Lyson Fotonic XG Inks

[Remo Nonaz]

Can anyone report on Lyson Fotonic XG inks for the Epson 1400/1430 printers? I'm looking for a cost effective, dye-based alternative to Epson Claria inks that is at least reasonably light fast. I've been using MIS D2 inks, which look good initially and cost 1/40th the cost of Epson ink, but they fade quickly. Aardenburg-Imaging now has the MIS-D2 on Red River UltraPro Satin paper in their test results and at 10 megalux-hours it looks pretty bad. At 20 megalux-hours it is horrible. Their results are consistent with what I've seen in prints I've hung in well-lit environments.

Lyson Fotonic XG is 1/10 the cost of Epson, and four time more expensive than MIS-D2, but would be a good value if the images don't fade away in a year.

There was a rumor that MIS was coming out with an "archival quality" dye ink. Has anyone heard anything confirming this?

[MHMG]

Can anyone report on Lyson Fotonic XG inks for the Epson 1400/1430 printers? I'm looking for a cost effective, dye-based alternative to Epson Claria inks that is at least reasonably light fast. I've been using MIS D2 inks, which look good initially and cost 1/40th the cost of Epson ink, but they fade quickly. Aardenburg-Imaging now has the MIS-D2 on Red River UltraPro Satin paper in their test results and at 10 megalux-hours it looks pretty bad. At 20 megalux-hours it is horrible. Their results are consistent with what I've seen in prints I've hung in well-lit environments.

Lyson Fotonic XG is 1/10 the cost of Epson, and four time more expensive than MIS-D2, but would be a good value if the images don't fade away in a year.

There was a rumor that MIS was coming out with an "archival quality" dye ink. Has anyone heard anything confirming this?

I realize this is an old post, but it takes time to conduct light fade testing. ID# 302 in the AaI&A database has now reached 30 megalux hours in accumulated light exposure dosage (equivalent to 15 years on display using a common industry-standard assumption of 450 lux/12 hour per day), and it's pretty wasted . The only way to get several years on display without noticeable fading for this ink set would be to maintain museum quality lighting guidelines of about 50 lux or less on the print, or better yet keep in a photo album with little display time.

 The sample in test was printed on an Epson Stylus Photo 1400 printer using the Fotonic XG ink set and Red River UltraPro Satin 2.0 paper. Red River Paper now offers a newer UltraPro Satin 3.0 paper that replaced the UPS 2.0, but the embarrassingly poor results for the Fotonic XG inks is unlikely to be helped very much by any other media. I have yet to test any third party dye base ink set that comes anywhere close to the light fade resistance of Epson Claria or Canon Chromalife 100+ dye sets.

You can filter the AaI&A database for ID# = 302 to find this Fotonic XG sample quickly. The database can be found here: http://www.aardenburg-imaging.com/cgi-bin/mrk/_4777c2hvd19kb2NfbGlzdC80
A login name and password is required, but creating a new account or renewing an old one is free.

cheers,
Mark
http://www.aardenburg-imaging.com

[Ernst Dinkla]

Mark,

Thank you. It is good to reveal the truth about Lyson dye inks again. We experienced that the Lyson (now Nazdar) documents do not represent any value of the dye ink performance in practice. That has been so in 2000 and it is the same in 2014:
http://www.nazdar.com/lyson_knowlege_base.asp
The misleading test documents are no longer there but the attitude stayed.

--
Met vriendelijke groet, Ernst

http://www.pigment-print.com/spectralplots/spectrumviz_1.htm
April 2014, 600+ inkjet media white spectral plots.

[MHMG]

The misleading test documents are no longer there but the attitude stayed.

Yes, the hype does appear to be toned down from the last time I visited that website, but the buyer is still being courted with statements like this one which describes the Fotonic XG dye set:

"Offering up to 20% more colours than a standard dye-based ink set combined with high light stability, Fotonic provides a perfect balance between colour vibrancy and archival requirements."

According to my tests, this set is a highly fugitive dye set and would get a museum textile display type of rating somewhere between Blue wool # 1-2 patches at best. OEM dyes sets like Claria make it into "moderate" light fastness category equivalent to Blue Wool patches 4-5.  Since the BW scale is logarithmic, it means the Fotonic dye set is roughly an order of magnitude worse in light fastness properties. OEM dyes will therefore last ten times longer on display in comparable display conditions, and the Aardenburg testing protocol also shows that the eventual "easily noticeable" fading will also appear less visually objectionable on media printed with Claria versus Lyson Fotonic XG inks.

cheers,
Mark
http://www.aardenburg-imaging.com