A few months ago I had a very serious problem with the prints I had made with a brand-new Pixma Pro-1. The prints looked great right out of the printer, but after leaving them exposed to the air for 2-3 days, I set myself to pencil in the titles and other info on the backs, and to bag the prints and store them safely. But when I slid the prints into the sleeves (I use BOPP), dozens of tiny spots appeared suddenly. Studying more closely, I saw that the flakes were popping off the print surface from the mere fact of the edge of the sleeve gently chiseling flakes of pigment - evidently, where there was a slight protrusion of the paper surface, which became very delicate, extremely sensitive to lateral abrasion. The spots are patchy, irregular, and usually up to about 1mm in diameter. I could spot them (with watercolor pigments and brush), but what a nuisance, and still I couldn't be sure they wouldn't flake some more.
I was using Hahnemuehle William Turner 310, but I suppose similar papers may be prone to this defect. (I know such papers are a bit delicate, and don't well tolerate being stacked in a portfolio box unless they are sleeved - the slight rubbing under a bit of weight is enough to lose you a bit of the surface, especially near the print edges. But this flaking problem was another thing, of a much higher order of delicacy, one which prohibits ordinary handling.) Fortunately, Hahnemuehle made no problem about replacing the paper - I just had to send a couple of swatches to my dealer (Monochrom in Germany), which forwarded them to HM, which then confirmed the problem (one known to them, but one which occurs "very seldom"), and had my dealer send me the replacement paper - at no charge, of course. Unfortunately, I had made several prints before discovering the flaking problem. So for me there was a considerable cost in wasted ink, wasted time, and aggravation. And I can't have been the only one who got stuck with this bad paper. (It was batch # B389516.)
I sure don't want to repeat the whole story here, but in the interest of sharing information, I refer anyone who wants to read about the problem in greater depth to the lengthy thread, started 5 months ago, in dpreview:
http://www.dpreview.com/forums/thread/3864792If you respond to me here, mind that I'll be incommunicado until about November 9.
