Budgeting Ink

[dustmunkey84]

Greetings All,

New to the forum.
I am budgeting a vary large project consisting of about 2000 digital prints. I have to buy a printer and the ink to go with it, I know that the make of the printer has a lot to do with these numbers so... Details:

1) I am thinking about buying and Epson 2880 or r1900, or a similarly priced/quality printer

2) I need to price out ink for Both B&W and color images

3) Needs to be inkjet no Dye-sub

4) Looking for the most economical solutions available

So i guess I don't really know where to start with this problem. I noticed ink manufactures don't like to give out the info on this sort of stuff.

THX,
D.M. Rosemark

 

[KenC]

I have a 2400, the earlier version of the 2880, and it produces beautiful bw (and color) prints. According to a couple of reviews I've seen, the 2880 also does well with bw, but the 1900 not as much, so if bw is important, consider that. The ink for that volume of prints certainly would be pricey using the standard cartridges. Is a 3800 (or whatever the latest version is) out of the question? That printer can easily accomodate bulk ink reservoirs, which may be possible with the 2880, but would most likely be more difficult to set up.

 

[dustmunkey84]

Well when considering this I am looking at total net cost. I.E. Printer + Ink.
So If i get a cheap printer w/ xxxpensive ink it doesn't do me much good.

I am not looking for gallery quality prints from the printer. (That would be nice tho) I am making acetate negatives to print cyanotypes with. I don't know if you know anything about cyanotypes but they end up fuzzy anyways.... so super sharp prints are over kill.

I did this a 1 1/2 years ago and i came up with 1900 bucks for ink, which is fine... but it was a guess, and i don't like to leave anything to chance.

 

[dustmunkey84]

The reason I said i will price out both B&W and color:

B&W will probably result in a cheaper ink cost.
Color will result in denser negatives and a better image.

I will weigh out pros and cons after i see the price differences.

 

[ann]

we make negatives for cyanotypes as well as vandyke browns all the time, using a standard office printer with overhead project transparceny film. 8X10 negatives.

the 1900 is for glossy color prints (per espon directly)

 

[dustmunkey84]

Well I did that, for my tests, but I was planning on upgrading for my final product. Are you thinking that this is not necessary.

 

[Flash Harry]

Epson cartridges here are £12 each, don't know how much the canon's equivalent is I have an epson 8 cartridge system and print very little, in fact only for myself as its cheaper to have my lab do multiple "real" photo prints, I certainly wouldn't consider doing 20000 prints on an inkjet. H

 

[ann]

well, we found that those negatives worked great.
on occasion we had to tweak the curves to get a proper contrast but that isn't hard.
how did you like your test negatives, how did they print ?

Yes, i know quite a few pt/pd printers who use more involved work processes using either Dan Burkholder's program or Mark Nelson and then print out of Pictoro film, on high end printers, but those processes are more involved with a different tonal range than cyanotypes.

I have students take the same negative used for cyanotypes and use them on vandkeybrowns, and get nice results. It all comes to what is your vision for your print.

 

[dustmunkey84]

That is an interesting point, but I am not making a single print, I am actually making a film from cyanotypes. So the final print is viewed for only 1/24th of 1 second. So I am thinking that final image resolution is a moot point?

 

[groundzero23]

The reason I said i will price out both B&W and color:

B&W will probably result in a cheap ink cost.
Color will result in denser negatives and a better image.

I will weigh out pros and cons after i see the price differences.

how was the comparison? theres not much problem in B&W though, just how the "black" glares in the light.

 

[hyperdash]

I have a 2400, the earlier version of the 2880, and it produces beautiful bw (and color) prints. According to a couple of reviews I've seen, the 2880 also does well with bw, but the 1900 not as much, so if bw is important, consider that. The ink for that volume of prints certainly would be pricey using the standard cartridges. Is a 3800 (or whatever the latest version is) out of the question? That printer can easily accomodate bulk dell ink reservoirs, which may be possible with the 2880, but would most likely be more difficult to set up.

The 2400 is really great in bw prints but not so much in colored prints in my opinion..