I've replaced more than half of my original cartridges when the "Accounting->Show Ink & Media Used" (or something like that) indicated that I had used about 140 to 150ml each out of the original set, in response to the printer demanding a change. The warnings started about 15ml before that, which is still time to print more or less a 24" by 40' roll. The original carts showed as full for a long time, then suddenly went down quite fast. So maybe there's some disparity in the ink-left reporting calculations in the special case of just after setup time.
In my case, the order of changing has been...Yellow, Matte Black, Photo Magenta, Gray, Blue, Photo Cyan, and a tie for Red and Cyan. The rest look like they're about ready. I'm about 2 liters down the road, the original maintenance cart just flipped down to 40%. Been printing a lot of blue-ish images, and no photo black media.
Have been using very roughly 1.2ml per square foot of canvas, depends on the overall print density. If you are feeling really penny-pinching you can select minimum ink density in the media setup software, but my best advice is to select the BEST ink usage setting, which for my canvas has been in the medium range. The media setup software prints test targets you can use to select ink density.
New 330ml carts bought from a supplier weight 461 grams out of the plastic wrap, and 114 grams when empty. Can anybody weigh one of the carts that comes with the printer? If those original carts were indeed full, then it took about 180ml per color to prime the system.
