The differences in ink laid down on paper are not that high. There are limits in the coatings to allow that and color + black saturation has to be equal at some point.
The differences appear in keeping the heads in condition and the HP models seem to be most economic ones on that aspect. Then there's the ink swap loss for gloss and matte like on the Epson 3800, reduced compared to the Epsons above it (but the 11880) but still taking a lot of ink. As the thread starter has a Z3100 I think he will like the B9180 as well, shares the same ink and heads (but not all), isn't expensive to buy and economic in ink use. Ink price is higher than the A2 models but there's a wider format available already with even cheaper inks.
Ernst Dinkla
try: http://groups.yahoo.com/group/Wide_Inkjet_Printers/
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It seems each printers *do* differ in how much ink is used to print significantly. Take a look at those three cost comparison from three printer manufacturers:
[a href=\"http://www.pictureline.com/images/pdf/48,%2078,%2098%20cost%20per%20square%20foot.pdf]http://www.pictureline.com/images/pdf/48,%...uare%20foot.pdf[/url]
http://www.colorhq.com/pdf/canon/ipf80009000costpersheet.pdfhttp://www.tastarsupply.com/files_reference/z3100_cost.pdfThey all use the standard 'N5' chart.
EPSON 9800
EPSON Semimatte Photo Paper (250) $0.65/square foot
Total cost $1.16/square foot - $0.65 (paper) = $0.51/square foot (ink only)
Per ml ink cost: $112 (street)/220ml=$0.51/ml
Approximately 1.0ml used per square foot
Canon IPF 8000
Canon Heavyweight Satin Paper $0.41/square foot
Total cost $0.573/square foot - $0.41 (paper) = $0.163/square foot (ink only)
Per ml ink cost: $280 (list)/700ml=$0.40/ml
EPSON use approximately 0.41ml used per square foot
HP Z3100
HP Premium ID Photo Satin Photo Paper $0.477/square foot
Total cost $0.867 = $0.39/square foot (ink, includes print head cost, about $0.02) + $0.477
Per ml ink cost: $70.55(list)/130ml=$0.543/ml ($0.57/ml including print head cost)
Approximately 0.69ml used per square foot
It's obvious Canon has an advantage in ink cost aspect for having 700ml tanks, but surprisingly Canon also uses a lot less ink than either EPSON (more than 1/2 less) or HP (about 1/3 less), printing on similar surface paper. Of course, with EPSON's ink tanks you can get much cheaper than their street pricing (I usually buy one at around $90/220ml cartridge), so the actual cost may be much lower than this, but this shows they all use different amount of ink printing the same image. (Unless Canon would print noticeably lower density than the other two...) These are all big-format printers, so I am not sure if this would translate to medium format photo printers...
Ralph