I've just spent £67.56 on 4 carts for the Epson R800 at the local Staples - and whilst I don't have the receipt to hand I'm sure they were circa £14 pounds only 4 months ago per cart. This has got me thinking about the Lyson Continuous Ink System and whether it delivers value and importantly quality. I use the R800 for printing off happy snaps for grandparents (usually on Epson Premium Glossy) and for printing greetings cards on Crane & Co Museo Prefolded A5 Card stock.
What are your thoughts on the value and quality of using the Lyson CIS and is it a worth while change for a regular photog who does a lot of printing? My main concern is the apparent lack of profiles from Lyson for Crane's paper.
Lyson offers good value, but you may have to invest in custom paper profiles. In my experience, even the Lyson generic profiles are lacking. Add the cost of the profiles and see if it will be cost effective for you. I used to manage a computer lab at the college I taught at. I figured our break even point at about 1,000 8x10's made with the Lyson CIS. I haven't kept up with the prices etc. to know if that figure is still valid. We saved enough over the life of the printers to basically buy new printers every 2 years.
At 16.89 a cart its working out based on the prices today at circa £135 (probably slightly less as the gloss optimiser is a couple of pounds cheaper) for a complete set. So £199 for Lyson CIS starter kit that does 5 x what an Epson cart can do - I'm beginning to talk myself in to it
I've got a much under used printer profiling package at home - so to me I guess my "only" cost is time.
