Which Pigment Ink for Epson 1500W?

[martin0reg]

...maybe...this concerns the question of how dilution and printed lightness are relating..more..or less..
Actually I am searching for the compromise which will match best the OEM UCK3, because this ink set must be the same for all epson UCK3 printers.

So my other approach will come into play: visibly comparing "one-drop-dilutions" of real UCK3 ink (pulled out of 3880 carts) - to compare and prove the ratios which we now got by calculating chart prints.

 

[RogerB]

...maybe...this concerns the question of how dilution and printed lightness are relating..more..or less..
Actually I am searching for the compromise which will match best the OEM UCK3, because this ink set must be the same for all epson UCK3 printers.

So my other approach will come into play: visibly comparing "one-drop-dilutions" of real UCK3 ink (pulled out of 3880 carts) - to compare and prove the ratios which we now got by calculating chart prints.

Certainly the UCK3 ink set is the same for all printers but it may be used in slightly different ways. From QTR curves it appears that the 4880 and 7880 have a lower maximum density than the 3880 for LK and LLK.

Good luck with your visual approach, but I think you must verify it with actual printed results in the end.

 

[Ink stained Fingers]

I'm currently running a small fade test - ( am I a print addict doing that when it's cool, moist and icy outside ...?) - anyway - I'm comparing black and cyan Fujifilm DL inks and the corresponding black and cyan Epson Ultrachrome D6 inks for the Surelab printers - patches printed on the same paper, with the same driver settings. The blacks are stable after two weeks, the cyan inks show a first difference in the histogram of the scanned target - no change for the DL cyan, the D6 cyan starts shifting already - those are not identical inks. I'll update the findings in a week or two when the changes are getting more prominent.

 

[martin0reg]

This would be interesting, because like the epson 70ml bottles for ciss-models (L800) the UC-D6 comes with light colors, ready to fill 6 channels, for those who don't want to dilute.

But what carts have you used: 200ml or 700ml?

I'm not sure wether UC-D6S is for identifying the smaller cart or possibly a different ink set...
AFAIK the latest mini-drylab from epson (D700) and fuji (DX100) are the same, so the 200ml carts of both should be the same too.
But I can't find a sybling by fuji to the earlier not-so-mini drylab epson D3000, which takes the 700ml UC-D6 (without S). The earlier fuji models seem to have indeed other 6-channel ink sets, e.g. with blue instead of LC..

PS: I'm trying to get the new bottled canon ink (for pixma's with built-in ciss) as soon as it is available. Would be the second type of OEM ink bottles for small dye printers which can be used by refillers..

 

[Ink stained Fingers]

I got the ink for the Epson DL700

Epson T7821 Black SURELAB SL-D700

and the corresponding Cyan

 

[Ink stained Fingers]

Please let me follow up on the limited fade test mentioned above, now after 3 weeks total
exposure time, for the black and cyan Epson Surelab D6 and Fujifilm Drylab DL inks. Both blacks don't show any fading yet, both are stable to this point.

All ink patches were printed onto the same paper, with the same driver settings, the paper folded in half, and the upper part exposed to whatever weather during this time. The histograms are the luminance histograms of the scanned patches and just show the brightness of those, but not any color shift, the D6 Epson Cyan starts shifting and gets lighter in the upper half as the histogram shows, and this is visible as well on the screen. The Fujifilm DL ink patch below does not show any brightness variation yet between the upper and the lower part of the patch.
The Epson D6 Cyan comes with a lower brightness originally - 51 to 56, but I have not created any profiles with those inks to check whether that would result in any difference in gamut in this area. I have not tested the corresponding magenta and yellow inks.

Please see my corrections to these findings below in posting #89 http://www.printerknowledge.com/threads/which-pigment-ink-for-epson-1500w.9323/page-9#post-89191

 

[martin0reg]

Interesting measurements...
If you ever get LM or LC of the D6s, you could compare these with your selfmade light dilutions of M or C, to see how relevant may be the sort of thinner (nozzle cleaner, GO, ..)

After converting colors to grey and calculating, speculating, test printing, etc.. to get a decent B&W ink set, there is one thing I had to realize:
These purging bars with pure colors on the screen are NOT 1:1 pure printer colors. For example: the cyan BAR on the screen (0-255-255) looks clearly brighter than the magenta bar (255-0-255) - BUT cyan INK is always darker than magenta ink. There were other curious points in my amateurish ink mixing, conclusion: the only pure color printed on the sheet is the nozzle check (or from a RIP).
On the other hand these bars may represent a very high amount of the pure ink... don't know how to exactly determine this amount..

 

[Ink stained Fingers]

you are right that the patch colors are not the pure inks, but since the byprint for Cyan is the same for the D6 and DL cyan patches, all variance comes from the different cyan ink properties. I just wanted to know whether the D6 Epson Cyan makes any difference to the Fujifilm Cyan ink, and it does - it fades faster. I'm not going to evaluate this further for the M and Y inks, or the diluted LM and LC inks, their impact on perceived contrast changes on faded prints is less. The supply of Fujifilm DL inks appears to be stable, and prices are better than for the Epson inks, so that is a comfortable situation overall.

 

[Ink stained Fingers]

I need to post a correction here and feel sorry for that, I made an error in my above posting # 86 - I mixed up the labelling for the two cyan colors in question - the histogram for the Fuji DL cyan is actually the Epson D6 ink, and the patch marked as D6 C is actually the patch with the DL Cyan. I was a kind of sceptical about the result and redid the test with these inks - it is the opposite - the DL ink fades a tad quicker than the Epson D6 Cyan now after about 2 weeks, yes, I'm sure that I didn't mix up the patch markings this time, the histograms look identical to those above. I purchased separate ink cartridges for this test, those inks were not used otherwise so far, not diluted or mixed - which I'll do now since this test is finished.

 

[Ionlab]

Since i am also almost ready to pull the trigger on one of these i would really appreciate if someone that has used the l800/1800 epson inks on a 1500w could comment on photo printing without profiling, or share a profile if available.