Digital BW, The Print

OK here's the silly question of the month. For B&W printing, can I 
substitute all Canon black ink cartridges for the Canon color 
cartridges in my Canon S900? 
The after market B&W ink suppliers products - Lyson, etc, are 
essentially all black. What's the difference between theirs and Canon 
black?

--- In DigitalBlackandWhiteThePrint@yahoogroups.com, "buzzmag2" <buzzmag2@y...> wrote:
>
> OK here's the silly question of the month. For B&W printing, can I 
> substitute all Canon black ink cartridges for the Canon color 
> cartridges in my Canon S900? 
> The after market B&W ink suppliers products - Lyson, etc, are 
> essentially all black. What's the difference between theirs and Canon 
> black?

Those products have different dilutions of black. If you just used the full strength Canon black in all positions, when you needed to print a light gray, the printer puts down a few full strength black dots (dark and highly visible) with lots of white space between them. With a set like Lyson which has several dilutions of black, the printer makes the light gray by using a large number of dots of a reduced strength black. The dots are lighter, so they're not as visible, and there's less space between them. So you see smooth tones, instead of scattered dots.

Now, it should be possible to take Canon black cartridges and dilure the black ink (if you know what to dilute it with) and loar the diluted ink into empty Canon cartridges to make your own quadtome black sets. I do this with Epson inks, my printer is loaded with 100%, 32%, 10%, 3.2%, and 1% black.

--- In DigitalBlackandWhiteThePrint@yahoogroups.com, "koloshor" 
<wiz@n...> wrote:
>
> --- In DigitalBlackandWhiteThePrint@yahoogroups.com, "buzzmag2" 
<buzzmag2@y...> wrote:
> >
> > OK here's the silly question of the month. For B&W printing, can 
I 
> > substitute all Canon black ink cartridges for the Canon color 
> > cartridges in my Canon S900? 
> > The after market B&W ink suppliers products - Lyson, etc, are 
> > essentially all black. What's the difference between theirs and 
Canon 
> > black?
> 
> Those products have different dilutions of black. If you just used 
the full strength Canon black in all positions, when you needed to 
print a light gray, the printer puts down a few full strength black 
dots (dark and highly visible) with lots of white space between 
them. With a set like Lyson which has several dilutions of black, 
the printer makes the light gray by using a large number of dots of 
a reduced strength black. The dots are lighter, so they're not as 
visible, and there's less space between them. So you see smooth 
tones, instead of scattered dots.
> 
> Now, it should be possible to take Canon black cartridges and 
dilure the black ink (if you know what to dilute it with) and loar 
the diluted ink into empty Canon cartridges to make your own 
quadtome black sets. I do this with Epson inks, my printer is loaded 
with 100%, 32%, 10%, 3.2%, and 1% black.
>
Thank you koloshor.