Some tests with the ET-8550

[stratman]

a blind man on horseback couldn’t tell the difference

Maybe because you are a professional printer and not some goofball cranking out posters for his lost cat, missing one leg, answers to the name "Speedy".

PS Yeah, the horse makes all the difference.

 

[The Hat]

PS Yeah, the horse makes all the difference.

You bet…You can’t keep a good Horse down..

 

[Ink stained Fingers]

I think we should make this horse a honorary member of the printerknowledge forum.....

 

[Ink stained Fingers]

A color that cannot be seen is no color per definition.

Impossible and imaginary colors are described here

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Impossible_color

But I didn't find any inks with such colors yet - not even at inkproducts.com

It's difficult to find any actual tests dealing with the benefits of light inks, an early article is linked from this
posting

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/CcMmYK_color_model

Archived from the original (PDF) on 2015-07-07. Retrieved 2013-07-16.

to

http://cilab.knu.ac.kr/publication/국내외 컨퍼런스/2004/국외/six color separation for improving graininess in a middle tone region.pdf

which addresses the effects of granularity and graininess and does some test with an age old Epson Photo 700 printer with 360 dpi. I'm pretty sure that light inks were necessary those days - probably 15 years ago.

 

[Ink stained Fingers]

@Keith Cooper tested the ET-8550 some months ago in great detail, and questions came up if the missing light inks or the missing red ink compared to a Canon Pro-200 or an Epson XP-15000 make a visible difference in prints. He commented in the luminous-landscape forum to these questions here

https://forum.luminous-landscape.com/index.php?topic=138577.msg1219945#msg1219945 (reply #4)

yes, there is a visible difference under a microscope but not with prints on the wall

 

[The Hat]

but not with prints on the wall

Just as long as there high enough on the wall so the pixel peeper can’t get their nose to them..

 

[palombian]

As @Keith Cooper already mentioned, new ink sets are a lot of marketing and to keep ahead of refill ink labs.

 

[stratman]

new ink sets are a lot of marketing

Canon forgot to market the CLI-42 Yello Gello.

 

[houst1380]

I ran some profiles on the ET-8550 and the L1800 to compare them , I'm using a 190gr PE/RC paper - no brand - and I'm using the paper selection 'Ultra Glossy' and the quality settings normal/standard and high/stark, the ET-8550 offers another quality level 'best', and there is one profile with the matte paper selection. The ET-8550 offers an additional option to modify the ink density from +20% to -50%, - somewhere hidden in the extended settings. The graphs below are an overlay of seven of these profiles showing the gamut volumes, they are almost identical and the actual profiles as well at different lightness levels. They vary by not much more than reading variations by the spectro.

View attachment 12858

The right plot shows the cross-section at the mid-luminance of L*=50, this following graph shows the cross-section at a lower luminance of L*=25, they are still pretty much similar

View attachment 12859

And this plot shows the profiles at a lighter luminance of L*=80, still pretty much similar.

View attachment 12860

The L1800 runs with light inks - LM and LC - the ET-8550 does not, but the above profile displays show that this does not make a difference at all - there is no gain at all in the lower quadrants - in direction of magenta or cyan. The ET-8550 and L1800 very much deliver the same color output - gamuts as shown here.

The ET-8550 runs with the Epson 114 inks as they came with the printer, I'm running the L1800 with the Epson 106 inks of the ET-7750, the fading tests earlier this year show that these inksets are not identical - the are slight variations on different papers but both inks overall perform very well in both aspects - fading and gamut.

There is a 114 PB photo black dye ink and a 106 PB photo black dye ink used in these tests, both inks deliver
a black level luminance of L*= 3.7 - 4.2 varying with the driver settings, these black inks are as well identical.

I'm not complaining but this shows that there is basically no improvement over the last 15 years in respect to the overall color output/gamut and fading performance. Printers got some other features like a duplexer and wireless connectivity options and a display at the printer but that's about it. Stay tuned - I'll play some more with the printers.

Do you have a link to the paper you purchased by any chance?

 

[Ink stained Fingers]

Do you have a link to the paper you purchased by any chance?

https://www.ebay.de/itm/20-Bl-Premi...uckseite-PE-/232650718918?hash=item362b103ec6