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.

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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!

[eln]

A properly stored CD will last at least 30 years, making it superior to this technology as far as longevity is concerned.

Digital media is really the only way to keep things around for a theoretically infinite amount of time, as you can copy it from one medium to another an infinite number of times without any loss of quality.

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

[cwills]

A properly stored clay tablet will last at least 2000 years, making it superior to CD technology as far as longevity is concerned. (And of course there is stone tablets which has an even longer life span).

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

[OzPeter]

Um .. I hate to burst your bubble, but can I remind you about the dutch group (name escapes me and I can't be bothered to google, and I was sure it was reported here) who stored a variety of CDs away for 2 years and found significant degredation in over half of them? You may argue that CDs are archival under good conditions, but how many of them are actually stored under good conditions.

As for perfect savings of digital data, the data is only as good as long as someone has the desire to copy from an older to newer medium. Once that desire is not there, your data is practically useless after 2 or 3 generations of memory devices have come along. And this hampers future generations from handling data that we archive now. Just look at the number of 8 inch floppy drives around, and think about how hard it is to re-copy the data on them. Now extrapolate that 100 years down the track. Plus once the mechanisms are no longer readily available, the desire to replicate them drops off. How many people think that data on 8 inch floppys is as inmportant as what is on their 200+GB drives now???

One of the reasons I still shoot B&W film (even though I have a D-70) is that I know a negative is more likely to be readable/appreciated by the least technological means well after I am long gone and pushing up the daisies

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

[Phat_Tony]

Or a properly stored Mitsui (MDM-A) Gold Archival CD will last for over 200 years.

They're much more resistant to light, scratching, and plain old entropy than other CD's. They're the only digital media certified by the Library of Congress, and most other libraries, as an "archival medium."

Here's some more info and a place to buy them.

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.

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".

Another Slashvertisement

[goldspider]

This is a news site, not a product review site. Paying subscribers shouldn't be subjected to advertisements disguised as news.

Photographic Preservation

[Phat_Tony]

Or, if you don't want to buy your own archival printer, or would like books instead of just prints, or need scanning and/or restoration, take a look at these guys: The Family Reserve

Disclaimer- I am very much affiliated with them.

What's the point?

[xv4n]

If the print start to fade, you just print it again!

Re:What's the point?

[Phat_Tony]

Hmm, let's see.

- A good inkjet print, like with Epson's Ultrachromes, will last as long or longer.
- Good inkjets now produce sharper prints than any photographic process except the laser exposures of the Durst Lambda. The newest generation or the next may surpass even it. Oh, and good luck finding a local lab with one of those anyway.
- With an ICC-based Color Management system, you can get more accurate color from your digital files on an inkjet than you can with any traditional photographic print.
- With newer printers like the Epson R-800, you can get wider color-gamut prints than any photographic process.
- You could do all of this at home, anytime you like, without going anywhere. If you want to touch-up the print and redo it, you don't have to drive home to your computer and back.
- I don't have time to look this up for other printers, but the marginal cost of a 4 x 6 print with Epson Premium Glossy Photo Paper and Ultrachrome inks on a desktop Epson printer is $0.31. Buy third party inks and papers, and I bet you can get it down to under $0.20.

Need more reasons? If you make many prints to amortize the cost of the printer, and are comfortable with the technology, is there any reason NOT to make your prints at home?



/unbiased information

Incidentally, this is where I throw in a shameless plug. If you want high quality, and maybe additional services that are hard to do yourself like making hardbound photo albums, and photo websites, and archiving, but you don't want to buy your own equipment and figure it all out yourself, try The Family Reserve.

Is this new?

[AIX-Hood]

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.

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.

For archival properties, use archival processes

[davidwr]

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.

Re:For archival properties, use archival processes

[Phat_Tony]

Ack! Many traditional photo lab prints are FAR from archival. Many will fade horribly in as little as ten years under normal display conditions! Read up on Henry Wilhelm's research.

From the Bettman archives to the collections of the JFK presidential library, even the finest quality pictures have often suffered horrible degradation even under excellent storage conditions. Things have gotten a lot better in the past several years, and a lot of labs use either Fuji Crystal Archive or Kodak Duralife papers, which do last quite well if treated properly. But be sure you check it out, don't just assume! For example, my step mother just bough very expensive professional studio portraits of her granddaughter, and they came back on papers that are known to degrade terribly in as little as 10 years.

In general, for most of the history of photography, assume things won't last unless you know otherwise, because it's generally proven to be the case.

If you don't want to research a place near you that uses quality, long-lasting processes, I believe that, among other places, Walmart uses Fuji Crystal Archive paper for all their prints.

Why bother with a Photo Printer anyway ?

[MyTwoCentsWorth]

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.

What's the point?

[retro128]

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

Great, they're only four years behind Epson.

[Phat_Tony]

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.

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?

Re:printer reviews?

[WaterBreath]

I haven't been keeping up on printer news since I worked at Best Buy a couple years back. But when I was working there, I was intimately familiar with the consumer models of the big brands.

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.

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 is archival? Not.

[sakusha]

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.

Re:30 years is archival? Not.

[sql*kitten]

I nominate the above for "best Slashdot post ever".

Re:30 years is archival? Not.

[Locus Mote]

I decided to learn about inkjet dyes and (pigment) inks immediately after reading sashuka's post. I felt it necessary after seeing him so vehemently deny the existence of pigment based ink. After fifteen minutes of light research, the following document revealed the existence of a milled pigment inkjet ink. EPSON's UltraChrome Ink Factsheet provides information in detail. Below are listed some of the clues to this ink's existence... clues which EPSON cleverly hid on their own website!

It appears that EPSON has had a line of inks for (at least) a year now that are milled pigment inks in an acrylic suspension. Their method of delivery is inkjet technology.

According to the literature, EPSON UltraChrome(tm) Inks are: "super penetrating pigment inks" that "are engineered to deliver incredible print quality and color brilliance rivaling that of dye based inks" and that have "a lightfastness rating of up to 82 years under glass on certain Epson media".

They further go on to describe these inks as consisting of: "Evenly milled microencapsulated pigments."

Since EPSON compares their ink to dye-based ink, and since dyes use pigments dissolved in solution, not "milled pigments in suspension", we can safely conclude that EPSON makes a non-dye based ink. This would seem to invalidate your proclamation that states, "there are no inkjet "inks," they are all dyes."

Now, I don't want to seem harsh here, but I feel you need a little bit of a scolding. You see, I'm tired of amature hobbyists who also happen to be intelligent jumping on Slashdot and proclaiming their knowledge of the state of the universe without actually knowing what they are talking about. There is something which tempers the sharp cutting edge of intelligence and guides its proper use. It's called wisdom.

One of the primary assumptions which wise people everywhere seem to know intrinsically is that no one knows everything about anything. So be careful when using words or phrases like never, impossible, no such thing, et cetera. I would also add that it compounds the problem when you make such proclamations in bold text. You might give off the impression that you are on a rant.

Re:30 years is archival? Not.

[Phat_Tony]

Do you have any references for this idea that all inkjet printers use ionized ink? It's true that the IRIS (now IXIA) printers use continuous-flow inkjet printing, where the ink is ionized and the droplets are "steered" by running them past charging plates and deflection plates. But most inkjets use thermal printing, where the ink is rapidly heated in the print head to make a bubble, which pressurizes the ink and squirts it out the nozzle. It is only aimed based on careful positioning of the print head. Epson, and some high-end professional printers like Roland, use piezoelectric printing. The piezoelectric effect is where a mechanical stress occurs in a material due to an electrical charge. A small piezoelectric diagram forces the ink out through a narrow (10 micron) orifice. Again, dot-placement is controlled by careful print-head placement, not by electric plates guiding ionized ink.

In fact, while Epson and HP's ink formulations are not known, there are many third-party ink sellers who do list their formulations, and they tend to be rather clear about the fact that they de-ionize the carrier (water) before making the inks. And they don't add anything ionized. Yet, these non-ionized inks work with these printers. How is that? Fuji also mentions that only a few expensive large-format printers use ionized ink.

Even if the inks were ionized, it is entirely unclear that oxidation would break down the large color particles in pigment based inks like Ultrachrome inks. Your arguments fail to address this. Pigmented inks are what were used in classical oil paintings, many of which have been displayed without glass since the renaisance, probably without significant fading. During this time, they've been heavily oxidized. You do not present any case that adding an ionizing agent to the ink would accellerate the breakdown of the pigments to make the inks significantly unstable. Do you have any research, or math, or arguments as to what makes you think that the addition of any ionizing agent would break down any conceivable pigment too quickly to make it stable?

"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."

Yes, that's why, at least with dye-based inkjet inks, the paper is critically important to the life of the prints. The paper is the binder. There are two main types of inkjet photopaper coatings. Microporous coated papers provide the least protection against oxidation. Still, good microporous papers, like the microcermaic coatings invented by Asahi Glass, allow large amounts of ink to be deposited with quick drying and without smudging, and the more ink, the more it can oxidize without changing. They use tiny ceramic (alumnia sol) particles in a silca gel, which rapidly sequesters the ink. Viewed under a microscope, this paper looks like jagged mountains. This is how they gather enough ink to "provide a stable layer of pigment." That's why these papers are usually used with more stable inks, they don't protect the ink much, but they take a whole lot of it into the paper.

Swellable Polymer papers use a nonporous coating of organic polymers that are water-receptive and SWELL TO SURROUND THE INK after it hits the paper. The majority of the ink is completely protected from direct air exposure. How do the inks oxidize, then?

Kodak has managed to combine these two approaches in their latest Ultima Picture Paper, which both takes a heavy coating of ink and en