Canon Pro-10 with rebate $299

[The Hat]

I have the impression that fading in general is not addressed at all in any photo or printing forum by the vast majority of users/members - it is just a no-subject

Whether your prints fade or not is not the answer one should be concerned about, but rather how fade resistant is the paper that it’s printed on..

Here is HP photo paper that I used from a roll and it’s clearly not withstanding the environment that I hung it in, I placed it on the wall of my Computer room about 5 or six years ago and yes the dye ink is fading also (About 40% or more), the photo looks ok and needs replacing, but also is the paper.. It’s delaminating…

You can have all the best archival inks in the world, (100 years plus) but if the modern Photo Media surface can’t stay the distance, then what’s the point in worrying about how good your inks are, only time will tell how long the average Media will last..

Click to enlarge..

 

[palombian]

I agree we should try to achieve good quality at a reasonable price, not only to be cheap.

Unless proof of better longevity of 3th party inks (the Aardenburg findings for the original Precision Colors PRO-1 inks were rather embarrassing), the only thing we can do for the PRO-10 is steal from larger capacity OEM carts.

With the PRO-1000 Canon is at the 4th inkset since entering the (PRO and semi-PRO) pigment printer market 15 years ago.
The only one with a 100% match is from the PRO-1 (according to several sources and my own experience).
PRO-1000 red seems to be the same too (at least the color). Other colors should require custom profiles (and hence are not "genuine OEM" anymore).

The price per ml is lower, and there is a substantial gain by replacing the whole set of carts together to avoid the "domino effect" of cartridges purged empty one after another.

This way the PRO-10 is no ink guzzler and OEM ink is not unreachable for your best prints.
OTH I don't believe longevity of the actual 3th party inks could be less than the ones for the 9500, in my experience sufficient for most uses.

 

[palombian]

Some thoughts about refilling with PRO-1 ink: carts are available when needed on the web at lower prices, delivered next day.
That makes the difference with ordering (de facto larger volumes) 3th party overseas a lot more acceptable.

Once you have a second set of carts (never throw them away, not so easy to find, you could help others), you only need a resetter, a small scale and a few syringes with a special tip to suck the required volume of ink out to refill the PRO-10 carts.
You seldom need more than 10g, so with the 38g in a PGI-29 cart you come a long way.

Even if you don't print anything (only a nozzle check every few weeks) you will empty about one set of PGI-72 carts a year. Enough to print at least 100 A4's in one batch, or 50 spread over time - you better print those.

It is not so expensive as suggested sometimes.

Think about it.

 

[The Hat]

You can easily make your own tips for extracting ink from the Pro 1 carts..

 

[Ink stained Fingers]

Aardenburg published a short article about the impact of the paper type onto the fading performance of inks

SPREAD THE NEWS:
MEDIA MATTERS!

www.aardenburg-imaging.com/spread-the-newsmedia-matters/

and a 2nd article about the detrimental impact of optical brighteners onto the long term stability of prints

BREAKING NEWS:
Light Induced Low-Intensity Staining (LILIS)

www.aardenburg-imaging.com/breaking-news-lilis/

 

[palombian]

Seems LU-101 isn't Canon's best paper (guess Aldi and Sihl could be better), pigment ink performs not much better than dye on it.
Interesting to see also that PRO-1000 OEM ink is less good than PRO-1, and that while Precision Colors dye ink performs very poor, the pigment ink attains half of the OEM result (and a factor 10 better than PC dye).

IMO this confirms my experience that for refillers, who in general do not spend a lot on paper, and do not print for eternity, that 3th party pigment inks are a much better choice than 3th party dye.

 

[ThrillaMozilla]

Whether your prints fade or not is not the answer one should be concerned about, but rather how fade resistant is the paper that it’s printed on..

On the basis of my testing, I am at least equally concerned about the ink.

When I first started refilling I tested all the better brands of ink that I could get for fading in light, on different media (HP writing paper, two HP photo papers, and two printable CD types). The OEM ink performed superbly; most third-party ink performed reasonably well; and one well-known brand performed extremely poorly -- on ALL media. I tested in fluorescent light and sunlight. In a reasonably short time I was able to make some colors of that brand fade away almost completely!

The results were consistent. One brand performed very poorly on all media, while others did reasonably well on all media (with some variations), and the HP OEM ink performed extremely well. I conclude that if ink performs much worse than other inks on one medium, it is likely to perform poorly on others.

I have also had dye ink fade away completely in practice. Some papers that I had printed were completely faded after one year in semi-darkness, so fading is not something to be taken lightly. (I am not certain of the brand, and I was not able to determine the cause. There is no mistake, however: only a few traces of visible ink were left on one side where the paper was completely protected from light.)

 

[Ink stained Fingers]

Some papers that I had printed were completely faded after one year in semi-darkness, so fading is not something to be taken lightly. (I am not certain of the brand, and I was not able to determine the cause.

Fading is caused by various factors - mainly by light/UV or by some chemical reactions - ozone, formaldehyde (e.g. chipped wood emanations in cabinets) , smoke or even reactions between the ink and the paper coating, additives in plastic sleeves and more.

Yes, OEM inks - Canon - Epson - HP - overall perform the best, but the significant impact of the paper type needs to be included into the judgement.


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