Worth an upgrade from B9180 to 3800?

I've been seeing some faint head-banding in high values with digital negatives on my 1-year old B9180..I didn't notice it until I started printing carbon, but I can very faintly see it in my old kallitype negatives- though not at all in the prints. Has anyone who has used the 2 different printers care to comment? I know it must be a pretty small resource pool for both printers and the carbon process, but it can't hurt to ask. I otherwise love the HP and would hate to get rid of it unless there will be some improvement specifically with higher rez digital negatives. This banding is pretty heartbreaking.

Well, that's hard to see...so here's a crop:

Colin Graham said:

Has anyone who has used the 2 different printers care to comment?

Click to expand...

You are not likely to find many people who have owned both, idon't or have not, but I can tell you the 3800 makes very smooth negatives.

If you can't correct the problem your only choice is to seek another solution and the 3800 isn't a bad one.

Don Bryant

I thought the HP was very smooth until I started printing carbon. As I said, I know the resource pool of folks who have used both printers and printed carbon is very small- possibly non-existent- but I thought I would risk it and ask.

I'm going to try printing on some white film today to see if that helps at all. I've heard of some using it for printing diginegs on silver, so who knows...Although it looks like the exposures may run into the 1 hour range.

I just did a back-to-back test with the new Pictorico vs the last sheet of old stock that I had. The new material has pretty blatant artifacts straight off the printer- obvious head-banding. It does smooth out almost completely on drying, but it's hard to believe looking at it fresh that it could ever really smooth out enough. Has anyone else noticed this with the newer Pictorico? I contact printed some some of my old kallitype-curved negatives as carbon transfers and didn't see any headbanding at all- so I'm starting to think that maybe the problem is with the new Pictorico..? I've sent an email to Mitubishi. On their website they mention using a HP Premium glossy profile that just doesn't exist on my HP printer; just HP Advanced glossy, which was the recommended profile for the old stock. And they don't seem to have any ICC downloads for the Pictorico line.

edit-I just tried using the plain HP premium profile. It does indeed print without the wet ink lines, but it looks much grainier and the doesnt seem to be enough ink in the high values. Looks promising though, and certainly worth experimenting with.

Well...dead ends each and all. Ultimately I think carbon is just a little beyond this printer's pay grade if you have a lot of high key skies or similar areas of even tonality. Busier negatives do still render extremely well.