chrism
Well-known member
I'm getting pretty disillusioned with inkjet printers. Some years back, I bought an HP7660 because of its PhotoGray cartridge and was very happy with the prints, which were limited to 8.5x11. Briefly I went on to an Epson 2400, then an HPB9180, and finally an Epson 3000. All three worked well initially, but soon developed problems after a few system updates on my Macs, even though I installed all offered printer driver updates (even eradicated existing drivers and downloading the latest from the manufacturer's sites). Eventually each has suffered a deterioration in quality that is truly disheartening. The 2400 went through a trial of the QuadTone RIP, and even piezography black refillable cartridges (that rarely worked and spilled ink all over the paper when they did print. Briefly I went back to darkroom printing, but it was never my thing and I missed the ability to make digital adjustments on the images (I mostly use film and have invested more in expensive scanners than a sane person ought to do). The R3000 is beginning to act up. Black areas have a blue sheen. Lines across the print despite spending lots of ink on cleaning cycles. To top it off, I was so frustrated today that I printed a photo from the 7660 - lovely result! I'm happy to keep using the 7660 as long as it works and cartridges are available, but it's bound to give up the ghost one of these days. What's the best option these days for B&W photo printing if you don't particularly care about not being able to do A3? I've never had a Canon printer, so I know nothing about them. The HP site shows pretty much only multi-function machines that don't seem attuned to higher quality photo printing. Epson seem to restrict their photo-respectable offerings to the A3 printers, and I don't see any reason to replace my R3000 with another one the same.
Chris
Chris