Canon Pro-10 with rebate $299

In Europe lowest price is €599.
Difficult to find second hand.

But worth the price IMO, you never will find a better 100% refillable printer again.

As discussed on several threads here, the 3th party inks are much better than what existed for the PRO-9500(II).
Forget the old stories about pigment inks.

In the States and Canada precisioncolors.com, in Europe octoinkjet.co.uk.

On matte and semi-gloss both inksets produce good results.

For glossy papers add OEM PBK and Red (sold by these providers in small quantities) for maximum quality, or buy cartridges for larger printers yourself - only solution for 100% perfect CO anyway (PRO-1 38ml, PRO-1000 80ml, large formats up to 330 and 700 ml).

With these additions the gamut and gloss is of a quality comparable to dye ink, while still much cheaper than full OEM.

Since 3th party pigment ink is fade resistant, and 3th party dye ink NOT, I suggest to forget the PRO-100(S) and buy a PRO-10(S).
 
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palombian said:
Since 3th party pigment ink is fade resistant,
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I wouldn't like to spoil your evening, but Aardenburg tests tell you a much more complex story . You can access their test reports when you register as a member - for free - and get to the reports here

www.aardenburg-imaging.com/light-fade-test-results/

They calculate a Megalux hours final number for all the cumulated exposure over time - many months in total.
Let me just pick out a few of these results:

Test reports # 303/304/305 for the Chromalife Canon dye ink show results of 8.2 - 17 up to 55 Megalux hours, the papers make the difference
Test report # 302 for the Marrutt/Lyson Fotonic XG Epson compatible dye ink shows just 0.9 - 1.4 Megalux hours - just a few % of the Chromalife performance, Marrutt was advertising this ink as a super premium Epson compatible ink - at a premium price - so much for 3rd party dye inks - no - not yet -
Test report # 275 for a MIS Ass. D2 dye ink results in 1.5 - 2.1 Megalux hours - not much more, and you can assume that no name dye inks - China etc perform much worse, you can see some of them fading from one day to the next when exposed.
And how are pigment inks doing, look at
Test reports # 317/318 for the Lucia Pro 1000 inks ranging from 10 - 24 to 126 - 175 Megalux hours - the paper makes such a big difference for the same ink
Test report # 277/278 show the results for the claimed super premium Cone Color inks for the R3000 resulting in 11-15 Megalux hours - these 3rd party pigment inks don't even do as good as the Chromalife dye inks.
OEM pigment inks can do significantly better than OEM dye inks - depending on the paper - in a wide range but 3rd party pigment inks may not do better in lots of cases. There are only a very few entries with non-OEM pigment inks. Precisioncolors/Mike submitted a few samples several years ago - # 326-328 - but these don't show the performance of the current line of improved signature inks. It just shows that the inks at that time could not compare to the performance of OEM inks - dye or pigment.
You see that it is not that simple with the fading performance of 3rd party inks , there is effectively not more data available at all .
 
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@Ink stained Fingers ,

I've read most of the reports, very interesting.
Sad indeed we only have the result of the original PC inkset.

You spend a lot of time too investigating (mostly) dye inks and as far as I remember your concluded also that no 3th party dye ink was reasonably fade resistant.

Since I started refilling 6 years ago I give away prints, and also a calendar to my family and friends.
They hang unprotected on the fridge, in the sun etc.
When I visit them I check sometimes and could not find changes when printed with 3th party pigment ink (mostly the original STS inks sold by PC and Octoink). Same in my home.
They won't last 200 years, but they fade maybe not more in a year than the 3th party dyes I used (mostly Prodinks or OCP) in a week. Rather embarassing sometimes (although photo books kept in a drawer survived many years).

José Rodriguez openly said that printing with the PRO-100 and 3th party ink is for fun. It doesn't cost much so you can reprint if you like when faded.

A few years ago I printed on €25 second hand Canon home printers with ink at €15 for half a liter and didn't care about the fading either, but the price difference - in purchase and consumption - between a PRO-100 and a PRO-10 is not so big to be confronted again with this problem.

As most people I was attached to dye inks for the gloss and brilliant colours, but I can achieve nearly the same with the PRO-10 now with a much higher longevity.
 
palombian said:
that printing with the PRO-100 and 3th party ink is for fun. It doesn't cost much so you can reprint if you like when faded. Flattened
Click to expand...
Funny that, because I get much the same results with my Feckin Standard lamp… :barnie
Next time I’ll be sure to use pigment inks… :thumbsup :lol:
 
Even these few Aardenburg reports show how complex the situation is , fading is not just an ink parameter, the paper plays an important role as well, you may use these reports to identify those papers which give the best protection to your inks/prints, but there is no other report, no tests, no datasheets by manufacturers or distributors giving you any indication at all how other papers would perform, you are left alone.
Can you believe claims in ads of 3rd party ink suppliers - no, not at all; can you believe Epson's or Canon's ads - prints will last for generations to come .... - you need to read the fineprint about the test procedure/conditions and the paper they used, such claims only apply to just this ink/paper combination. Epson claims 300 yrs persistance in an album in a cabinet - would you have such cabinet at home - no ventilation, blocking all ozone, formaldehyde which typically emanates from chip wood boards in wooden cabinets - for 10s of years , and all this gives an additional environmental dimension to the fading performance. So yes - taking all that into account - some prints may do significantly better than others , and you could not easily explain the difference.
Yes, you can get dye inks from China, almost for free, I have seen offers at aliexress as low as 5$/litre (+transport), and it may even be o.k. to use those for particular prints - e.g. short term use.
Yes, I did quite some fading tests, always comparing either some inks - on the same paper - different papers with the same inkset, that's all tests just giving relative results - ink A does better than ink B or C in that particular test, but I'm not able to calculate any Megalux hours or similar numbers from these tests. I used in the majority of the cases the same ink set as a reference - Epson 106 or earlier the Fujifilm DX100 inks
 
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You may read more about the Precisioncolor inks in the Aardenburg tests here

www.printerknowledge.com/threads/new-ink-fading-test-results-by-aardenburg-imaging.13340/#post-115592

It shows the efforts needed incl. funding and the overall time until you get results.

You can find some more tests, but structured somewhat differently here by Wilhelm-Imaging
http://wilhelm-research.com/
I have the impression that fading in general is not addressed at all in any photo or printing forum by the vast majority of users/members - it is just a no-subject, not of any concern, users get excited about any megapixl increase on the latest camera, buy an expensive printer - Pro-1000, P800 whatever, want to do refill and print for free and just don't know what they get at the end.
 
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