blackest Loc: Ireland

Hi all,

I'm considering buying a printer, possibly the canon pro 100s, this might not be a good idea.
I love black & white and this is difficult for many printers they tend to mix magenta and cyan inks to attempt to get gray. I day attempt because often there is cyan in highlights and magenta in the shadows.

The best printers will use pigment inks rather than dye, this tends to give long life without fading, it also tends to make for clogged print heads, actually printhead in most cases If you get a clog on one color then you can end up replacing the whole print head.

Some printers can be adapted to run in third party gray inks (epson usually) but inks can be hard to obtain outside of the USA. Inks can be often treated as potential bombs and the post service often may refuse to carry ink (almost as bad as lithium batteries).

Why get a printer at all then?

Well there is the wonder of seeing your print appear before your eyes, its not the darkroom but ...
Of course that assumes there are no blockages, in which case it's an expensive mess.

If I don't self print then i don't need to match paper and ink. The clogged printhead is not my problem, I don't need to invest in the printer ensure I print often enough or buy expensive cartridges. It may be cheaper to get prints made professionally, i'm pretty much forced in that direction for photo books.

For the canon pro 100s it's looking to cost around €450 to start (sales tax bites), So i kind of want to do this but my head is saying leave it to the pros.
It might even be possible to get a deal if i can wait for prints, they have the same head cleaning issues i would face, so a print for me maybe cheaper than a cleaning cycle. Printer manufacturers are pretty shy about the costs of running their printers, the cost of cartridges and how much they will cover. often giving typical document useage (sure lots of pages for text but i'm covering a whole sheet). Apart from the margins, borderless printing will lead to overspray which may reach the waste ink tank or just lightly coat the printer. It may be better to allow for some 'bleed' if you want to crop the paper and not have white border showing, Mats are also a good choice.

So taking all this into consideration do i buy a printer and if so which one?

Christmas is coming and i have a handy bonus in hand :)

JohnSwanda Loc: San Francisco

I have an Epson R2880, which they may not make any more, but it does the best B&W of any printer I've had. The key is that they have 3 black inks - photo black, light black, and light light black.

User ID

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There are specialty ink sets for BW perfectionists.
You clean out an Epson [or other ??] and dedicate
it to fine monochrome printing.


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lovelylyn Loc: Fort Wayne, IN

The pro 100 has black grey and light grey. Black and white turn out amazing! Color prints are amazing also. I love it!

rwilson1942 Loc: Houston, TX

I don't print many B&Ws but my Canon MG6120, and I'm sure others, has a Grey cartridge that I think helps.

burkphoto Loc: High Point, NC

As an ex-lab guy who ran both silver halide printing operations and inkjet printing operations (and electrostatic and dye sub...), I have to say the answer comes down to this set of questions:

What sort of volume do you anticipate, and with what sort of frequency are you going to want to print? How important are controls over color, privacy, paper stocks, and time? Do you want the best archival results? Do you want to print directly from Lightroom so you get the widest possible color gamut? How good is your monitor, and do you calibrate it and profile it monthly with hardware and software from X-Rite or Datacolor?

For Black-and-White, I'd prefer one of the Epson P-Series — The P400 has two black inks, plus Cyan, Magenta, Yellow, Red, Orange, and a Gloss Optimizer. That's so it can print on both glossy and matte surfaces. The larger P-Series printers use a more advanced configuration for a wider color gamut and finer B&W gradation. They're pricey, but pretty amazing.

For most hobbyists or pros who need to do some in-house printing, the Canon Pro-100 is fine for what it is — a great value. I don't have one, but have seen excellent results from them. This forum may help you decide:

https://community.usa.canon.com/t5/Professional-Photo-Printers/PRO-100-True-B-amp-W-Prints/td-p/36347

blackest Loc: Ireland

B&H recommended the p600 as a replacement.

I'm not sure Amazon's customers agree ...

lamiaceae Loc: San Luis Obispo County, CA

The models (and numbers or names) might be different in Ireland than the USA for Canon. The Canon PIXMA PRO-100 has three heads for B&W printing; Black, Dark Grey, and Light Grey (and about five colours). From what I hear it does B&W prints pretty well. I actually have an older model, the PIXMA PRO-9000 with only Black and Seven colours. It actually does an OK job on B&W anyway, but does not give me a pure neutral black. I may be overly picky from having been a Wet Chem film photographer for decades. The Canon models Pro-10, Pro-1, Pro-1000 might be even better than the Pro-100 for B&W (and color), higher prices as well. All print up to 13x19" (I think). Yes, you are correct, they bleed you with the price of inks. A full set (8 cartridges) for my Pro-9000 costs about $140 from Canon.

For prints larger than >11x14" you might actually find it might be better and cheaper to have them done at a pro lab. They also have QC that would be hard to do at home. Some of the high end commercial Epson printers are more efficient with ink and could bring the print cost down if you can afford the initial out lay for the printer! A friend of mine bought a high end printer so he could off-set the expense by printing for others. I have not found a price list for him yet. But most labs out there seem reasonable for retinue prints.

blackest Loc: Ireland

That's pretty disappointing with the pro100s
Printers get away with murder in color if the shade isn't quite right , who knows! Black & white is more demanding, it's quite easy to spot color tones in a black & white photo. My old r200 is pretty good if you fool the engine into just using the black cartridge. It gives the impression of different black levels and on the wall looks great (even after several years) up close you can see it's not quite perfect but it's fantastic value.

I think that forum post is enough to put me off the pro 100s, for that money I want true blacks and if $500 can't give me that then i may as well pay for pro printing.

blackest Loc: Ireland

I have a frontier lab near me, although they do little film work these days i think they expose color photographic paper with a laser, even on a black & white image it's not too bad maybe a little cream rather than pure white but for the price it is good value.

burkphoto Loc: High Point, NC

Yes, Frontier is a laser-based silver halide printer. Get their profile and soft proof with it during final adjustment for printing.

Gene51 Loc: Yonkers, NY, now in LSD (LowerSlowerDelaware)

John, it's hard to beat any of the higher end Epsons, particularly if you use them with the QTR (QuadTone RIP), and with baryta paper, which has longer grey scale than other papers, especially in the darker tones. I use an old 4880 and the results are as least as good as I used to get when I did film, maybe even a bit better. I like Moab Juniper Baryta Rag 305 but I haven't tried them all.

FYI - https://www.fotospeed.com/blog.asp?SeriesID=53&TextID=6

burkphoto Loc: High Point, NC

rmorrison1116 Loc: Near Valley Forge, Pennsylvania

My favorite printer for black and white photos is my Canon TS9020. It has 6 cartridges, two black, one grey and three color. Only problem is it's limited to 8.5 X 11, which is not a problem for me; I never print B&W larger.

Pablo8 Loc: Nottingham UK.

I have an Epson R3000 Printer. It has Photo Black..Light Black and Light-Light Black, also Matt Black. (useful for Matt or art-texture papers). One can select just the Mono-inks for printing, plus a cool. normal or warm look, tones. Pigment Inks.