Digital BW, The Print

On 03/02/2008 djon43 wrote:
> 
> Anybody here use HP B9180 ? What papers? Is your experience in line
> with inkjetart's highly detailed review? 

Yup I have had one for 2m. I dumped (literally, gave away) a 1290 with G4 
CIS and 1160 + Piezo BW CIS, both of which were endless trouble with 
interminable nozzle clogs and head replacements. Both were also 
distressingly fussy about paper type. The only paper I ever found that I 
was happy with on both was HPR. But I was never happy with the quality of 
the Cone output from the 1160 after the plugin was replaced by ICC 
profiles in the Epson driver. I just couldn't face buying another Epson, 
even though I know the 3800 is a vastly better and newer generation model. 
The PK/MK changeover nonsense is just kludgy and would not suit my 
conflicted taste for HPR + FB glossy at all.

With the HP the self-maintaining head technology is just wonderful, and an 
immediate feeling of liberation from Epson frustration[tm]. The cost is 
leaving the printer on 24/7 (consumes ~8w in standby). I can and do send 
prints to the printer without even thinking about nozzle checks or blocks, 
even after a couple of weeks disuse. I have never had a print spoiled by 
this printer, only by my mistakes. This is in utter contrast to the 
Epsons, where a 35% success rate was about right over the few years I 
owned them. They wasted about 2/3 the ink and expensive paper I put 
through them. I wasted just vast amounts of time messing about with 
Windex, nozzle checks, cleaning cycles and leaving overnight for the 
nozzle fairies to maybe magic the microbubbles away. In the end I got so 
sick of them I gave up and went to labs instead. I know lots of people 
will tell me 'oh, your own silly fault for using CIS and aftermarket 
inks'. Well, maybe, but at the time they were a better solution than the 
2100 or anything else, and on a good day the print quality was very good.

One thing Inkjetart don't mention is that the B9180 appears to manage to 
extract more prints from each ml. of inks than Epsons do. This doesn't 
make a lot of sense, but appears to be the case, although the 
insignificant waste expended in nozzle cleaning might be the explanation.

With colour printing the HP is very tolerant of papers, working well with 
all HP's advanced papers, HPR, Harman FB AL glossy (excellent) and matte, 
and Innova Fibaprint Ultra Smooth White Glossy - which is just a bit 
better than the Harman glossy, but a has very slight localised over-inking 
issue on some images that may be cured by profile tweaking. A suitably 
toned B&W using composite inks on this paper is very close to 1970's 
Record Rapid (before Agfa took out the Cadmium and ruined it), which is 
definitely my favourite darkroom paper of all time. Superb, sensual depth 
that I never expected to see from an inkjet. Even the surface is similar.

The Ilford papers do not work well with this printer, except for Fibre 
Gold Silk, which some people are liking a lot. I've not tried it.

With Black and Gray inks only, images are extremely neutral - almost too 
much so. I never got such neutrality from wet printing. But bronzing and 
GD are a problem with all gloss papers when using black & grey only. 
Unless you are going to lacquer gloss, black and grey isn't very useful 
there. It really only works well with matte and art papers, HPR is 
excellent. Dmax is much better and tones are smoother than I ever got from 
Piezo BW ICC in the 1160 (was disressingly 'dotty' in high tones).

But black + gray DMax is just noticeably less solid than with 
composite-colour printing, and metamerism with the latter is sufficiently 
low that I mostly prefer it. Composite prints on the Harman and Innova 
just look like real photographs, with only minimal GD saying that they are 
inkjets at all.

The HP's are not perfect though. Some people have premature failures of 
the printer, although they are built like a tank. Some have had multiple 
replacements, but I think this was with earlier production. Head crashes 
with the Harman FB are also a widespread problem, and this can damage the 
heads if severe. The Harman has a tendency to curl on receipt of ink, 
although flat enough before and after printing. I have had no such 
problems with it or any other paper though, at A3 size. It may help that I 
never print borderless.

Perhaps the most common issue is that the printer will sometimes load 
special media then spit it straight out again, telling you to load paper. 
This can happen repeatedly. A reboot fixes it until the next time. I 
haven't seen this since installing the latest firmware, but haven't 
printed much.

The HP PS plugin does not work with CS3, but I use Qimage anyhow and would 
never dream of printing from PS (ugh).

There is an active list for these printers at 
http://groups.yahoo.com/group/hp9100Series - and it will be worth reading 
the archives to see the sort of issues that people have. The files list 
includes a fair range of good canned and user-donated custom profiles, and 
the nice thing about the HP's closed loop calibration is that this seems 
to be good enough for profiles to be portable - what works on one B9180 
will work near-identically on all B9180's.

Not quite perfect but so far my experience has been nothing but good, and 
the value is remarkable. It is a big sucker and needs a lot of space, 
behind as well for A3+ special media. A 17" tabletop sheet-feed version of 
the HP Z3100 with GLOP and onboard profiling is about the only replacement 
I'd consider for the B9180.

-- 
Regards

Tony Sleep
http://tonysleep.co.uk