Difference of photos between Canon Pro9000 and Epson R2880

[Tin Ho]

Canon Pro9000 uses 8 colors of color dyes. Epson R2880 uses only 6 pigment colors plus light black and light light black. I did a comparison between photos printed by these two printers. I found that Canon Pro9000 still prints a little more vibrant on glossy photo paper. The difference is not obvious. You need to do close side by side comparison to see the difference.

I printed a same image for the comparison. I used Costco Kirkland glossy photo paper. On the Epson print I can still see some bronzing. Not objectionably obvious but comparing to the Canon print it is a little more. Being pigment based Epson R2880 is surprisingly good though. Dye based inks with Canon Pro9000 do have the advantage of wider in color gamut. But R2880 is very close and the archival property is a big advantage over Canon Pro9000. Honestly if I print a bunch of photos with both printers then mix all of them without marking I will not be able to tell which is printed by which without very close side by side comparison. One disadvantage of R2880 is it is still very slow. It took me on the average of 7 minutes+ to print a 8x10 photo in max quality. It usually takes half of that on a Canon Pro9000.

I am on a photography project to print a few hundreds of max size photos using 13"x19" photo paper and watercolor paper. I don't know how much ink I will need. I plan to get 1 liter for each color of the 9 colors of ink the printer uses. Actually the project involves a group of 50 - 100 amateur photographers. I am just the one in charge of the printer and ink. It will be a fun project. At the end of the project if the printer survives it may be sold to one of the members.

 

[pharmacist]

Hi Tin Ho,

I onced made about 20 A3 prints and one set of BCI-6 (Canon i9950: the prechip version of your Canon Pro 9000) was enough. Let's say enough for about 15 13x19". One refill per cartridge is 10 ml's (there is still some ink left in the cartridge). So for 300 sheets, that would be 20 x 10 = 200 ml's ink needed, so I think 250 ml's should be enough for your project.

 

[Grandad35]

Several years ago, I kept careful track of ink usage on my i9900, and came up with an average of 0.8 CCs for an 8"x10" on photo paper. Extrapolating to 12"x18" on a 13x19 sheet, this gives about 2.2 CCs/sheet.

However, this usage is very dependent on the images being printed. If you like your prints on the darker side, this usage can easily double. If you are printing "high key" images, the ink usage could drop by more than half. If you are printing with a dark background around the object of interest, the ink usage will increase.

Then, there is the problem of which ink colors will be used - printing a blue sky over a blue ocean will obviously use a LOT of cyan, a lesser amount of magenta and very little yellow.

I have never printed on watercolor paper, but I suspect that you may have to bump up the ink usage to get more pleasing colors.

I'll let you do the math, but 9 liters of ink seems to be overkill.

 

[Tin Ho]

Pharmacist, Grandad, I know 1 liter for each color is a lot of ink. I did not do the math. 250 ml is probably enough for a few hundred 13x19 prints. I will get 500 ml instead of 1 liter then. That's still 4.5 liters total of ink.

This project is for a group of people including teenagers, seniors, men and women. The number of people may be close to 100. Everyone will bring a box of maybe 20, 25 or even 50 sheets of full size photo paper or watercolor paper to print. I will not be able to do the actual refilling of ink cartridges every time. I will figure out how to do it then teach a few then pass on to more people. I believe there will be some waste. I will need to install an external waste ink tank just in case. I hope the printer will survive the project. The fee collected from each participant is $29.95. So there is enough in the budget for the printer and the inks.

The project should be a lot of fun. We will make many field trips to national parks but will include some indoor photo shoots too. The people are not pros. There will be no color management involved. The goal will be in photography skill, composition, lighting and final photo printing, etc.

I may get 1 liter of ink for each color still because there is enough of budget. My hands will get very colorful stains for a while.

 

[OutOFtheinkwell]

Sounds like an amazing project Tin Ho, I should love to see some of the photographs.

 

[Tin Ho]

Thanks. But I probably can post only my own photos. I am not the organizer of the project. It belongs to a community group. The project participants vary in age from teenagers to seniors. I am one who is assigned to be in charge of getting a printer, inks and refilling for the printer. There is enough budget so I chose the more expensive printer/inks with an Epson R2880. This is a great opportunity for me to learn about Epson technology. I will post my findings about this printer.

 

[Tin Ho]

I have printed a few old photos on the R2880 and made a simple side by side comparison with the prints from a Pro9000. Both printers are using OEM inks. So this comparison is somewhat interesting. I found Canon prints a little lighter and Epson a little darker. In terms of colors both looked just right and vibrant. I don't want to say which one is better or worse than the other because both are printed with OEM inks. The paper I used for the R2880 is Epson matte paper and Costco's Kirkland glossy photo paper (made in Switzerland).

The difference brought up an interesting thought to me. How do you judge which is better? It is a tough call to say one is better than the other since both were printed with OEM inks. What if there is another set printed with HP printer and HP OEM inks that shows differences too? What if there is a 4th set of prints but printed with a 3rd party ink set and it too shows some differences?

 

[Tin Ho]

We continued to get people signing up for the project. This proves that small amount of money from each participants can buy everyone the ability to print the best photos with a high end pigment based Epson photo printer and with a lot of ink to spill too.

 

[Tin Ho]

I just placed an order for another set of OEM cartridges for the new R2880. The original set came with the printer is 50% used already. I just want to have plenty of time looking for the source of good after market K3 ink. In addition to online shops I want to check with a few local inkjet shops too. I met one such shop owner some months ago and got the impression from him that they could order inks from the manufacturers that they do business with. I believe some of the local shops may actually have Epson wide format printers in their shop to providing wide format printing services. I probably can purchase k3 ink out of their working stock.

The reason I checked with local shops is so that I can get tech support if needed. Also I probably will be able to have a look of prints printed with their ink before ordering. I am imagining that I can bring my own bottles and ask the shop to fill them up for me. I could walk in their shop in the future with a few bottles that need refill. This would be better than buying from online stores. Not sure how feasible this is yet. I will just have to explore this possibility.

As far as the R2880 goes. It is a great photo printer. It is surprisingly slow but the glossy photos coming out of it are surprisingly good too. Unlike older Epson printers there is no bronzing that I can see from the R2880 prints.

 

[Tin Ho]

I am on a photography project to print a few hundreds of max size photos using 13"x19" photo paper and watercolor paper. I don't know how much ink I will need. I plan to get 1 liter for each color of the 9 colors of ink the printer uses. Actually the project involves a group of 50 - 100 amateur photographers. I am just the one in charge of the printer and ink. It will be a fun project. At the end of the project if the printer survives it may be sold to one of the members.

There are already 70+ people signed up for the project. The total number of full sized photos (13" x 19") to be printed is now estimated over 700 or 1400 depending on how many will be allowed to print by each individual. I can imagine that some will probably buy a box 25 sheets of paper and will want to print all of it. Some may want to print more than one box. I can imaging that there will be needs to print smaller photos such as 8" x 10" or even 4" x 6". We have decided to get 1 liter of ink for each of the 9 colors for the R2880. Since there is plenty of money paid by the participants each person will be able to print a lot more photos as long as the printer remains alive.

There is one small set back of the project. There are quite some inkjet refill shops around. I found out that most of them are actually Cartridge World. I called one and found that each of them are actually individually owned. The one I called does not have K3 inks I want. It also is not interested in getting it for me. Maybe it is a wrong idea trying to get K3 inks from a local inkjet refill shop. However, I was able to chat with the owner about the project and I was given some suggestions. I was invited to visit the shop and check out their operation at the shop. More interestingly I was advised to only use good quality American made ink. It's not only for the reason of getting better colors but also for the reason to avoid getting the print head clogged. I was told that there are several American ink manufacturers available. The shop owner did not tell me the names of the manufacturers tho.

So here is my question. Is clogging an issue regarding the use of 3rd party K3 compatible inks? I know that getting good colors is highly desired. But I don't want to have to deal with clogging in any way. What are the American ink manufacturers? Does anyone know? I don't think I can or need to deal with the manufacturers. Just want to learn what are available. The inkjet refill shop owner seemed to know a lot of them but he apparently did not want to tell me too much about the subject. I am not in a hurry to get the ink yet. I know Image Specialists is a choice. I will look into inkjetfly and inkjetrepublic too.