p.1 #1 · Best choice for most economical high quality printing?
I am looking for advice on the most economical way to get high quality printing.
I recently purchased a Canon 310 ImagePROGRAF printer, which I am using several times a week to print images ranging from 4 x 6 to 8.5 x 11 and occasionally larger. I am delighted with the quality of the prints, but I am beginning to feel eaten alive by the cost of constantly replacing cartridges. I am wondering if I should have chosen a different printer.
I am considering printers that use ink tanks rather than cartridges, expecting that these would be more economical to operate over time. The two options that occur to me at this point are the Canon 1100 ImagePROGRAF printer and the Epson 8550 printer.
I prefer pigmented inks, which inclines me toward the Canon 1100. But I have not heard anyone talking much about the ink tank system on the 1100 being particualrly economical. I do hear people saying that the Espon 8550 is economical to operate and that they love the prints--but they are dye-based rather than pigmented.
Is the Canon 1100 an economical way to get very high quality printing? Or is the Espon 8550 a clearly better choice?
One other question: there will be times when I don't print for 2-3 weeks. Is either printer likely to have more of a problem with clogged nozzles, ink-start-up usage, or other problems when there is a period of not printing for several weeks?
p.1 #4 · Best choice for most economical high quality printing?
The 310 uses 15ml carts at $18 per cart ($1.20/ml). The 1100 uses 80ml carts at $70 per cart ($0.88/ml). The 8550 uses 70ml bottles at $24 per bottle ($0.34/ml).
p.1 #5 · Best choice for most economical high quality printing?
Alan Olander wrote:
The 310 uses 15ml carts at $18 per cart ($1.20/ml). The 1100 uses 80ml carts at $70 per cart ($0.88/ml). The 8550 uses 70ml bottles at $24 per bottle ($0.34/ml).
The 8550 seems like a great machine. I wish it used pigment inks.
p.1 #7 · Best choice for most economical high quality printing?
I just viewed a great video from Keith Cooper about ink usage on the Canon 1100 (and the 1000). While the cost per ml is cheaper on the 1100 (and the 1000), its cleaning cycles use up a great deal of ink. According to Cooper, if you have not made a print in the last 24 hours, the first print you then make will use 3 ml of ink to clean before it starts to print. Also, the 1100 (and the 1000) automatically does a deep cleaning every 3 months that consumes 30 ml of ink. These printers seem to make the most sense for regular heavy use. Here's the video:
p.1 #8 · Best choice for most economical high quality printing?
I will second the epson 8550 as an inexpensive to run workhorse.
I print more than 1000 5x7" folded notecards every Christmas. The 8550 just chugs along. Almost 3000 prints on her so far. I am almost done with my second set of inks- that is I had to purchase one additional ink set since she was new. New set of inks about $125. Way cheaper than my other printers.
Do the prints look as good as my pro-1000 or 4100? Nope.
But they are close- closer than I expected. I can tell the difference, I don't think most people would notice.
Do the dye inks fade- in my experience the answer is yes. I printed an image with a lot of blue sky, and hung it in our foyer. No glass. Direct sunlight. After about a year the print still looked fine. But when I took it out of the frame the blue sky had definitely faded with respect to the edge that was under the mat. Again, the image still looked fine and I did not notice the fade until it was out of the frame. My pigment printed images do not fade in the same environment.
So is the 8550 perfect? No.
But I still use it more than any other printer I have. Test prints, note cards, give aways, etc.......
gary
p.1 #9 · Best choice for most economical high quality printing?
Alan Olander wrote:
Unless the prints are "art" prints for sale, I wouldn't worry about dye vs pigment. The dye will last a good long time.
The longevity of the prints does matter--many of them are intended for family documentation and might have a long life-span of interest. I also like the water-resistance of the pigment prints.
The other major point of comparison is whether to a critical eye the prints from the Epson 8550 are equal to the pigment prints from a Canon 310 or 1100.
p.1 #10 · Best choice for most economical high quality printing?
gchappel wrote:
I will second the epson 8550 as an inexpensive to run workhorse.
I print more than 1000 5x7" folded notecards every Christmas. The 8550 just chugs along. Almost 3000 prints on her so far. I am almost done with my second set of inks- that is I had to purchase one additional ink set since she was new. New set of inks about $125. Way cheaper than my other printers.
Do the prints look as good as my pro-1000 or 4100? Nope.
But they are close- closer than I expected. I can tell the difference, I don't think most people would notice.
Do the dye inks fade- in my experience the answer is yes. I printed an image with a lot of blue sky, and hung it in our foyer. No glass. Direct sunlight. After about a year the print still looked fine. But when I took it out of the frame the blue sky had definitely faded with respect to the edge that was under the mat. Again, the image still looked fine and I did not notice the fade until it was out of the frame. My pigment printed images do not fade in the same environment.
So is the 8550 perfect? No.
But I still use it more than any other printer I have. Test prints, note cards, give aways, etc.......
gary...Show more →
What you are saying confirms what I had been concerned about with the 8550. It seems to be an excellent printer that makes excellent prints, is inexpensive to run, but it still doesn't match the quality or permanence of the pigment printers.
How do you find the ink costs of the Canon 1000/1100? I do feel that I am constantly ordering cartridges for my 310 and that I might have bought the wrong printer--that I should have gotten the 1100. On the other hand, I don't print every day, but maybe four days a week, and I wonder about the cleaning cycle costs of the 1000/1100.
p.1 #11 · Best choice for most economical high quality printing?
There is no way to keep ink cost down with the Canon pigment printers, but you can schedule your printing in a way to produce one print every 23 hours rather than print several times per week. Also, per print ink cost really doesn’t drop until you start printing with the wider printers above the 1100. The larger printers take the two largest sized ink cartridges and with volume comes a reduction in per print ink cost. If you print regularly, this is the answer:
p.1 #12 · Best choice for most economical high quality printing?
bwcolor wrote:
There is no way to keep ink cost down with the Canon pigment printers, but you can schedule your printing in a way to produce one print every 23 hours rather than print several times per week. Also, per print ink cost really doesn’t drop until you start printing with the wider printers above the 1100. The larger printers take the two largest sized ink cartridges and with volume comes a reduction in per print ink cost. If you print regularly, this is the answer:
I think you are right that there is no way to keep Canon pigment ink costs down. I did find some very interesting information at Red River Paper's web site which suggests the ink cost differences between the 300/310 and the 1000/1100 is not very great. They have done a very careful comparison of printing costs with a wide range of printers. Comparing the cost of prints between the two printers, they came up with, for example, a cost for an 8x10 of $0.72 on the 1000 vs $0.81 on the 300. Here's a link:
I am a slow but steady printer who wants high quality results rather than a high volume printer or someone making many large prints for sale. My style of editing and printing is to make small (4x6) test prints of various edits of a single image or of closely related images and then, after some time living with the test prints, to make a larger print as a "final" version. I could easily print 5-7 days a week, but probably only a few prints each day. I have a very large backlog of unprinted images to work on, but I work on each image slowly, spending time on alternate edits and then living with the 4x6 test prints.
So, the Pro-2600 is probably excessive for my needs. But I would like to get high quality results as efficiently and economically as possible, given my slow but steady manner of printing.
EDIT: BTW, I found your website--beautiful work!!!
This doesn't include usage for cleaning cycles which can be substantial for canon. I remember posters describing real world usage results with those included on luminous-landscape.
This doesn't include usage for cleaning cycles which can be substantial for canon. I remember posters describing real world usage results with those included on luminous-landscape.
If the cleaning cycles make the canon uneconomical, I would consider the epson p900 instead, maybe even prefer that as a primary option.
One of the interesting things about the Red River numbers is that there is little difference between the 300/310 and the 1000/1100 in cost per print--the 1000/1100 is about 90% of the cost of the 300/310.
On the Epson side, the prints from the P900 are about half (!!!) the cost of those from the P700. The P900's ink costs are significantly less than either the Canon 300/310 or the 1000/1100.
p.1 #15 · Best choice for most economical high quality printing?
I went through comparing both printers that you are looking at when I was looking to upgrade from my Canon G620 which is an A4 printer back during the holidays. In fact I orderred an 8550 and then cancelled the order. I ended up purchasing a 1100, which I like a lot.
One of the main motivations for me was that I didn't want to purchase the 8550 and then upgrade in a year or two. Buying and selling printers is even more expensive than ink.
For me the 1100 was a much more capable printer that would suit me for a long time because of pigment inks and the ability to print A2 size. The decision between the 8550 and the 1100 is a hard one because they are really different kinds of printers.
I have to say that I approach printing an image in a more purposeful manner. I used to print a lot of images that were kind of throw away as I wasn't as careful in the printing process. I now print fewer images and have less discards with the 1100, although you could take the same approach with the 8550.
I also decided to try and be frugal with the other consumable cost, namely paper. I found new rolls of Red River Ultra Pro Satin on CL for $40 which comes out to $0.40 a foot. So if I print a 17x 25 image it probably only costs about $4-5 for ink and paper.
Best of luck with your decision. As they say, you can get beautiful images out of any of these three printers.
p.1 #16 · Best choice for most economical high quality printing?
chiron wrote:
I think you are right that there is no way to keep Canon pigment ink costs down. I did find some very interesting information at Red River Paper's web site which suggests the ink cost differences between the 300/310 and the 1000/1100 is not very great. They have done a very careful comparison of printing costs with a wide range of printers. Comparing the cost of prints between the two printers, they came up with, for example, a cost for an 8x10 of $0.72 on the 1000 vs $0.81 on the 300. Here's a link:
I am a slow but steady printer who wants high quality results rather than a high volume printer or someone making many large prints for sale. My style of editing and printing is to make small (4x6) test prints of various edits of a single image or of closely related images and then, after some time living with the test prints, to make a larger print as a "final" version. I could easily print 5-7 days a week, but probably only a few prints each day. I have a very large backlog of unprinted images to work on, but I work on each image slowly, spending time on alternate edits and then living with the 4x6 test prints.
So, the Pro-2600 is probably excessive for my needs. But I would like to get high quality results as efficiently and economically as possible, given my slow but steady manner of printing.
EDIT: BTW, I found your website--beautiful work!!!
The secret to buying expensive Canon printers is patients. I purchased two Pro-1000 printers for an out of pocket price of $50 each. Companies change their marketing approach, but traditionally the printers were drastically reduced in price from time to time and the profits made in selling ink. The three advantages of the larger printers are being able to print larger, printing from paper rolls and reducing ink cost. The key is buying the printer when it is offered at a substantial discount and right now, that isn’t the case. Buying roll paper also reduces cost and is a great approach if you tend use few papers.
p.1 #17 · Best choice for most economical high quality printing?
Printing is expensive and ultimately a zero sum game. You can spend more up front buying a large format printer that uses high volume inks and roll fed paper which costs less per square meter to run. Or you can buy a less expensive small printer that uses small cartridges and sheet fed paper which cost more per sq m.
It really boils down to how much you print. For sporadic output like making 10 or 20 finished prints 3 or 4 times a year, you'll probably come out ahead with a small printer even if you throw it away after a year or two due to a failed head. Sad but true.
If you're printing daily or weekly, a bigger machine like an Epson 24" using 700ml inks may last long enough to amortize the total cost making your per print cost lower. But a single failed print head can wipe that savings out too.
p.1 #18 · Best choice for most economical high quality printing?
Are you using the “Pattern Print “ feature in Canon Professional Prin and Layout software? This feature may save you some ink and paper by printing multiple versions of your image with different settings on one 8x10.
It’s available on the 310.
chiron wrote:
I think you are right that there is no way to keep Canon pigment ink costs down. I did find some very interesting information at Red River Paper's web site which suggests the ink cost differences between the 300/310 and the 1000/1100 is not very great. They have done a very careful comparison of printing costs with a wide range of printers. Comparing the cost of prints between the two printers, they came up with, for example, a cost for an 8x10 of $0.72 on the 1000 vs $0.81 on the 300. Here's a link:
I am a slow but steady printer who wants high quality results rather than a high volume printer or someone making many large prints for sale. My style of editing and printing is to make small (4x6) test prints of various edits of a single image or of closely related images and then, after some time living with the test prints, to make a larger print as a "final" version. I could easily print 5-7 days a week, but probably only a few prints each day. I have a very large backlog of unprinted images to work on, but I work on each image slowly, spending time on alternate edits and then living with the 4x6 test prints.
So, the Pro-2600 is probably excessive for my needs. But I would like to get high quality results as efficiently and economically as possible, given my slow but steady manner of printing.
EDIT: BTW, I found your website--beautiful work!!!
p.1 #19 · Best choice for most economical high quality printing?
gchappel wrote:
I will second the epson 8550 as an inexpensive to run workhorse.
I print more than 1000 5x7" folded notecards every Christmas. The 8550 just chugs along. Almost 3000 prints on her so far. I am almost done with my second set of inks- that is I had to purchase one additional ink set since she was new. New set of inks about $125. Way cheaper than my other printers.
Do the prints look as good as my pro-1000 or 4100? Nope.
But they are close- closer than I expected. I can tell the difference, I don't think most people would notice.
Do the dye inks fade- in my experience the answer is yes. I printed an image with a lot of blue sky, and hung it in our foyer. No glass. Direct sunlight. After about a year the print still looked fine. But when I took it out of the frame the blue sky had definitely faded with respect to the edge that was under the mat. Again, the image still looked fine and I did not notice the fade until it was out of the frame. My pigment printed images do not fade in the same environment.
So is the 8550 perfect? No.
But I still use it more than any other printer I have. Test prints, note cards, give aways, etc.......
gary...Show more →
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bwcolor wrote:
There is no way to keep ink cost down with the Canon pigment printers, but you can schedule your printing in a way to produce one print every 23 hours rather than print several times per week. Also, per print ink cost really doesn’t drop until you start printing with the wider printers above the 1100. The larger printers take the two largest sized ink cartridges and with volume comes a reduction in per print ink cost. If you print regularly, this is the answer:
This doesn't include usage for cleaning cycles which can be substantial for canon. I remember posters describing real world usage results with those included on luminous-landscape.
If the cleaning cycles make the canon uneconomical, I would consider the epson p900 instead, maybe even prefer that as a primary option.
---------------------------------------------
pjmsj21 wrote:
I went through comparing both printers that you are looking at when I was looking to upgrade from my Canon G620 which is an A4 printer back during the holidays. In fact I orderred an 8550 and then cancelled the order. I ended up purchasing a 1100, which I like a lot.
One of the main motivations for me was that I didn't want to purchase the 8550 and then upgrade in a year or two. Buying and selling printers is even more expensive than ink.
For me the 1100 was a much more capable printer that would suit me for a long time because of pigment inks and the ability to print A2 size. The decision between the 8550 and the 1100 is a hard one because they are really different kinds of printers.
I have to say that I approach printing an image in a more purposeful manner. I used to print a lot of images that were kind of throw away as I wasn't as careful in the printing process. I now print fewer images and have less discards with the 1100, although you could take the same approach with the 8550.
I also decided to try and be frugal with the other consumable cost, namely paper. I found new rolls of Red River Ultra Pro Satin on CL for $40 which comes out to $0.40 a foot. So if I print a 17x 25 image it probably only costs about $4-5 for ink and paper.
Best of luck with your decision. As they say, you can get beautiful images out of any of these three printers....Show more →
---------------------------------------------
jeffbuzz wrote:
Printing is expensive and ultimately a zero sum game. You can spend more up front buying a large format printer that uses high volume inks and roll fed paper which costs less per square meter to run. Or you can buy a less expensive small printer that uses small cartridges and sheet fed paper which cost more per sq m.
It really boils down to how much you print. For sporadic output like making 10 or 20 finished prints 3 or 4 times a year, you'll probably come out ahead with a small printer even if you throw it away after a year or two due to a failed head. Sad but true.
If you're printing daily or weekly, a bigger machine like an Epson 24" using 700ml inks may last long enough to amortize the total cost making your per print cost lower. But a single failed print head can wipe that savings out too....Show more →
Thank you all for the input. It is very helpful.
My pattern of printing is to print about 5 days a week but to make small numbers of prints each of those days. The way I work is to make 4x6 test copies of an image that I am working on in editing until I am satisfied and then to live with the test prints for a while until I decide which version I like best in orer to then print a larger final version, usually in multiple copies. The editing and printing are very much part of the fun and of the creative process for me.
Given that I already have about $1,000 sunk into a 310 + ink that I purchased several months ago, and given that I print often but in small numbers of prints, I am unlikely to make enough prints in a reasonable amount of time to justify abandoning my 310 for a different printer, like the 1100 or P900 or 4600. I do wish I had bought the 1100 to begin with!
But I still hate those small cartridges in the 310. I am beginning to think that the optimal solution for me might be to get an Epson 8550 to use primarily for the many test prints I make and for other prints as appropriate (it is by all accounts a very fine printer, but not quite up to the 310/1100) and then to use the Canon 310 for final larger prints when I have decided which version of a photograph I like best. The low cost of ink on the 8550 actually encourages the making of multiple versions of a print, as Keith Cooper suggests in his review of the 8550.
The only downsides I see to this approach is that the 310 would get used less often, which is not good for any printer and might make it more prone to clogs and cleaning cycles; and that the prints from the 8550 might be too different in tone and color than the prints from the 310 to be a reliable guide to selecting the final version from among the 8550 test prints to then print a final larger version on the 310.
p.1 #20 · Best choice for most economical high quality printing?
Using totally different inks for proofing versus final output is tough. That only really works with specifically paired proofing systems. HP and Epson make desktop size inkjets that are designed for proofing commercial offset printers. Mixing desktop Canon and Epson photo inkjet systems is unlikely to be very successful unless you invest heavily in colorimeters for custom profiling. Even then you'll be struggling for consistency.
For photos, you'll only get true proofs using the same ink and paper. An Epson P700 would work perfectly to proof a larger P7370 setup up for the same 10 color Ultrachrome pigments. But proofing for the 12 color version of that 24" printer would be difficult because there's no smaller sibling that runs the same 12 color ink set.
