Printing Letters using Colour Cartridge on Canon BJC-80/85

[plevyadophy]

Can someone tell me whether on the Canon BJC-80/85 printers, coloured ink is also used when you print a black & white document and are using the Colour Cartridge?

Or does the printer have the intelligence to use only ink from the Black Ink Tank?


Advice appreciated.

Thanks.



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[Nifty]

plevyadophy, that's a great question, and one I've pondered with almost all of my printers (except my BJC-1000 where I had to swap out the B/W cartridge to use color).

Actually, a few times I've taken my 30x magnifier to see if I can see traces of color dots in my b/w pictures, but with better and better inkjet technology it is getting harder and harder to see the difference between straight black and mixed color black.

From my experience, when I select "photo paper" or even a higher quality printing mode, it seems that printers will print black using the colors to mix to black. If you are printing on regular paper with a regular quality setting then it seems that the blank ink is used.

Of course, most of this is just conjecture and I'd love to hear some other opinions / facts!

 

[plevyadophy]

Thanks for the reply.

Actually, the reason I asked is that usually I have a Black Cartridge installed. So everytime I wish to print in colour I have to fiddle around and change to a Colour Cartridge (CYM + Bk).

As I am starting to use colour a bit more now, I would much rather keep one Cartridge in place, and if the Black Ink Tank runs out, to supply replace it with a full one. However, this really depends on whether or not the Canon BJC-80/85 is wasting ink by mixing Cyan Yellow and Magenta to make black. If it isn't ...... then Hooray!! I can run my printer in a more convenient fashion.

But like you said, it would be nice to know for certain.

I hope someone has the answer.

Thanks.


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