[Leica] Printer Purgatory

[pklein at 2alpha.net (Peter Klein)]

First off, thanks to everyone for their comments.  It narrowed the search a 
bit and made it manageable.

The good news is that it looks like I'm going to by OK with the 1280 for 
now.  I ran a couple of purge patterns with MIS cleaning carts in the 
printer, then left it sitting for a couple of days.  Now I've installed new 
ink carts, and all is almost well.  I am missing one nozzle, but which one 
is missing moves around from test to test. Which means there's an air 
bubble that just needs to bubble up.  The hextone prints are a little 
cooler tone than they were before, which is weird.

I hope I don't have to do anything immediately, because I want to recover 
from <ahem> a recent camera purchase first.  But I don't trust the 1280 
long-term.  The 3800 looks like a good long-term solution, but I'll want to 
see some actual output from it first.  Especially the B&W output.

Paul Roarke has been messing with the 1800/800 lately, and has come up with 
a way of keeping the color inks, but putting MIS Eboni inks in the black 
ink and GLOP positions This gives you both B&W and color in a pigment-ink 
printer, with one restriction--matte paper only.  I think you have to use 
Quad-Tone RIP for this.

("GLOP" is GLoss OPtimizer, don't you love that name?).

Mark, you know me well.  In the digital B&W world, I am indeed more of a 
matte B&W guy than a glossy guy.  Interestingly, though, back in my 
darkroom days I used mostly glossy paper, but unferrotyped.  So it was 
glossy but not glitzy.  But that was then and this is now.

I think I prefer glossy for color prints that are going to be handled and 
passed around, as opposed to mounted.  So it would be nice to have the 
option.  For B&W, inkjet prints just looks better on matte.

--Peter

At 09:45 AM 6/15/2007 -0700, Mark Rabiner wrote:
>When you buy a 3800 you are getting in effect 500 dollars with of pigment
>ink.
>
>Subtract that from the cost of the printer it is cheaper than the 2400.
>
>This and the more modern print engine and the fact that its not that big
>even if you mainly did letter sized prints the 3800 would still be maybe
>your best bet. I'd say for sure the one to get.
>
>I don't think Peter, as I know him, would want a printer with gloss
>optimizer designed for glossy color non pigment prints but just the
>opposite.
>
>Matt pigment black and whites.