Digital BW, The Print

I absolutely agree with Paul here....My own personal experiences with MIS have been both positive and negative, but the bottom line is that they REALLY try hard for a small company to fill a void and a need for us photographers..I would hate to see this MIS bashing deteriorate into the loss of  a GREAT resource such as I feel they have been for myself after doing business with them for over 5 years.. I print  my B&W's with a 1280 and their UT2 inks  and their spongeless carts (yes..a few did have leaks in the beginning..)..virtually trouble and clog-free for over a year now....Which is more than I can say for any CIS/CSF system I have used (with 2 1160's and 2 other 1280's)
     I think it's time to turn this discussion into a more positive vein....My black and white printing has was NEVER this good in the old WET darkroom days, and my productivity has increased immeasurably  in a great part due to the effort, products and support that this company has provided..
Enuff said..

Eddie Wiseman


  ----- Original Message ----- 
  From: Paul Roark 
  To: DigitalBlackandWhiteThePrint@yahoogroups.com 
  Sent: Friday, August 17, 2007 8:57 PM
  Subject: RE: [Digital BW] Re: What's with MIS?


  I'm not here to defend MIS or sell its products, nor am I here to take shots
  at any company. I have no monetary relationships with any. 

  Neither MIS nor any other company has perfect products or support.
  Clogging, cartridge quality, and customer support seem to be the main themes
  in this thread, and each involves slightly different issues.

  With respect to clogging, from what I can tell all inkjets can clog.
  Pigments are said to clog more than dyes, but my old HP dye printers sure
  did clog.

  The information I've been able to get indicates that most of the pigment
  particles themselves from the various competitors are close to the same
  size, and all are so small that the particle sizes are rather irrelevant.
  They are way smaller than the nozzles. The problem is agglomerations of
  pigment particles, and that is probably unrelated to the minor differences
  in particle sizes among the competing inksets we use. The base and how well
  it disperses the particles is much more important.

  (There are a number of factors to clogging that have nothing to due with the
  inks, like capping station adjustment, but I'll ignore these here.) 

  The chemistry of the base is the main variable in the inks that seems to
  affect how prone they are to clogging. In that respect, all of the
  companies appear to have improved their products over the years I've been
  involved. I just do not consider clogging a serious issue with today's
  pigments and printers, whether they are Epson, MIS or Piezo inks.

  How much an ink may be prone to clogging involves a combination of factors
  including the binder used, as well as the solvents and other agents in the
  base. If, for example, a base had no binder, it would probably not clog
  very much if at all. Of course, the pigments would also fall off the paper.
  In that respect, I use the MIS "UC" base, diluted 50% with distilled water,
  as a cleaning and storage fluid. It has no binder because the Epson UC pigs
  rely on their coatings to stick them to the paper. Of course, these
  coatings can also cause the particles to stick together and stick to the
  nozzles. But I'd guess that the less binder, the less the likelihood of
  clogging, all else being equal.

  Glossy paper compatibility requires a different binder -- and probably more
  -- than matte paper. I suspect one can make a matte paper only pigment that
  clogs less than one that must be able to stick on glossy paper.

  Epson's MK pigments have no coating and must, therefore, have a binder in
  the base just like MIS Eboni. On the other hand, both are compatible with
  matte paper only. I'd guess they both clog about equally, but I've never
  run any objective tests on that. I've never had significant problems with
  either.

  In general, MIS is a reseller of Image Specialists inks, and that company is
  a major supplier to many third party companies and industrial users. That
  and the even larger companies above it are where the sophisticated chemistry
  is done.

  The cartridge issue is mostly a question of what quality MIS can buy. For
  example, the spongeless carts are wonderful when they seal, but a
  significant number appear to have problems with their exit port poppet
  valves. A significant part of what MIS does is search for the best carts at
  the best prices. In general they've done a good job, but they -- and we --
  are dealing with a quality issue that is not totally within MIS's control.
  From what I can tell, they receive a test batch and then have to buy in
  quantity to get good prices. The shipments of production carts do not
  always match the quality of those in the initial test shipment. Not
  surprisingly, much of this seems to come from China. So, the bottom line
  seems to be that about 1/3 of my spongeless carts will leak when I pull the
  stopper to refill them. I may just throw the leaky ones away and use
  another, new spongeless cart. Even if it takes 2 carts to find one that is
  perfect, the price is still a fraction of what the alternatives are.

  I hear a mixed bag in terms of customer support. The truth is that this
  list has more experience with most of the problems than the people at MIS.
  MIS is a handful of employees in a small company, and they spend most of
  their time searching for products to meet consumer demand, filling orders,
  and doing all the other things that need to be done to run a small business.
  MIS is not a group of B&W photographers and printer experts. Frankly, the
  appeal of this company from my perspective is based on this. They simply
  provide what the market wants. That is their business model. They do not
  push any agenda; they simply react to the market. As such, they have been
  an excellent source of very competitively priced inks and accessories. And,
  while I was not active at the very beginning, I believe that MIS was
  actually the first commercial supplier of inks to B&W experimenters on the
  forums that preceded this Yahoo list.

  Regardless of all the above, I'm very aware that our materials are not
  perfect by any means. As I go forward, the workflows I develop and use
  reflect not only what I think make the best prints (from my perspective),
  but also which workflows are the easiest, including avoiding the problems
  that have surfaced regarding our materials, printers and drivers. Like
  most, I want the best for the least -- time and money. Right now, for what
  I do, MIS supplies what I need to accomplish this, particularly with their
  Eboni MK.

  My main concern is not the minor problems that are reported here with
  respect to MIS, but whether Epson will be able to succeed in its effort to
  choke off all third party competition. MIS provides some outstanding inks
  at prices that, if one refills carts, are about 1/10th the OEM prices, based
  on equal quantities. This drops to even less if one uses the denser inks
  more. With the 100% Eboni approach, the ink costs simple become trivial.
  So, I'm definitely willing to put up with an occasional leaky cart for these
  price difference, particularly when the third party products give me B&W
  prints that are, from my perspective, better than any Epson inkset can
  accomplish.

  So, what's with MIS? I think they are just a small company doing the best
  they can at their price point and under the circumstances that include the
  huge dominant players trying to cut off all cart supplies. 

  Paul
  www.PaulRoark.com 



   

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