Digital BW, The Print

Antara,

>I have 870 with MIS VM, using Roark curves.. Am considering the
>C82 after all the excitement here.
>How would you compare the two?

The 870 may be the better printer.  The UT inks, however, are better than
the VM inks in terms of longevity (and tones, in my view).  So, if the UT
inkset ran well with the curves and in your printer, there would not be much
reason to change.

The C82 is part of an effort to have a very affordable and easy archival B&W
printing solution -- for anyone.  For what it is and costs, it's doing a
very good job.  I'm putting the finishing touches on a neutral inkset now.

The weaknesses of the C82 are, first, that its dmax is a bit low.  With the
neutral inkset I'm seeing 1.58-9 on EEM and 1.59-60 on PhotoRag.

Second, of course, is that it, like the 870, cannot print larger than
letter-size paper.

Third, like all monotone inksets, the tones cannot be fine-tuned in the same
way the vm & UT inksets can.  And, of course, there is not ability to do
split-tone printing.

In the neutral inkset for the C82 I've compromised the neutral tone as
follows:  EEM is 0.01 cool, and PhotoRag is 0.01 warm at 50%.

On the other hand, the C82 has a unique trick here.  If the warm (UT light
C) ink is put in the yellow spot, EEM is then 0.01 units warm.  If a warm
ink cart is put in the magenta spot, EEM is then 0.04 units warm.  To switch
between these, in fact, I just swapped the yellow and magenta position
carts -- they are all interchangeable.  So, with 2 inks, much more fine
tuning is possible on the C82 than on most monotone inksets.

The forth weakness or quirk of the C82 is that the head often nicks the
bottom 3/16 inch of the paper.  So, there is sometimes if not often a little
ink on the bottom right corner.

I don't know how well the existing curves work on the 870 for the UT inks.
For PC users with 1270s the 1280 driver seems to work.  That way they can
use the 1280 UT curves.  If that approach works for the 870 and you, then it
might be worth trying a UT cart.

>Also, is it possible to do the same or similar with the C80. ...

I don't know.

Paul
http://www.PaulRoark.com