Weird Canon i950 stuff

K

Krasnaya_Zvezda

Guest
This printer has always produced wonderful color prints, but the black and white has been rather hit or miss... Sometimes I get beautiful BW prints, sometimes they are slightly magenta. Tonight, this printer went entirely barmy. First, it would not power up, which has never before happened to me. Then, while going through the Canon website interactive troubleshoot, it sprang to life. So I tried some BW prints, which came out the most remarkable shade of blue, whether I selected grayscale (or not) in the printing options (the original images were all shot in BW mode with my Leica Digilux 2). I tried printing an image which had previously came out perfect BW, but now it is blue. Switching to some color shots, no problems. Everything looks good there.
I am really tired of the BW problems with this printer. The options I am considering are:
1) Have everything printed online at someplace like mpix, 29 cents per 4x6, a buck 99 I think for an 8x10. I had them do some BW prints for me once, and I was extremely impressed with the quality, so why not just get everything printed there as well? According to my calculations, this is much cheaper than my home printing costs.
2) Buy another printer, an Epson (I have heard they are excellent for BW printing) and therefore have a dedicated color printer and a dedicated BW printer.
3) Keep fighting the i950 (and end up punching the wall in frustration.)
I would appreciate any advice or insight, and will thank you all in advance.
 
KZ

I would guess that getting the prints done on line is the cheapest way. As you say, you can get a lot of prints for the cost of a printer, printer ink and photo papers. The new generation of inkjet printers that have 8 ink colour do B&W very well. I have no experience with Epson printers but my new HP 7960 works very well for both colour and B&W printing. My old HP 5550 gave me weird colour casts with B&W printing where the new one does not. Your option 3 is not much of an option . Have fun trying to choose between dining in or dining out.

Bob
 
I've been looking for a low cost high quality black and white printer. Check out this Mike Johnston piece. Scroll down to "A New System for B&W". It uses the inexpensive Epson C86 and the MIS UltraTone EZ inkset. It seems to really do the job. Mike said he would report back on his experience but hasn't. I emailed him today about it and he's been swamped and will be reporting back at the beginning of the year. With rebate the C86 is under $70. The 4 cartridges for black and white is $45. Worth looking into. I'm waiting for Mike's final tests. It only does up to 8.5 x 11.
 
Gordon Coale said:
I've been looking for a low cost high quality black and white printer. Check out this Mike Johnston piece. Scroll down to "A New System for B&W". It uses the inexpensive Epson C86 and the MIS UltraTone EZ inkset. It seems to really do the job. Mike said he would report back on his experience but hasn't. I emailed him today about it and he's been swamped and will be reporting back at the beginning of the year. With rebate the C86 is under $70. The 4 cartridges for black and white is $45. Worth looking into. I'm waiting for Mike's final tests. It only does up to 8.5 x 11.
Click to expand...

That sounds highly promising. I could run right out tomorrow and pick up one of those Epsons at the local Best Buy, it really is pocket change... order the inkset, and we're in business. Yeah, it would be less expensive to print online in the long run, but somehow you relinquish a bit of control.. and we all love to be in control. Well, I'm very encouraged, and thanks so far to Nikon Bob and Gordon Coale, Happy Holidays!
 
Don't despair

Don't despair

We use a Canon i9100 here at my design studio. We had tons of problems with blacks (always blue), and later realized that they were due to the OFF-BRAND INKS. I couldn't believe it -- since I was sure that the difference between Canon and El Cheapo brand was nil.

TRY CHANGING INKS to Canon brand. If you already use those, then make sure you clean and clean and clean and clean and test run and configure (which will consume TONS of ink).

The other variable is the color management found all over the place in photoshop. Embedded profiles, printer settings, CMYK versus RGB versus Greyscale (try all three), etc.

This will drive anyone mad.

Otherwise you may find the same problems with Epson at some point.
 
Re: Don't despair

Re: Don't despair

justins7 said:
We use a Canon i9100 here at my design studio. We had tons of problems with blacks (always blue), and later realized that they were due to the OFF-BRAND INKS. I couldn't believe it -- since I was sure that the difference between Canon and El Cheapo brand was nil.

TRY CHANGING INKS to Canon brand. If you already use those, then make sure you clean and clean and clean and clean and test run and configure (which will consume TONS of ink).

The other variable is the color management found all over the place in photoshop. Embedded profiles, printer settings, CMYK versus RGB versus Greyscale (try all three), etc.

This will drive anyone mad.

Otherwise you may find the same problems with Epson at some point.
Click to expand...

Well that's probably it. I just bought some "Canon-compatible" cartridges and there are three of them now in the printer. I didn't think that was the problem since I still have an authentic Canon black cartridge in, and I printed some images in grayscale only. Guess it still uses all tanks to produce those. Thanks for the tip, I'll go back to the original Canons.
 
Gordon Coale said:
I've been looking for a low cost high quality black and white printer. Check out this Mike Johnston piece. Scroll down to "A New System for B&W". It uses the inexpensive Epson C86 and the MIS UltraTone EZ inkset. It seems to really do the job. Mike said he would report back on his experience but hasn't. I emailed him today about it and he's been swamped and will be reporting back at the beginning of the year. With rebate the C86 is under $70. The 4 cartridges for black and white is $45. Worth looking into. I'm waiting for Mike's final tests. It only does up to 8.5 x 11.
Click to expand...

OK, I did it. I bought the Epson C86 and the MIS Ultratone EZ Inkset (Neutral, Eboni black for Matte paper) and it is FREAKING GREAT!
I can't describe the elation I felt when I saw the prints I got from this setup. When you are trying for the real BW look from your inkjet, and you FINALLY get it, and at a reasonable price, well... I bought the printer first, and waited for the ink to arrive, some delay due to MIS being closed over the holidays, but I loaded the BW inks into the 'virgin' C86 and my BW problems are over.
If anyone is interested, the cartridges can be found at inksupply.com and there is also a yahoo forum that is almost exclusively devoted to this subject at
http://groups.yahoo.com/group/DigitalBlackandWhiteThePrint/
 
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