New ipf5000
Sam
Registered Users Posts: 7,419 Major grins
Didn’t want to hijack Ann’s thread on printers, so I’ll post a new one here. Yesterday I pulled an Andy (Andy is a registered trademark of Andy Williams, and can be used as a colloquial term indicating a complete lack of fiscal responsibility with unprovoked attacks of impulse buying. 
)
Got a deal on a ipf5000 I couldn’t turn down. Ok, Ok! I could have turned it down, but the deal was soo sweet, and the poor little neglected Master Card was winning about not being used for such a long time. Think of the reward points. What was I supposed to do?
It’s scheduled to be delivered next week along with 5 rolls of paper.
Part of my decision process (Ok a big part was simply “I want it”, deal too good to turn down, “I want it”, getting free freight, “I want it”, free roll attachment, “I want it”, One free roll of paper, “I want it”, $500 instant discount, did I say “I want it”?) purchase was also based on a the experience of a local printer who currently does some printing for me. He has 3 large format printers, and just got the ipf9000. He is very high on the Canon printer, and thought I would be thrilled with the ipf5000.
I know there will be a new learning curve. My hope it that with my current knowledge / experience the learning curve with this new printer will be a little less steep than my initial foray into printing at home.
For me it’s a big purchase of an item I don’t have an immediate business need for, but I am excited about this, and can’t wait to have it delivered.
Sam
)Got a deal on a ipf5000 I couldn’t turn down. Ok, Ok! I could have turned it down, but the deal was soo sweet, and the poor little neglected Master Card was winning about not being used for such a long time. Think of the reward points. What was I supposed to do?
It’s scheduled to be delivered next week along with 5 rolls of paper.
Part of my decision process (Ok a big part was simply “I want it”, deal too good to turn down, “I want it”, getting free freight, “I want it”, free roll attachment, “I want it”, One free roll of paper, “I want it”, $500 instant discount, did I say “I want it”?) purchase was also based on a the experience of a local printer who currently does some printing for me. He has 3 large format printers, and just got the ipf9000. He is very high on the Canon printer, and thought I would be thrilled with the ipf5000.
I know there will be a new learning curve. My hope it that with my current knowledge / experience the learning curve with this new printer will be a little less steep than my initial foray into printing at home.
For me it’s a big purchase of an item I don’t have an immediate business need for, but I am excited about this, and can’t wait to have it delivered.
Sam
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It has some very interesting features, and apparently, a better gamut than almost any other printer out there.
I am sure you have seen M Reichman's review here - http://www.luminous-landscape.com/reviews/printers/canon-ipf5000.shtml
Please report back your opinion after some experience with your new printer, Sam.
Bigger printers are really fun to print with - it is neat to see your images at 16x24 live and in person
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Rutt,
There are more than one reason I chose this printer, but with all do respect I have not heard, or read about anyone producing fine art prints on an offset press, but I aslo have never seen any prints from an offset press using fine art paper. Would be interesting to see a comparison in my own hands.
Of course even if it's true, who can afford an offset press?
Along with the pigmented ink the ability to have a very wide choice of papers was another key factor in this decision.
My dye based i9900 will not take the same papers as the ipf5000, and even if it could I would still not have the long life.
Sam
Dan's point it that CMKY's shortcomings are with very specific colors, mainly pastels. Those colors do come up, but not in every image.
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Inkjetart Micro Ceramic Luster which is virtually identical to Epson Premium Luster Paper, but much less expensive. Or look at all the fine art papers they carry. I've also gotten really good advice from them here.
The big brothers of this thing look pretty darn cool. I might need a 60" wide printer except then my wife would have irrefutable proof of my lack of sanity, something she would use mercilessly. It will have to wait until I open my ballet photography studio.
congrats on your purchase, sam-
rutt, question please, regarding paper:
I have an epson r2400, and I use the epson matte for my bw's (along with the matte black ink)-
do you have any preferences for your b/w's?-
thanks-
I don't print many B&Ws, but I love Epson Ultra Smooth Fine Art Paper as a matte paper. This is a real upgrade from the Epson Enhanced Matte paper. I've made B&W prints for Andy and Ginger on this paper (ask them what they think.) One warning though: it's more "tender" than enhanced matte. You have to be very careful or you'll scratch it. Another matte paper I love is Museum Digital Art, which has a cool feature: it's two sided.
But all that said, there is nothing wrong with Epson Enhanced Matte. Panopticon Gallery which is pretty darn high end uses it for very expensive original signed prints from famous photographers, in particular Bradford Washburn.
Thanks for the inkjetart info. I saved it and will look at it later. My plan right now is start up with Canon papers to establish a base line. Canon now has quite a variety of paper choices. Hahmemuhle manufactures their phto rag, and I believe Somerset manufactures their velvet.
Later after I am comfortable with the printer, and it's operation, I will probably start looking at other papers, to achieve a different look.
I am getting a roll of Hahmemuhl photo rag, Somerst fine art enhanced velvet, premium bright glossy, premium satin, and premium mat. I also have different sheet papers here at home to play with.
I think I should be able to get good results with these choices.
The wonderful thing about where the photography, and printing technology is at today is that we have sooo many choices! Maybe even too many.
Each of us will find one combination or other that gives us the results we are looking for, and we become comfortable with that process.
Sam
Rutt,
I didn't take that way at all. Is it better to have 12 inks than 7. I would say yes. I just bought a printer with 12 inks what else do you expect me to say?
I think the manufactures like the additional ink sales.
Actually while I think from a technical stand point
the more colors you start with would give you an advantage when combining them to create a particular color in say a photo.
One real advantage is that the printer has 2 blacks, and a photo gray installed full time so no ink tank swithing is needed to go from glossy to mat, and the 3 black / gray inks will provide a good quality neutral toned B&W print.
In the real word I thnik it's the fact of diminishing returns. I will wager that you would be hard pressed to find a consumer that could tell the difference between a print made with 12 inks versus 7. It would also depend on the image, and the colors it contained, the paper used, the profile, and skill of the printer. All things being equal maybe if you put the same image down side by side you could see a difference, but I think you would have a print from ether printer a customer would be happy with.
Sam
How many ink colors do you need? That depends on how well the colors you have blend to make the ones you don't. With light (instead of pigment), we are happy with the three primaries because they do blend so well. We get the whitest white we can by turning up all three colors as far as they will go. We get the darkest black we can by turning them all off. We can get a perfectly bright magenta with the red and blue guns turned all the way up. We desaturate and brighten it by adding green light. Dynamic range is a function of how bright the guns are and how dark their absence is.
Sadly, the world of printing is far less ideal. How bright a white we can achieve is determined by the paper itself, since no ink at all will result in the best white we can get. How deep a black is determined by the interaction of ink and paper. If our cyan and magenta inks mix well, we can get very good greens. If our cyan and magenta inks mix well when we use less of them we can get very good light greens. If our press (or printer) is capable of applying very light amounts of inks, we'll got good pastels. Etc.
The function of the extra inks in inkjets is to compensate for the imperfections of the printers and inks. Making a printer which can apply the light amounts of magenta and yellow to make good flesh tones for very fair haired people is harder than adding a light magenta ink to do the job. (Yellow is essentially light, another symptom of the imperfection of the pigment domain vs the light domain.) This is especially true with the black inks which have to support a very large gamut from very very light gray to deep black in order to make rich B&W prints. Finer control over inking and different shades of black are different approaches to the same problem. The goal is to get all those shades in the most practical way. More, less sensitive nozzles (or layers in offset) combined with more inks? Fewer but better nozzles? It's an engineering choice with no single right answer.
So that's my real point. More inks are not necessarily better per se. Additional inks have to be seen as a part of an overall engineering trade off.
Anway, I'm sure you'll have fun with this baby. I'll be very interested to hear what you think in a month or so. I don't know if it's relevant to you, but I didn't really start to love my R4k until I started to use ImagePrint with it (a 3rd party RIP which cost a healthy percentage of what I paid for the printer itself.) The Epson driver kept inking way too heavy and making a mess. I've been told this has been fixed, but now I'm satisfied with ImagePrint.
Was this comment directed towards me, perhaps, John??
Both you and I purchased an Epson 4k, and I think we are agreed that it is a superlative printer ( with the IP RIP for B&W.)
But....it was quickly replaced with the Epson 4800 which I find not very appealing because of its inabliity to switch from matte to glassy without ink purging which I am sure you know about. The K3 Ultrachrome inks are said to have slightly more gamut than the standard Ultrachrome inks used in the 4K.
However, the Canon ipf5000 does not suffer from this limitation, and is supposed to have a significantly wider color gamut than previous Epson printers, and the ability to print lovely B&W without the IP RIP.
It would be nice to have the Canon ipf500 ( as a Network based ) printer for Color, and keep the Epson 4K for B&W, wouldn't it??
As to papers, I tend to use Epson and Red River. The Red River Satin and Polar Matte have served me well, and I get quick service from Red River
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Yes, I guess it sort of was. I just got done having Dan beat me up for 3 days and one of his students has one of these Canon printers and we discussed it. Dan has a very clear and focused position about gamut these days. In short, wider gamut is nice in case you run into flowers. But colors out of the sRGB gamut or even the CMYK swop gamut are actually rare in the real world. (In fact, CMYK is has some colors that sRGB doesn't.) So don't sweat it unless you have a very specific requirement (and Dan made us do colors and high visibility green in CMYK to show what to do when you do need to work with out of gamut colors.) Actually B&W conversions are just an extreme instance of printing out of gamut colors.
Wait until you read PP, 5th edition before you make this purchase.
So now, I really have hijacked Sam's thread. Sorry, Sam.
I can't really give a documented scientific argument with respect to 12 inks versus 7 or 8 inks. I have rationalized this purchase from several different angles, not the least of which is emotion. One thing to consider is that of the two additional inks one is photo gray, and the other is matte black. The Epson 4800 actually uses 10 inks it’s just that you have to change out two blacks every time you need them, where as the Canon has them permanently installed and will use the needed black / gray inks automatically. I couldn’t see buying a printer where I would need to change out inks when I used different paper, or decided to print one B&W. So I think the Canon only really has two additional colors.
Another factor is a guy I know who does some printing for me. He has 3 large format printers, and knows what he is talking about when it comes to printers, and printing. He recently bought a Canon 9000, 60” wide, printer and is very pleased with the performance, and image quality. It was his opinion I would be very happy with the 5000.
Again the bottom line is, are the prints of a high quality? Are you happy with them? If so who cares if it’s 4 inks or 16?
We will resurrect this discussion in 10 years when the printers just has one ink reservoir holding a gallon or two of ink. The nozzle assembly will as needed alter the molecular structure of the base ink to create any color or shade needed. I have it on good authority that this technology comes directly from the Roswell crash.
Pathfinder,
I have some small sheets of Red River polar mat here, and I just went to their web site, and they have a profile for the ipf5000, so it will be easy for me to give that a try. I do have 5 different rolls of paper coming with the printer, and I think it will be easier / safer to try and establish a base line using Canon paper. I am hoping it won’t be necessary to buy a RIP. Those are pretty expensive, but if I need to I will. I have read that people are getting good results with the supplied drivers.
Sam
I will not make a rash decision, I actually love the images from the 4K
Thanks for your comments.
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As I said earlier, Sam, Michael Reichman reviewed the ipf5000, and liked it so well he bought one for himself to sit along side his Epson 4800.
I would expect that it will print lovely images on Canon paper, but see what you think of the Red River stuff. I use it quite a bit.
M Reichman said it printed lovely, neutral B&W without a RIP also.
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