New ChromaLife 100 Canon Printer Inkset

Mark Goldstein writes "Some exciting news today for everyone who loves the speed of Canon printers, but hates the fact that they don't have archival-quality inksets. PhotographyBLOG reader Phil Aynsley has sent me a translated version of a page from Canon Japan's website, which talks about a new ChromaLife 100 inkset using BCI-7 dye-inks, with promises of 30 years light-proofness under glass and 10 years antigas fading when used with Canon's "genuine photograph paper". Let's hope it leaves Japan and reaches the rest of the world soon. " The archival issue of printing is a big one for people thinking long term - this would definitely be cool.

Comments

give me permanence or give me bit-death!

[abysmilliard]

I could really use one of those, or I could someday.

The problem with digital cameras and our bloody, damned computer media is that I take so many more pictures, but hard drive corruption, decaying optical discs, and flash drive failure have a habit of winnowing my useable image files away from time to time. I've lost enough pictures permanently that sometimes plain old traditional archiving seems like a smart idea.

If I was more than an amateur, I'd be racing for something with archival ink. At least, of course, until somebody comes up with an electronic medium that has the durability of a marble block.

Re:give me permanence or give me bit-death!

[veg_all]

I translate all of my important documents into "memes" and propagate them out into the culture at large. I can retreive them later using a USB ethnographic peripheral. Or just by reading magazines and watching TV.

Re:give me permanence or give me bit-death!

[blueskatz]

Maybe you can keep your digital pictures in pristene condition, copying it from one medium to another, but what happens if you don't keep up this vigil? Or what happens if you die suddenly? Would your survivors know where to look in your hundreds of gigs worth of data? Would they even realize that there were pictures to be found? Most likely, the digital record of your life would just be thrown out.

My family has many photos from generations ago - its easy to realize that when you find a shoebox filled with pictures in a closet, you've come across something special. I doubt most people would think the same if they found some old hard drives sitting around.

Also remember that even when a photo begins to degrade, the image will still be recognizable for a long time to come. When your digital storage degrades, your decendants will have to do some hardcore data mining in order to find anything. Maybe they wouldn't even bother. And yet another thing to consider is will people 100 years from now be able to read your jpeg files? You don't need file translators for ink and paper photographs.

Now, I'm certainly not saying that ink and paper rated to 30 years is going to solve all our problems. But maybe digital isn't the best way to go for photos?

Paperless office??

[teiresias]

so much for the paperless office (although that was a pipe dream anyway.)

At least, the Canon office will be printed "genuine photograph paper" with 30 years light-proofness under glass and 10 years antigas fading.

I'd be interested what their results are without Canon's "genuine photograph paper".

Easy and (Almost) Permanent Prints

[BenEnglishAtHome]

If you want to turn your digital image files into real photographic prints that will last a long, long time, try San Miguel Photo Lab. No, regular silver prints on photographic paper won't last as long as platinum prints, but, hey, a couple of hundred years should be enough.

I don't have any relationshiop with the lab, but I've seen their work and it's amazing.

epson ultrachrome inkset

[spacepimp]

epsons ultrachrome (non archival is considered lightfast for 75 years (85- a hundred except yellow tends to fade a bit earlier) now, if you use their archival inkset add on about 25 years and lose a little bit of color accuracy (yellow again) what i see that is important is which print heads does it use, as far as i know most of them use old technology epson, yes even roland and hp. micropiezal technology. epson is far ahead of the game and is hell bent on putting these companies in their wake, theyve been a media company since before they invented the first printer for the olympics years ago. it seems to me this is very little to be excited about and about two years too late to be newsworthy. except for the uninformed

Will this work with existing Canon printers?

[Phat_Tony]

The main problem companies have had with switching to archival inksets is this: the most effective known way to make archival inks is to use pigment based, as opposed to dye-based, inks. But pigment ink particles tend to be much larger than the particles in dyes. (Dye particles are 1-4 nanometers, pigment particles are 50 to 200 nanometers.) This usually changes the viscosity of the ink solution, and the larger particles can more easily gum up the print heads.You can grind them up smaller, but the smaller they get, the less archival they become.

One reason Epson is so far ahead in archival printing is that they're the only company using piezoelectric diaphragms in their print heads. Everyone else uses thermal print heads, which heat the ink in order to spray it out, which tends to gum up the print heads more easily anyway. In fact, every other brands' heads gum up so easily that they put disposable print heads on the print cartridge, where Epson printers come with permanent print heads. (Obviously, this allows them to make a killing on ink compared to the competition). This may be why Canon's only advertising a 30-year ink as opposed to Epson's 100-year Ultrachromes- they may have to grind up the pigments smaller to stop them from clogging in their thermal print heads.

So I wonder if these will be plug'n-play replacements for Canon's current printers, or if they're going to come out with a whole new line you have to buy to use these?

30 Years? Let me know when it is 200.

[cwhicks]

In my opinion the purpose of photographs is to keep a permanent record. I'm 38, so with this stuff, my childhood would be fading to black in front of my eyes.
I'll stick with real chemical process photo prints until then.

Re:printer reviews?

[Phat_Tony]

I have an extremely intense hatred of HP's drivers for Macintosh. Which is too bad, because I otherwise love their equipment. They have really taken a beating and kept on going, with very high quality performance, in my experience. (Which entails three printers, one scanner, and one all-in-one.)

Without the HPIJS or GIMP-print drivers, my HP's would basically be paper weights, HP's drivers are so bad.

Still, after a long history with them, I've switched to Epson. Never buying HP again. I love that the open source community makes my HP stuff work, but when I pay for "Mac supported" hardware, I don't want to have to rely on the goodwill of others to make it work.

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[account_deleted]

Comment removed based on user account deletion

Re:Great, they're only four years behind Epson.

[Phat_Tony]

"nobody knows if a wide carriage version of the R800 will ever come to the US"

A wide carriage version of something better is certainly coming, and it will surely include the new higher quality gloss. They aren't going to just stop development with the current generation of printers. Anyway, the "bronzing" is only visible when the image is held at certain angles to the light, and those are the same angles where you get glare off glossy paper anyway. But it is admittedly a weakness. However, if it actually bothers you, you can fix it right now off any Epson print with an archival glossy protective spray, like PremierArt Print Shield or Lyson Print Guard Spray.

And no, the R800 does NOT have a wider color gammet then any other consumer level printer. Dye based inks are still superior in that regard. The only thing the R800 does is add an 8th tank of "gloss enhancer" which helps reduce but doesn't completely eliminate the bronzing effect on glossy paper- it doesn't change the gammut.

Well, thanks for correcting my statistics on the Epson 2200, I did have some numbers wrong. But I'm surprised you'd be so nitpicky on that, and immediately follow it up contradicting me with complete misinformation about the R800. Since the R800 has 1.5 picoliter droplets and 5760 x 1440 resolution, they no longer have to use "light" colors to achieve smooth gradients. So they dropped light black, light magenta, and light cyan from the Ultrachrome inkset, and in place of those three, they added Red, Blue, and gloss optimizer. With the addition of red and blue inks, the R800 can cover almost the entire SRGB color space, plus a whole lot more green and blue. Epson claims it prints a 19% larger gamut than HP's dye-based Photosmart 8450. Can you name any printer that covers a larger color space than the R800, without going up to giant professional printers like the 12-color Colorspan DisplayMaker Mach 12?