Digital BW, The Print

Is the venerable Epson 860 printer (small carriage version of the popular
1160 for Black & White) still a desireable printer for Black & White?  Is
the none chipped cartridges for this printer a major plus?

I have one which I bought new old stock about a year ago and first tried
Lyson Quad Black inks, which I found to have a lot of metamorph.  I went to
Lyson Small Gamut and the tones were better, though still not nearly
perfectly grayscale.   But I think the Quad Blacks had slightly better tonal
separation.  I went back to Quad Blacks and they are just way too magenta.
Doing a few Black & White tests on my 870 (6-color) the BW prints look very
sharp but of course have metamorph.  I need to print on glossy paper and so
have to use dye inks.

I'm thinking of selling the 860 and getting ???.  Open to all ideas for a
dedicated BW printer.

Rick Schiller
www.rickschiller.com

I need to print on glossy paper and so
> have to use dye inks.
> 
> I'm thinking of selling the 860 and getting ???.  Open to all ideas for a
> dedicated BW printer.

Rick,

with a little bit of work, looks like the 2200 is the way to go. Take a look at 
previous posts here regarding its use for bw.

Antonis

I'm using an 860 with MIS UltraTone monochrome pigment inks on Ilford 
Smooth Gloss and Smooth Pearl papers, and get flexible tones (cold, 
neutral, medium warm and warm) by applying the appropriate curve, with 
virtually no metamerism.  I've read somewhere (perhaps here?) that there 
are no real advantages to more than 4 inks if you're using monochrome inks, 
and unless you go to the 2200 you won't get much faster in an Epson than 
about 10 minutes for an 8x10, which is about what my 860 takes.  The MIS 
inks are not very expensive compared to OEM cartridges, either, although 
refilling those cartridges is a real nuisance (compared to refilling my 
Canon S9000 carts, which I can do without taking them out of the printhead 
- but so far, no pigment inks available for the Canon.)  There have been 
lots of nice things said about the 2200, but they ain't cheap and from the 
specifications, are HUGE things (I think the spec is 36 inches front to 
back when printing, although maybe that's for a roll paper holder of some 
such.)  So you might give the MIS inks a try before you go to a lot of 
expense for a new printer.

Cheers,
Kip

At 6/7/2003 08:12 PM +0000, Rick wrote, in part:

>  I need to print on glossy paper and so
> > have to use dye inks.
> >
> > I'm thinking of selling the 860 and getting ???.  Open to all ideas for a
> > dedicated BW printer.