. I don't know about Cyanotype or Van Dyke.

Otherwise, HP makes some good printers as well. I can't say I have any experience with them, but I've seen a lot of other people around town with them, and they seem to like them. Might be worth checking out to compare to the Canons (who make good printers too).
 
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Dan Pavel

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jeffreyg said:
I don't have that printer but do a search for how to unclog your print head. You may be able to use Print Refresh liquid and clear the clogs. Since it seems to be broken it can't hurt to try before buying a new printer.
Click to expand...
You are right, I have nothing to lose. I already have ~200ml of head cleaning solution and I'll try cleaning the print heads myself in spite of what the service man said.
jim10219 said:
... I've used laser printers for digital negs before and had pretty good results. If you're doing things like Gum Bichromate and Casein, they'd probably work fine.
Click to expand...
I am doing Pt, Pd, gum and VDB. Probably an inkjet is a better fit for me.
jim10219 said:
...HP makes some good printers as well.
Click to expand...
Yes, I had some HP printers and they proved very reliable. I still have an older HP DesignJet 130 plotter that worked well after one year of not using it at all. The problem with HP is, AFAIK, that , with the exception of their expensive plotters, they use dye inks for colors and pigment for black. My cheaper plotter uses dye inks. A few years ago I tried my HP plotter for DNs. As far as I remember it work well with some completely transparent film (Staedtler Lumacolor) but not as well with Pictorico. I might revive it and test it again.
 

ced

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Dan I 2nd the idea of humidification of the heads there are a few vids on Ytube (I think demineralised water should be okay).
Good luck...
 

Andrew O'Neill

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Sandy King recommended the Epson P400 a few months ago on his Carbon Printing Forum. The nice thing about this printer is that you can use QTR, which I have been using for several years to make digital negs (I've had the 4000, and 3800 but the 4000 died, and the 3800 keeps clogging). It also has smaller ink drop size of 1.5. It prints up to 13" wide, and can hold rolls. I ordered a refurbished P400 for $400 (Canadian). I am very happy with it. The resulting negs print very smooth tones for carbon and kallitypes.
 

nmp

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I have a P400 too. It is a wonderful printer. However, I didn't have good luck making negatives for Centennial POP which seems to require one of the densest negatives. I tried conventional colorized approach as well as QTR. MK ink, being better at blocking UV, with QTR was somewhat successful but problems with ink absorption on the media and subsequent slower drying made it unsuitable for my purpose. Other processes which may not require the highest density may just work fine, if not great, on this printer.

I have left the printer unplugged twice so far in 2 years that I have had for long duration (2-3 months) and found to work without any problems when turned back on. I also like it for the fact that PK and MK do not share a head so there is no annoying switch over between the two. Unlike the P600 and P800, the driver for this printer does not allow increasing the amount of ink laid from what is prescribed for a given media type to boost UV blocking. QTR would be the way to go if that becomes necessary.

:Niranjan.
 

Andrew O'Neill

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I can easily make negatives for carbon transfer. My typical DR is about 1.90...which I believe is more than POP by a bit... and I'm only using Pk, Mk, Y. Other colours are set to 1, in QTR. My recent photo in the gallery was printed using a negative of 1.90 DR. When I run out of yellow and MK, I'll be filling MK cartridge with PK.
 

nmp

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Hi, Andrew:

That's very interesting. Can you tell me how you measure the DR. Is it with a UV densitometer? I don't have the capacity do this myself so I have no way to compare. My Centennial POP print (Se-toned, un-toned is worse than this) with the QTR calibration mode looks like this:



The densest inks are in the order from high to low (similar to your findings): MK, PK and Y and the rest are all pretty transparent. At 100% MK, it gets almost to paper white, however for PK, it does not. MK also seemed to have some serious noise problem that were absent in the other inks. Ink-dot noise is an exaggerated issue for this glossy gelatin coated paper that may not be for hand coated water color papers.

Anyway, we are probably going way OT at this point (hope Dan doesn't mind.)

:Niranjan.
 

Andrew O'Neill

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nmp said:
P400. Using the 2880 Unidirectional settings.
Click to expand...

The calibration neg doesn't correlate with the P400 inks... which ink is which? I didn't bother printing one out because of that. Instead, I went straight to making a profile (using my old curve) and printed a negative (with a 21 step wedge). With a bit of tweaking of ink output, I nailed it. I can easily print Carbon Transfer, Kallitype, Gum, Cyanotypes... Did you make a negative from one of your images?
 

nmp

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Yeah the labels are from R2000, sorry I forgot about that...From top to bottom: MK, C, M, Y, R, O, PK, and GO. I didn't make a negative of an actual image for the POP prints because I was not happy with the less than clear whites - not as good as what I was used to in HP B9180 (kind of spoiled I guess.) I did try dialing in various combination of MK, PK, and Y using QTR but wasn't very successful. In the mean time I found this used moth-balled B9180 and focused on reviving that. The P400 (straight without QTR) did work pretty well for salt printing as I documented here:

https://www.photrio.com/forum/threads/salt-free-salt-print-toned-with-himalayan-black-salt.155417/

:Niranjan.
 
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Dan Pavel

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Thank you all for helping.
I have tried hard to recover the clogged print heads of my Epson, but with limited results. I have fully recovered black and partially yellow but not light grey. And the light light grey died, as well (it was probably my fault).
After my anger slowly subsided I ended up with buying another new Epson SC-P600. The main reasons were that I still had a full set of new (not cheap) inks for it and with a new different printer I needed to re-make all the curves for my DNs. And, of course, the fact that I am used with the good quality and the few limitations of its inks. I didn't want to lose its' very good "Advanced B&W" mode for printing DNs. I'll pay much attention now at printing something at least every 2 days and at keeping humidity high inside the printer when not in use. I made a humidifier for that and I'll buy a rubber cover, too. Let's hope I'll be luckier this time.
I managed to fully recover my older HP plotter, too, by changing 3 of its 6 print heads (not very expensive and very easy to do). Very reliable this HPs...
I am back in business now.
Thank you all, again.
 

MattKing

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Andrew O'Neill said:
Turn your printer off when you are not using it.
Click to expand...
Unless your printer has an automatic function that prints something every X hours, in order to prevent clogged heads. In that case, roll paper is handy.
 

tnp651

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Dan, 8 of my P600's 9 printheads plugged up after I hadn't used the printer for awhile. I got it going by running the head declogging cycle 8-10 times and wet-capping it. Wet capping fills the capping station (that seals the printheads when not in use) with solvent. After an internet search, I found an easy method that doesn't require disassembly. Run the Maintenance > Nozzle Check cycle. As soon as the cycle starts, unplug the printer. This stops the printhead in an unlocked position. Now you can find the capping station at the far right of the print well:

You can buy print head solvent or make your own. I use 8 parts plain Windex (not Ammonia-D) to 2 parts isopropyl alcohol (70% or 99%). Fill both wells and then turn the printer back on. After a self-test the printhead moves over the capping station and remains humidified overnight. I do this when I won't be printing for several days.Between running the nozzle check every few days and wet capping occasionally, I haven't had any further problems.
Tom
 
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