Refilling Canon with OEM ink

[Ink stained Fingers]

Yes, I know their results, those together with the high prices were the reasons that I never tried that ink; but I got some sample ink from a photographer I met, and I just added such patches to my tests, against ink patches with the Epson D6 inks and DL inks which I printed somewhat earlier, so both inks were on the same sheet, same sun, same exposure time, same printer and driver settings.
I measure the lightness changes via the histograms so I can get some numbers even when you cannot differentiate the colors by eye, but I'm not able to recalculate them into something what Aardenburg is measuring. It could be as well that Lyson improved their inks after the bad results were published by Aardenburg. This all shows how tricky and difficult it is to get consistent and comparable results, you don't get anything from the ink suppliers and even less from the paper manufacturers about this characteristic, nothing in the data sheets, nothing by any shop what could be of help for a purchasing decision. With the tests of the photo papers I have several papers by Tecco in the test , these papers, by the same supplier , perform very good to very bad as well, but they don't tell you anyhting about this. I just try to find the 'best' ink and paper combinations, and if not the best overall on the market , then some combination which is close to it and at least much and visibly better than the average stuff. And my price vs. performance considerations may be different to other people's.

 

[The Hat]

You would have to be very careful testing any stand alone black ink, because when used in conjunction with other inks, 3rd party or OEM it stands to reason you’ll get different results.

Ink testing should be done as a complete set and on various paper surfaces to get an overall accrete test result.

Ink can be like the weather, unpredictable, variable and can show some big surprises when least expected, that’s why OEM Paper/Ink combinations are so unrivalled..

 

[martin0reg]

Finally I've found a source for lyson fotonic XG for canon (s9000 and other early "BCI" printers) in the Netherlands, 100ml 15 €.. This test was not cheap, but there are so few 3rd party inks for canon with good longevity that I paid the price..
After one week under the UV lamp the XG prints seem to look relatively good, better than MIS/IS and far better than the canon GI bottled ink, the two competitors:

Paper was mondi smooth plain paper 160g.

I will do another test on photo paper, comparing the XG ink with my "best of the bad" refill ink for small canon pixma's, OEM dye ink out of bigger BCI-1411 cartridges.

PS: regarding color matching of CLI printers like ip4500, also BCI like the ip4000 - the XG ink is way off! So profiling is really needed if you want to use XG for refilling.

 

[Ink stained Fingers]

Is there hope for Canon users to get a good fade resistant refill ink finally ? It is a pricing game finally how much more somebody is willing to pay for such ink - the same issue as with the Fujifilm inks for Epson

 

[The Hat]

Is there hope for Canon users to get a good fade resistant refill ink finally ? It is a pricing game finally how much more somebody is willing to pay for such ink - the same issue as with the Fujifilm inks for Epson

When it boils down to it, most users want to print with the cheapest ink that they can buy, whereas a few defined used will always seek a better quality ink even if it means paying a higher price, that’s why universal ink is still so popular today...

 

[martin0reg]

I made some more XG prints, with a ip4500 (CLI-8 type) and also with a ip4000 (BCI-6 type).
But I have to say, that the color output is VERY different from CLI or BCI output.

I know that the "color matching" of 3rd party inks is never like 100%. And after profiling with a color munki the result is okay...
But without a custom profile for each paper these inks are so far from correct colors like no other, and much cheaper, ink set for canon CLI type printers!




(edit) Print on aldisihl semiglossy 280g, canon setting on glossy paper with color on "auto" (above) / with colormunki custom ICM (below)

PS: I'm wondering if I got a bad batch of ink..? .. or if the XG set is only useable as an 8-color-set for pro9000...?

 

[Ink stained Fingers]

I have seen such color shifts before with Epson 'compatible' inks, run a profile, and it's o.k. as you say. The question left would be the actual size of the gamut compared to more typical Canon inks on the same paper type.

 

[The Hat]

@martin0reg, I have two printers that used BCl-6 carts and three that use the CLl-8 carts, but it was a pain in the butt having two compendium of carts for the four machines, so I switched them all to use the CLl-8 carts, I even went a step further and used exactly the same colour ink-set in all four printers

Yes, the colours were a bit off to start with, but by using the colour/Intensity Tab on each machine I was able to use the Manual Colour Adjustment to match the test sheet on screen on all four printers, the 8 cart machine was slightly different didn’t, as you might expect.

When I had a lot of printing to do, I found I could control the output much better while using exactly the same carts and inks in all the printers, it cut out the possibility of mistakes...

Printers:- i865, iP4500, iP4700, iX4000 and i9950.

click to enlarge.

 

[stratman]

click to enlarge.

Looks like you put a lot of effort into adjusting.

 

[The Hat]

Looks like you put a lot of effort into adjusting.

Smart Ass...