Fine Art Archival Printing

[Smudger]

Hello good people.

I've been lurking here for a while, and learned much. My UK background is design, printing and hanging for a small photo gallery in the UK. We have some very well known clients, and my daily work is mostly in framing and hanging. I'm also an (amateur) B&W photog of the 'soot & whitewash' persuasion and use InDesign and LightRoom to produce prints on Canon A3+ printers.

A Very Famous Photog (VFP) and close friend has been approached by an online gallery to sell limited editions of his B&W work. He (and I think) that he should print his own work to be sure of the final results. The prints would probably amount to no more than 1000 of A4 and A3+ B&W prints.

It boils down to 1) dye or 2) pigment inks, 3) piezo Epson or 4) thermal Canon , and an infinite choice of artisanal archive papers. Test prints on Ilford Galerie Pearl 310 GSM are superb and have the desired tonality, D-max and feel. We're also trialling Canson papers.

But which printer? The replaceable print heads on the Canons appeal. We don't need bigger than A3+. which is 13"x19" or 329x483mm and occasionally print borderless.

We have had first class results from a £150 Canon 'Fine' Pixma IP6850 +printer, using dye inks which is really nothing special but feel we really need to go for pigment inks for B&W archival printing.

The Canon Pro 10 says 'Buy Me!' but all input is welcome. The budget would be about $1000, euros, or GB pounds, for the setup of printer and inks.

The final prints would be behind glass.

Regards to you all.

 

[The Hat]

Hi @Smudger and welcome to our marvellous community.

You are very much in tune with what you do and what you want is to produce very good prints.

The art of photography and printing are miles apart so what you know about photography is not much help to you if you don’t know anything about printing.

Dye inks on glossy paper look great but if you want true professional prints then you will have to choose Pigment inks without a dough, dye inks have very low longevity and you don’t want your prints to fade do you ?

Your budget for a printer is very adequate and all dough the pro 10 is saying Me Me, you are certainly on the right track, so your other options are Epson as well as Canon.

I am a Canon person true and true but I do recognise that the Epson 3880 is a truly smashing all round printer, however I would go for the Canon Pro 1 simply because you have a hankering for B&W prints.

The Pro 1 out of the box works splendidly with no experience necessary and completely hassle free setup, it is so easy to use it’s nothing short of ridiculously easy to print with and it’s the one I would recommend to you because it’s in a class of it’s own for B&W prints.

So do some window shopping or Googling which ever is your taste and just concentrate on these couple of printers but please come back and tell us which one you picked and why ?

We look forward to your comments on how your shopping went but above all what your satisfaction rating is on your final choice..
https://www.parkcameras.com/c/7515/printers/a3-printers

 

[Ink stained Fingers]

the choice is not easy, you may think about the print format again, whether A3(+) is really the limit for you, the mentioned Epson 3880 is a A2 printer already. A current Epson A3 model is the Surecolor SC-P600. I only can tell you from own experience that bigger prints just look better, in most cases the bigger the better, visually more appealing. There is the decision for the printer brand, Canon and Epson cover the range of A2 - A3 models pretty well, I'm not familiar with the HP models in this range, but based on forum activities they don't seem to have a bigger marketshare at all. And if you actually look to A2 models you may consider as well whether you want to stay with sheet print media, or may want to print custom formats, longer, much longer, any format. And then you are in the range of printers supporting media from the roll, and have a cutter in the printer like the Epson 4880 just to name one. Such models are as well on the market used, in some cases refurbished and/or with an Epson service certificate to make them selleable better. If you don't have production print volumes in your mind such printer still would last forever for private use. If you decide for Epson they only use Pigment inks, Canon offers models with dye inks or with pigment inks. If you choose to go with refill inks you should be clear that 3rd party dye inks don't offer any significant longevity compared to the original Canon dye inks. And with 3rd party pigment inks you may get other effects like more pronounced gloss differentials or bronzing, seller promises like 'compatible with....' or something rarely hold true, and before you would save with such inks you probably have to pay for a learning curve. Said that it's your decision, but you are welcome to come back with more questions.

 

[ThrillaMozilla]

A serious artist. I love it.

If I am not mistaken, a big selling point will be archival properties. Some things come to mind. First, you might want to view the light fading tests that have been done: http://www.aardenburg-imaging.com/ . There's another professional site that also does that (I forget the name), but I've never been able to find or understand any of their results. Aardenburg will probably not have the latest printers, alas. As much as I like our refillers, you probably want to stay with OEM ink, with the possible exception that some Epson ink suppliers have made a big point of longevity and quality.

I would sure have to cast a vote for pigment. Although some dye is very good now, it is not usually as good as pigment. I have seen some magnificent prints with Canon pigment printers, with good high D-Max.

I think Canon and Epson will make some prints for you to evaluate. I just got a camera, and that offer was included. That will allow you to evaluate the prints carefully for all aspects, including color under different lighting. Or maybe you can get jtoolman to make a couple of prints for you. He has all those printers. I'll betya he isn't just using them for family snapshots.

There are a couple of kinks about the Canon Pro-1 and -10 that you might want to know about. Canon printers pigment achieve high D-Max and great colors by overspraying the print area with Chroma optimizer. The sprayed area does not extended all the way to the borders of the paper, and you can see this. Second, there is a problem with the driver using the wrong black ink under some conditions. You might look up what jtoolman has to say about it on this forum and DPReview.

 

[Ink stained Fingers]

Canon is using this Chroma Optimizer with one of their Pigment ink printers, similarly like Epson on the R2000 model, they call it 'Gloss Optimizer'. Other printers of Canon and Epson do it without this feature. It's a decision upfront for a particular model, and you may not need this feature later when you mainly print on matte papers - maybe , or the other way around. A wast amount of testing on light fading was done by the Wilhelm Research Institute http://www.wilhelm-research.com/
Dye ink prints are more susceptible to UV, ozone and humidity than pigment ink prints, but with laminating, putting prints behind glass, or using UV protecting photo varnish you can overcome those factors very much. When it comes to high quality B/W prints you'll probably read about special inksets for that purpose.e.g. from Piezography or Carbonprint etc ink sets, mixed for pure monochrome printouts. Whether they are visibly better than what you get from the standard ink sets - I don't know, you would have to ask the specialists.

 

[Smudger]

Thanks so much to everyone who replied.

Given that we are producing framed limited edition runs for sale, I think we can assume that we'll rarely want to go larger than A3+. But part of me always wants to print bigger.

The issue with Chroma Optimiser not being sprayed to the print edges is interesting. Generally we would size the print to allow for framing with a mat(te) so this might not be an issue, but thanks for pointing that out. Also, would we use C.Op. for behind-glass prints? Well, it seems nice to have the choice.

The Epson 3880 also looks suitable; pigment inks and so on, so I'll double check with VFP on the A2 size requirement.

But yes, pigment inks, A3+ at least, and latterly Ethernet. Yay!!

OK, Shortlist is now: Canon Pro 1, Epson 3880, Canon Pro 10.

Thank you, kind people.

 

[Ink stained Fingers]

directly competitive as A3+ models from Epson are the R2000 and SC-P600 , with pigment inks by Epson, with pigment or dye inks in case of refill, if that's intended at all, with all the (dis)advantages, but that's a wider subject in its own

 

[Smudger]

Thank you. Decisions! Pah!

The Canon Pro-1 has £100 cash-back from Canon UK this month, which has me leaning, slightly, towards becoming Canonised. More, if it happens, same time, same channel.

 

[The Hat]

Gloss optimiser is not a problem to use on your prints at all, it will cover whatever area you require it too and if you don’t wish to use it then it’s not compulsory or essential, it’s simply down to pure choice, but what is essential is to only use OEM inks.

If you really want to push the boat out then the Epson A2 is the way to go but it gets harder to find a place to hang all these size prints later, besides A3+ prints are a better compromise and will suite your customers needs and will sell much better especially the B&W’s.

You shortlist of printers are all pigment based and Ethernet capable so you need not worry about the longevity of your prints or sitting on top of the printer while using it, because they all will take up a big chunk of your desktop space.

Good luck with your purchase which ever one you decide on..

 

[Smudger]

The deed is done. The die (dye) is cast. The £100 cashback and advice from this forum swunged it. A Canon Pro-1 is on the way. (With free pack of A4 paper). £663.00 GB pounds - £100 cashback.

Thank you, everyone.