Canon G1400 - some tests

Ink stained Fingers

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I visitied a relative a few days ago and we talked about this and that and everything - including his printer.... he was using a Canon printer IP???, several years old which was on the way out - the cyan test field in the nozzle check was almost gone - exactly half of it as a clear sign that the printhead is nearing the end of its useful life. He doesn't like to swap cartridges every time he starts a new print job he told me, it's probably not that bad actually but he just wants a printer - like lasers - to be filled up with consumables for the next 5000 pages, so he bought a Canon G1400 with ink tanks. Since he is on a vacation trip now he gave me the G1400 for the start up preparations and allowed me to do some tests with it...
The G1400 is a no frills printer with a built-in CISS/tank system similar to the Epson L300 type models.
Both models come with 3x70ml ink bottles CMY , the L300 with 2x70ml dye black and the G1400 with 140 ml pigment black -- what a coincidence . Both printers feed the paper from the top, the L300 takes a few more pages in the input bin. The G1400 has almost the size, the depth of an IP4000 but does not have a duplexer, the L300 is somewhat shorter. The printing noise is about the same, the G1400 does some internal action a few seconds after a print job, the paper feed does some clonking noise even in the quiet mode, the L300 is not that active overall.
Both printers are using 3 dye inks CMY , the G1400 a pigment black for text print, the L300 a dye black for text print.
The black dye is used in the L300 driver for printing on normal paper and matte/inkjet papers, the pigment black of the G1400 is only active for normal paper , not for matte/inkjet /other high resolution papers.
The L300 does not offer borderless printing at all which limits its use for photo printing. The gamut with the black dye ink is very good as reported already elsewhere. The printing hardware is the same as in the WF2010W which is a pigment ink printer.
The G1400 does not use the black ink for any photo or other papers at all, the black level of the mixed black from CMY is poor, it does not give any good contrast to photo prints. A borderless print option is available, even for plain paper, but the driver turns off the black ink even on plain paper in this case, borderless photo prints on plain paper are barely recognizable from lack of contrast.
I ran some profiles on the G1400, barely measurable on plain paper, and with a tremendous lack of darker colors on glossy papers, the black level is at about L=22 on a photo paper, barely better than the black on plain paper.
So I did some tests:
I printed the profile target sheet with the pigment ink /plain paper setting onto a glossy photo paper, the black is rubbing off in this case, so I did an overprint with a gloss optimizer to fix the pigments to the paper - that mode yields a tremendous increase in the gamut - specifically in the darker range - an exceptionally low black level of L=3% and great contrast of photo prints (with borders)
I replaced the pigment black with a Canon dye black, as per @martin0reg 's hints to the old BCI1411 cartridges. This allows me to print onto glossy photo paper with the plain paper setting, without using a gloss opt. to stabilize the pigments. Printing text with a dye black on normal paper looks the same as with the L300. The gamut with such a dye black is very good as well on glossy papers with the plain paper setting, with borders.
The G1400 is a CISS type printer, without cartridges, without a sponge in cartridges which may affect and filter the flow of pigment inks, so I replaced the inks in the G1400 with pigment inks left over from some previous test with the IP7250, pigment inks for the Pro10. This allows me to print with an all-pigment ink set similar to an Epson WF-2010W with Durabrite inks. It works fine, photo prints with borders look fine, the contrast and black level are good, and get somewhat better with a gloss opt. overprint. Printing borderless turns off the pigment black, the contrast gets lost, not as much as with the dye inks but very much visible in direct comparison, it does not look very good.
The G1400 is back on the standard Canon inks now and is awaiting the move to its final place of operation.
I printed as well some test sheets for a fading test, the GI-490 dye inks for the G1400 are no Chromalife inks and fade pretty fast, as fast as cheap Chinese dye refill inks for Canon printers. I think @martin0reg got similar results in his tests recently already.
 

Ink stained Fingers

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I printed some patches for a fading test with the G1400 bottled Canon inks - GI-490 onto a castcoated Labelseek 180gr glossy paper, a budget paper. The samples have been out for a week:
G1400 Fading.jpg
That's pretty bad compared to the ref. copy kept in the dark. The inks perform somewhat better on a Netbit/Aldi glossy, but other inks to compare to as well. That's with the 'matte' paper selection to get the black mixed out of the colors, the pigment black ink is not tested here and doesn't make sense on glossy papers. These inks are of no use for any serious photo printing, even with borders. Only non-standard tricks as described above could improve the performance in this respect. I did not test these inks against the L300 inks which turned out a year or two ago as well as rather bad performing. But there would be at at least an alternative by using the L800 Epson inks instead.
 

Flying Scotsman

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How can a major company like Canon sell a printer, that it states can print pictures, with ink that fades surly this is doesn't conform to the fit for purpose law that is meant to guard customers rights.
The other thread you mentioned showed the same results with their Gl ink !!!!
 

Ink stained Fingers

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this is doesn't conform to the fit for purpose law
I wouldn't think that such a law would specifically specify the fading stability of inks, so Canon just assumes and expects you to keep the images printed with this printer series in storage, album etc most of the time; there may be some very fine print in their product specs referring to some storage requirements. But it's no different with the Epson printers - The L800 as a photo printer and a CISS comes with inks which are less stable than their Claria inks in the 1500W and alike photo printers, it's probably written as well in the fine print of the specs that there are some differences between the display and storage conditions.
 

The Hat

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@Flying Scotsman, Canon dye inks on their paper, don’t fade for quite some time, so I reckon they well cover themselves in the advent of any court case, even when using OEM pigment inks your prints will still fade in high UV light conditions. !

But do you reckon you could sit for months on end in the same conditions and not have a serious colour problem yourself, you can get 20 years out of Canon dye ink prints when stored or displayed in the right lighting conditions and 3 times longer with pigment inks.

I reckon you shold take this argument up with any of the 3rd party ink supplier, because their inks don’t last even half as long, but before you do please remember, that you are paying 60 to 80% less for their inks, so its horses for courses...
 

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@The Hat I appreciate what you are saying and I don't have a problem with the third party ink suppliers I just think that genuine canon ink should not fade before third party ink.
 

The Hat

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@The Hat I appreciate what you are saying and I don't have a problem with the third party ink suppliers I just think that genuine canon ink should not fade before third party ink.
No 3rd party ink can stand up to the quality or fade tests of OEM inks, none...
 

martin0reg

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No 3rd party ink can stand up to the quality or fade tests of OEM inks, none...
Okay - but here it's canon OEM ink (GI-490), which seems to not stand up to the quality neither of chromalife. nor of some 3rd party dye..

The other thread started with GI-490 ink, hoping this would be a decent refill ink for canon bubble jet printers, in particular regarding fading:
https://www.printerknowledge.com/threads/refilling-canon-with-oem-ink.10712/#post-89760
But this soon turned out to be false hopes, fading was as bad as any noname refill ink or carts, and ISF's new test reconfirms the results in general.
The thread expanded (after p.1-2) to a general search of a light stable ink to replace canon dye ... which has not been found yet.

For epson dye (piezo!) there are some better alternatives - and even epson's sybling of the canon GI, the bottled ink for L800, is fading visibly slower than GI, as far as I remember..
 

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No 3rd party ink can stand up to the quality or fade tests of OEM inks, none...

@The Hat so if I refill my ip8750 cartridges with the Canon GL ink that will give me the best quality and fade resistance then any 3rd party dye ink I could buy.
I hope this is the case because I think this ink is reasonably priced .
Thanks again for all your help
 

Ink stained Fingers

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the Canon GL ink that will give me the best quality and fade resistance then any 3rd party dye ink I could buy.
I didn't do as much testing with the G1400 inks as I do/did with Epson compatible inks and papers, an ink fading as quick as the the sample mentioned above is by far below the performance of genuine OEM inks, but I can't establish any relative ranking to other 3rd party Canon dye inks in this case, it is a disappointing situation if you are looking for the fade performance of 3rd party Canon inks. You get a relative benefit by using good PE type photo papers- including Canon or HP or Aldi/Sihl. Yes , you may use some GO overprint if you have the hardware - e.g. another cartridge to swap out - to do so, the GO extends the fading somewhat, but whether that should/could be a regular practice is another question. I'm presenting my findings for discussion and as an option, I'm not doing it at this time, if fade performance beyond the Fujifilm DL inks is needed I switch over to pigment inks at this time.
It may nevertheless be interesting to run some fading tests with various 3rd party Canon ink sets to find out which one is the best ink - relative to other inks in this case. You may find a good bargain at Aliexpress - or not - just cheap but fast fading. I'm busy enough with the Epson inks at this time.
 
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