Slashdot Mirror
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.
In other news, revenue goes up due to the high price of their special paper.
Comment removed based on user account deletion
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.
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".
-Teiresias
It is rather simple with automated remote backups.
In Soviet Washington the swamp drains you.
This is a news site, not a product review site. Paying subscribers shouldn't be subjected to advertisements disguised as news.
"Ask not what your country can do for you." --John F. Kennedy
I've used them all and like Canon the best. The dual black inks (one an ink, the other a pigment for photos) is a really nice feature, especially if you print a lot of text. Unfortunately, Canon no longer seems to be supporting this feature in their current line of printers, all of which seem to be strictly photo printers. Bummer. You can still find the i860 on their site, but you have to search for it.
Dude, I think I can see my house from here.
Disclaimer- I am very much affiliated with them.
Can anyone tell me how to set my sig on Slashdot?
If the print start to fade, you just print it again!
Epson has had this type of archival ink available for at least 6 months, as I bought one and the output is spectacular. I'm not sure why this is story is newsworthy.
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.
If you want archival prints, get them printed in a traditional photo-lab. Many 1-hour labs can turn your digital photos into photographic prints, made with the same paper and chemicals regular prints are made from.
These should last 30 years easy if taken care of and kept out of the sun.
If you want 200 year prints, you can probably get digitals put on IlfaChrome (formerly CibaChrome), which can last centuries if treated properly.
Knowledge is how to play a game, intelligence is how to win, wisdom is knowing what game to play.
I can print a 4x6 digital picture for 19 cents at Costco, and it goes up to a 11x19 inch for 2.99. No Costco around ? Try Wal-Mart for 24 cents, CVS for 29 cents, etc.
Other than the "I need it right now so I'll pay twice the price for a bad quality picture which fades fast too" factor, why would anybody pay a ton of money for a printer and then pay again in EXPENSIVE consumables, when they have a better choice.
Happy printing.
With the purchase of a digital camera I found that I can take the memory chip to Costco and for $0.19 per print create 4x6 prints on photo paper (developed and printed like normal 35mm prints). I did it as a test and found that the photos (snapshots) were by and large comprable to the 35mm point and shoot I had been using. (haven't made anything larger than 4x6 yet)
While actual photo prints don't last forever, they do last substantially longer than anything I've ever seen come out of a printer. The cost and time (costco is 1 hour @ $0.19 per print) is substantially less than photopaper, ink, printer, and printing time. (They made 50 Thanksgiving prints in one hour).
Doesn't solve the long term problem of storing and archiving the 'digital negative', but seems like a really great option for snapshots and the like.
Filmo The Klown
You can take your flash media into just about any place these days and have the pictures on it produced with the same machines they use to print negatives. And the cost is about $0.20 per print. At those prices, why mess with lousy inkjets?
http://tinyurl.com/58g98
-R
Epson released the first Archival printer, the 2000p, in the summer of 2000. And it was rated for 200 years light-fastness. It was followed in 2002 by the very popular Epson 2200, which used a newer 7-color archival pigmented ink set, prints up to 13 x 19, uses roll paper, does borderless printing on many sizes, and prints at 2880 x 2880 dpi with a minimum 3 picoliter droplet. It produces more crisp pictures than any photographic process except the laser exposures of the Durst Lambda.
They folowed that up in 2002 and 2003 with four large format archival printers of comparable print quality, the 4000, 7600, 9600, 10600, printing up to 44" wide by 100' long. All of these are rated at 100 years light-fastness.
Now, in 2004, they've released their third generation of archival printers, starting with the R-800, which is the first pigmented printer to produce true glossy prints without "bronzing," has a wider color gamut that any other consumer level printer of any photographic process, prints borderless sheets as well as CD's and DVD's, and prints at up to 5760 x 1440 with 1.5 picoliter droplets. These prints are also rated at 100 years.
Don't get me wrong, it's nice that Canon's bringing on the competition, but is a new 30-year ink set four years after Epson's really big news in the industry? Epson dominates here, and with their huge range of printers that take ink sets good for 100 years or more, this isn't a very aggressive step for Canon.
Can anyone tell me how to set my sig on Slashdot?
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
The PIXMA 3000, 4000, and 5000 All replaced that line of printers and offer 4 (C,Y,M,Bk) for the 3000 or 5 (C,Y,M,PBk,Bk) inks for the 4000 and 5000.
Mak'tal shree lok'tak mek'ta sa'tak Oz! - Daniel Jackson
I have to say that, at that point at least, Canon was most popular, because their quality was good considering their low prices. Though it also might have had something to do with the in-store sales rep they had. But HP was miles ahead of the competition in quality, if you could afford their ink. Epson couldn't seem to find a good balance between quality, speed, and ease of use. Lexmark was fast, but the quality was less than stellar, plus their ink was ridiculously expensive.
If I were to go out and buy a printer today, I'd be focused on quality, so I'd still check out HP first.
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?
Can anyone tell me how to set my sig on Slashdot?
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.
- I like pudding.
This is a joke, right? 30 years life is NOT archival. I've seen photographs produced in REAL archival processes that are 150 years old and they look perfect, with no signs of fading. I even use some of those processes myself, and I expect the pigments I use will last longer than the paper, probably something around 400 years.
I have done a lot of research on this subject, and let me make one thing perfectly clear: There is no such thing as an archival inkjet ink. And there never will be, not unless the fundamental technology of inkjets changes radically.
Let me explain this to our presumably technically oriented slashdot audience. It requires some familiarity with the famous Milikan Oil Drop Experiment, which should be well known to anyone who studied physics. Perhaps some of you even performed the experiment in your high school physics class as I did. Fortunately we won't have to do any of the measurements, the analysis is strictly qualitative, not quantitative.
Milikan's experiment involves a vapor of oil drops suspended in an electric field between a cathode and an anode. The experiment had to use oil drops, because the surface of oil drops is ionized. If you do this with a neutral-pH substance, like distilled water, the droplets will not suspend in air inside the field. You would have to add significant amounts of salt or some other ionizing substance to the water to get it to interact with the electrostatic field.
And that's exactly how all inkjet systems work, from the fancy Iris to the lowliest piezoelectric inkjets. Small droplets of ink are propelled by electrostatic fields. The ink droplets must contain an ionizing agent or nothing will happen.
Unfortunately, ionization is the enemy of pigment. Ionization is the catalyst for oxidization, and causes fading. This is why some of the early Epson "archival" inks underperformed their rated lives. Testing was done by Wilhelm Research, in the clean air of Iowa, but when the inks were released, they were used in major metropolitan areas like Los Angeles, with high levels of ozone pollution. The ionized inks interacted with the ozone in the air, and the prints faded rapidly, sometimes in mere days or weeks, rather than the expected 80 years. The inkset was withdrawn, and obvious flaws in Wilhelm's accelerated testing methods were revealed.
If you look at any truly archival photographic process, the fundamental issue is neutralization of ionization. Adding salts is exactly the one thing you should NEVER do if you want to produce archival prints. But that is exactly what the inkjet printheads require for propelling the inks. Until a technology evolves that does not require electrostatic fields to propel ink droplets, inkjets cannot ever produce archival prints. It would contravene the laws of physics.
I won't even get into the chemical formulation of dyes, and let me make it clear, there are no inkjet "inks," they are all dyes. Inks have a binder, and dyes do not. Dyes cannot be deposited on a surface in sufficient quantities to provide a stable layer of pigment, they merely stain the surface of the substrate. An archival binder is just as essential to archivality as the composition of the pigments. And some pigments are particularly "fugitive," they fade rapidly while others do not, causing color shifts, especially in pale colors where a minor amount of oxidization and pigment loss causes major color shifts. There is no such thing as an archival CMYK dye set. Nobody has ever produced a full-color stable ink set, the magenta colors are particularly prone to fading. If you've ever seen a color poster hanging in a sunny shop window for years, you've seen the shift, the magenta fades away, leaving a sickly bluish-green image.
Well enough of that. Just realize that whenever "archival" is thrown around in the inkjet field, it's being used as a selling point. Every single person who makes an assertion that their ink is archival has a financial incentive to lie to you. Photographers and art curators have specific criterion for archival properties, and if you go to them and tell them you have a new dye that is archival, and it lasts 30 years without fading, they'll laugh in your face.
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.
Can anyone tell me how to set my sig on Slashdot?
Comment removed based on user account deletion
Huh. Somebody needs to visit the Long Now foundation and recalibrate their idea of what "long term" means.
Thirty years is "archival?" The crappiest stuff in the world will last thirty years. Canon is bragging about thirty years?
And that's probably an exaggeration. There are probably a lot of asterisks about humidity, and what kind of glass it is stored under. (A lot of those CD-R's that manufacturers said were going to last a century are starting to fail in less than ten years).
Light purple spirit duplicator documents will last thirty years. Even if they're a lighter purple than the day they were printed.
Books printed on World War II paper have lasted more than thirty years.
Any old black-and-white photo will last a century, easy. After a hundred years or so it may not have a full rich Ansel Adams tone scale, but you can see that your baby has Great-Grandma's dimple just fine. And that's the one that was sitting in that leather frame on Grandpa's office desk for all those decades...
So, these inkjet photos. Sure, you can always print them out again... except that our supposedly permanent digital media are, of course, only permanent if we are vigilant conservators ready to recopy everything over to a new format every decade or so as technology advances.
Two hundred years from now historians are going to know more about the 1800s than they do about the 2000's.
"How to Do Nothing," kids activities, back in print!
If you want an archival color print from either digital files or traditional negatives, go to a lab that uses Fuji Crystal Archive paper in the traditional RA-4 process. Your print will last a 100 years and doesn't have to be underneath glass. In fact I recommend this even if you store your digital pictures on a RAID-5 array backed by tape. There is something to be said about the permanence of a print versus the permanence of digital bits.
Personally, I bought my wedding negatives from the photographer and did all the prints using traditional B&W silver halide paper in my basement darkroom. Fiber-based paper toned in Selenium will last 200 years or more. Heck I even printed the color negatives on B&W paper and they look great.
I have family pictures that are 80 years old and look fantastic. The sad part is that Joe Sixpack's treasured family pictures, created on inkjets or even shoddy photo labs, will not be viewable 80 years from now.
Some one already posted about the lifespan of hp's vivera inks, but the only two replies implied that hps testing was questionable. The truth is that hp doesn't do their own tests, they hire a 3rd party that is an expert in image testing. The company they use is Wilhelm Researchu s.html). All of HP's long-life figures are from this source, and the previous post was correct, up to 117 years behind glass with HP's new ink system and hp premium plus paper, and 70+ years with the previous ink system, which is still more than this "groundbreaking" 30.
(http://www.wilhelm-research.com/about_
It's a damned lie. We have some medical image backups on this stuff where I work, from about 3-8 years ago. Close to half of them are corrupted and unreadable.
-ccm
Too much Law; not enough Order.