Suggestions for a printer suitable for printing monochrome at a reasonable cost please?

Glenn

Glenn

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I am working with a friend who has a good but old printer (Canon Pixma iX4000). It still performs well but BW images have a greenish cast. I think the issue is that it is a four ink printer (Y,C,M and black). More modern printers add at least photo-blue or grey into the mix to neutralise any colour cast.

For information: I have calibrated the monitor and use monochrome iX4000 ICC profiles. The inks are original Canon. The paper is Ilford Galerie.

Does anyone have suggestions for a moderately priced printer (say in the region of £250 to £350 with reasonable ink replacement cost) suitable for A3 prints please?
 
I used to run Epson printers, but found they were unreliable, and prone to heads clogging. Over the past10 or so years, I've stuck to Canon's medium and large format pigment ink printers - now known as the PROGraphic range. I have also a consumer grade one for everyday use, running on dye media, a Pixma iP8700, which is excellent, handles up to A3+, is silent and runs well using OEMdye inks at a good saving and no noticable difference from the Canon juice. My other one is a newer creation called the PRO 300. This is a multi-chamber pigment 'giclee' machine, but like most pigment types, suffers from ink clogs in the head - trying to clear it right now! It's run for three years without problems until a few weeks back, but was left unrun for about three months allowing the squirters to stick up. The answer with these is NOT to turn them off. Doing so between runs means the printer does a complete clean and check run to get ready for use, using up a lot of ink. If you're interested, I have an earlier Pixma PRO-10 that's virtually identical to the 100 series. It needs a new head and fresh ink set - that's about £200 on the independents/eBay market. If you're interested, I'm selling it for £100. Contact me on my email address > jezimages@gmail.com
 
Thank you Jeremy, kind of you to reply. Plenty to think about. Let me ponder.

I spent the day cludging together a set of compensation curves for photoshop (cheapskate ICC file looky likey) that might be sufficient for the time being. An interesting exercise using my digital camera instead of a spectrometer which, although clearly suboptimal, got the brain cells working. My friend is getting good scores in camera club competitions for her colour work using the iX4000 and it is only really letting her down on monochrome.
 
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I know that cost is one of your considerations but, having spent out on two Epson SC-P600 printers, only to have them both die untimely deaths, after two years each, from blocked jets and air leaks, I finally switched to the Canon Pro-1000 and have never been happier. I bought it in February 2022 and have never had a single blockage, even when leaving it for a couple of months on a couple of occasions without doing anything.

As for printing B&W, Canon has its own B&W mode, which doesn't need profiles. The very first thing I did on receiving the printer was to create a B&W print on Canson Baryta Photographique II paper and was an instantly blown away with the result. I have never used profiles for B&W since.

It uses 12 cartridges, including four blacks and a Chroma Optimizer, which ensures that you don't get differences in texture on areas with no colour. You can change from satin to matt black without physically changing cartridge.

For me, having four years, so far, of trouble-free, intermittent, printing has been worth every centime.
 
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In terms of Canon Vs Epson, my experience mirrors the two expressed above. When I still printed, I eventually ended up with a Canon 7 cartridge Photo printer. It produced quality prints and never let me down but it was expensive to feed. I consequently replaced it with an Epson printer for the family because it uses very large ink bottles that last for ever. It's OK for every day printing but photo prints are poor. Despite fairly heavy use, I've just managed to catch a head blockage in time with the head cleaner. Never happened with my Canon printers.
 
I use Imageprint for my printing software and use a Epson 3800, I prob tempt fate now, in 15 years I have owned it , thousands of print, done , it has never missed a beat
 
Thanks everyone for taking the time to reply. It's much appreciated.

So it seems the consensus is Canon good, Epson bad although Martin's experience bucks the trend.

I spoke to my friend at last night's meeting and she has her heart set on a new printer rather than a "previously enjoyed" one so that answers that question. The Pro-1000 (or the 1100 which appears to be its replacement) looks excellent but I don't think the volume of prints she makes during the year justifies the cost. The cheaper Pro-310 might be a candidate though. I will research it a little more.
 
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I've used up two Epson Stylus Pro 3800 printers, and currently use a 3880, which is virtually identical. Both 3800 printers worked really well until they suddenly didn't, but all were bought second hand. I think there were some serious early issues with the P900 that replaced them, but I'm sure they're long sorted out.
 
Found this from a review online from 2006 in "What Digital Camera" magazine:

"... Unfortunately, this printer [iX4000] doesn’t outperform in print quality. Firstly, the blacks are very weak: even the densest black looks more dark grey. This leads to images lacking contrast and bite, which isn’t helped by a weak set of colour renditions in some areas, particularly blues and some greens and yellows. Green is also a predominant cast in the print, especially in shadow areas and even skin tones, which is never an attractive cast. This certainly doesn’t help black and white images. So, if you’re considering this printer, consider profiling it too. ..."

Seems I might have been on the right track with my kludge profiling after all. Will persevere.
 
The Canon Prograf 300 I have is way above the quality of Epson P600 that I had before. It was so bad that after pestering Epson and threatening them with trading standards did they relent and give me the money back but never bothered to collect the P600. Shortly after that the P600 range were taken off the market world wide, because of complaints about jamming paper feed, smearing of the inks and the overall shoddy and flimsy construction not to be replaced for several months. It was also very noisy in operation, not the heads moving to and fro but the paper feed mechanism used to give a loud slapping or cracking sound when loading the paper- (usually inaccurately)

As has been said before you do not shut the printer off, but leave it switched on. It goes to sleep and this avoids the need for waiting when the printer is woken up and agitates the cartridges. If you do not use the printer for 3-4 days it still goes through the agitation stage and does waste the dye's so every other day just print a test pattern and this will use far less ink and ensure non is wasted. You do not even have to turn the computer on, the command button on the printer will do it in a minute or two after starting the sequence. You can even get 4 full test prints on one sheet of A4 so that is not expensive either.

I have had it about 4 years now and the Pro 300 has been superceded by a later version but I see no point in changing it. But going back to the original question I have never had a problem with colour casts when printing B&W. The only drawback is the cost of cartridges which only contain only 12cc each and a full set of 12 can set you back around £160.-£170.
 
Glenn said:
Thank you John.
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I forgot, there is a company called 'The Cartridge People' who sell both the original Canon Cartridges and compatibles. The Canon for a full set, the last time I bought from them was around £126 for the full set with free delivery. The compatibles are cheaper still, around £85 for a full set also with free postage.
The Canon ones have what I think is a ball bearing in the ink/dye compartment and when it does an agitate stage which is every time you change a cartridge this stirs up the dye compound (a bit like a rattle can of spray paint) which does seem to reduce or stop clogging at the business end. The compatibles don't have that so you have to take your chance it will be OK. I would think with a test print every other day you could almost rely upon them. I don't think it is worth it, although they do have a guarantee if they do cause problems with your printer.

Their web address is TheCartridgePeople.com
 
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Thanks John. I have been using the Cartridge People for some time and found them to be good.
 
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John2 said:
... I consequently replaced it with an Epson printer for the family because it uses very large ink bottles that last for ever. It's OK for every day printing but photo prints are poor. ...
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Not sure if you have seen this or even if it works but for what it's worth:

 
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