Digital BW, The Print

Hello Chris,

>Thanks for your reply - it makes the choice much more clear.  I'm 
>fairly certain that if I invest that much $$ in a printer, I'd like 
>to be able to make great color prints as well.  I'll still have an 
>r220 for B&W only.  

 
>I notice it's about $130 to for a set of Epson K3 inks, 

That's at full retail.  They are $11.90 each from atlex.com (good
paper prices and quick service, too).


>...and from what I understand they don't last too long.  

Do you mean in the sense of carts being small or it puts more ink on
the paper?


>I've heard a little bit about the MIS K4 inks, spongeless carts, 
>etc.  Do you know the advantages/disadvantages of going in that
direction?  

Well it's certainly cheaper, but of course you have to mess with
refilling carts.  People who use it say it looks great.  It's just
wherever you place the most value.  I am always extremely busy (self
employed) and time is at a high premium.  Since I sell prints, the
photography pays for itself, so it's worth it to me to use the K3
carts and avoid refilling (I do refill my R200 carts with R2 ink). 
But everyone is going to have their own cost/benefit equation.


>Also, I see that QTR is available for the r2400.  But from what I 
>gather, the ABW sliders in the Epson driver perform essentially the 
>same function as the RIP would.  Is that right?

Yes, exactly, and it does an excellent job.  But (there's always a
but), ABW includes the Yellow ink, which is not as lightfast as the
others.  Some people use QTR so as to eliminate the Yellow.  However
another alternative is to put MIS K4 LLK in the Y position.  I haven't
tried it yet, but Paul says it works very well.  That increases the
longevity and still allows using ABW (which IMO is a dream come true).
 But (!), of course then you can't make color prints.

How big an issue the yellow ink is is, again, a personal call. 
Wilhelm Research, at
       http://www.wilhelm-research.com/epson/R2400.html
on Page 3 of 9, rates BW prints using K3/2400 inks as follows,
depending on the paper:

Framed under normal glass: 110 to >205 years
Framed under UV glass: 110 to >300 years
In dark album storage: > 200 years

That's good enough for me, so I don't worry about it.

However it's used, the 2400 is a dynamite printer.  Hard to go wrong


Regards,
Clayton


Info on black and white digital printing at    
http://www.cjcom.net/digiprnarts.htm