Ink cartridges

[Stephen Coates]

Harrison, do you have any recommendations for photo paper?

I have used Canon Photo Paper Plus Glossy recently, and that is really nice, but very expensive compared to others. I did do some 6x4 prints on some Epson paper which was included with my Mum's Epson printer a few years ago and they came out nicely on the Canon printer.

I do want some decent quality paper, as I have used lower quality photo paper and found it to be not very good.

[Stephen Coates]

Last time I bought some new cartridges, the Yellow was a nice orange colour, and the old yellow one had gone a funny colour.

Now that that new cartridge has got old, it too has turned a weired colour. Printouts seem to be fine so I'm guessing its not something to worry about.

I wonder if it just goes off after a while.

STA60077.jpg

[Harrison]

It might be that as the ink is used up the real colour of the sponge holding the ink is that dirty colour.

[Stephen Coates]

Hmmm, not sure, as the ink in the current (old ish) cartridge is that funny colour, not just the sponge.

Anyway, it seems to have printed a few photos out nicely.

[DonAmiga]

I just seen watchdog on the TV and was amazed at how much ink costs hp was coming in at £2100 p/l and canon at like £1700 p/l Also over the last few years they have been reducing the internal sponge meaning reduced quantity of ink. They said you could buy the parts to make your own ink carts for 30p and a good quality ink at £15.10 p/l

[Harrison]

Not surprising. Ink prices have been getting worse as time goes on. The general purpose Espon all-in-one printer we have in the house for day to day use gets through its ink carts really quickly. They only cost about £11 for the black and £14 for a set of the colour carts, but they are really small, and I reckon printing A4 images they would be empty after 20 sheets.

My professional HP A3 printer was also starting to cost way too much to run. It takes 8 ink cartridges, and a whole set of 8 would cost at least £160. They are however very large cartridges and would easily print 100's of photos before needing replacement.

But the printer also eats the ink even when not being used as it is required to be left on all the time, and performs a daily cycle to run ink through the print heads to keep them clean and unclogged. Over a 3 month period when I wasn't using the printer much it managed to empty 2 of the ink cartridges, so it cost over £40 when not even being used! As you can imagine I've stopped using it for the moment.

I might upgrade to a different A3 printer; maybe a Canon. Or look into continuous ink systems for the HP.

[Stephen Coates]

Harrison, why does it have to be left turned on?