Epson 7900 is gone; report and questions on Canon 8400

[alan a]

First of all, many thanks to all of you who helped me in previous threads, specifically on addressing a defective Epson 7900 and deciding whether to get rid of it and get a Canon.  The Epson is gone.  The Canon 8400 was delivered yesterday.  The larger 350 ink cartridges partially paid for the larger printer as compared with the 90s that come with the 6400, along with the larger $800 rebate.  I probably paid more than some mail order places, but the dealer delivered it, got it in my house, assembled it and started it up.  That was worth a lot to me, as this is a really big printer to deal with.  (I highly recommend Kent Walker of Walker Supply in Rockville MD, for anyone in the greater Washington DC-Baltimore area, and I think they also sell Epson.)

So, an initial report and comparison with the 7900, followed by questions on the 8400.  Many thanks in advance to anyone who can help me out on the 8400.

Initial observations comparing the Canon 8400 and Epson 7900.  (a)  The Canon inks are all at 100% using the network "Remote UI" monitor, so little ink is wasted in charging as compared with Epson.  (Although the maintenance tank is at 80% which contradicts that to some extent.  The tank apparently received small amounts of ink from all 12 cartridges, enough to use up 20% but not enough to reduce the ink measurements from 100% to 99%.  Compare that to getting royally nailed by Epson, in wasting ink in the maintenance tank, on setting up the 7900.)   (b)  The Epson 7900 is a bit better built as compared with the Canon plastic, and Epson has a bit more polish on items like the method of loading rolls and papers. The Canon roll spindle is a throw back to ten years ago, but it works fine.  (c)  REVISED on print quality, comparing 16x20 prints from the same files done on the HP Z3100, the Epson 7900 and Canon 8400.  The prints are essentially identical, and you would not notice the difference unless looking at these prints side-by-side and really scrutinizing the difference.  With that key caveat, the 7900 prints have a very, very slight improvement in detail compared to identical prints from either HP or Canon.  But it is so slight, I wonder if simply increasing the level of sharpening for Canon and HP would eliminate that difference?  Again, you would not be aware of the difference unless comparing prints side-by-side.  And Canon definitely has richer or darker blues, but I suspect the difference I am seeing is from printer profiles, and not the printers themselves.  (d)  Regarding the difference in construction (Canon plastic) frankly, I don't care just so long as I no longer have the clogging and hassles that came with Epson.  I WASTED SO MUCH MONEY on ink on the 7900 (especially in recent cleanings to address the problems) it would have paid for the difference between a 6400 and 8400 right out of the box. (e)  When I think about all recent threads here, my observation is that those who buy Epson spend more time both reporting on problems, and on defending the superiority of Epson, i.e. defending their purchase as they deal with clogs.  Those who use Canon don't bother to defend their purchase, as they largely don't have to.  (f)  That previous comment will result in responses from the Epson owners who don't have problems.  That is why I concluded years ago that Epson does not utilize consistent manufacturing techniques, as there is no other way to explain the wide variation in the experience of Epson users.  The 7900s that are out there are just not all the same machines.  Some 7900 owners have few problems, some are royally screwed, but most must deal with the hassle of periodic clogs.  (g)  By comparison, Canon users are quietly spending their time printing, instead of addressing clogs.  (h)  On clogging, I installed a Honeywell humidifier, based on the thread on that topic -- so many thanks to those who posted in that thread.  So if the Canon clogs less as compared with the 7900, it will be an apples and oranges comparison, as the room with the printer is now at higher humidity.  (i)  One other difference -- Epson provides skimpy manuals.  The main manual for the 8400 is an astonishing 1,000 pages, and the "basic" guide is 160 pages.  (j)  Canon software includes a gallery wrap feature for canvas printing which might be really nice for that, but I have not tried it yet.  If it works it would be a great feature for those who use canvas.  (k)  Epson provided an internet based means of tracking printing costs on a per print basis for the 7900, which I really liked, but Epson abandoned the feature and killed it off.  Canon offers a similar feature but I haven't tried it yet.  It is windows only, and I am on a Mac, but have boot camp, so will install windows drivers just to see if I can easily use that to determine actual printing costs.

So, many thanks to all who helped me.  With that, a few Canon questions, and I will likely have a few more in the next few days.  (Despite the big manual.  LOL)

(1)  The hard drive in the 8400.  It appears that the "stored jobs" in the "mailbox list" in the "common box" fills up at around 15 jobs and then stops adding newer jobs?  That is odd, if you want to use the drive to reprint previous jobs.  What am I missing?  Is that same for all the "mail boxes," that they fill up and just stop accepting new jobs?

(2)  Precisely how do the mailboxes work?  How do you add print jobs to that or use the different mail boxes?  The huge manual really doesn't say.  It does appear to say that "print jobs" is utilized only when printing out of the Canon photoshop print driver. I was printing out of Lightroom, and the "print jobs" is empty, as are all of the mailboxes, with the exception of the "common" box.

But what function is served by the mail boxes, and how are they accessed?

(3)  The hard drive reports 250 GB capacity, but only 140 is available.  That was the case when the printer was first set up. What happened to the other 110 GB?

(3)  Color calibration.  The initial setup directions are very specific about color calibrating with one Canon paper, HW Coated HG.  (Which is very hard to find in the menu, you must hit down when it appears that there are no other options.)  When I do future nozzle checks, or print head alignments, or calibrations, does it matter as to the paper type?

I just calibrated again, using Red River Ultra Pro Satin.  Did I screw up the color calibration by doing so?  It appears to be the same to me.

Many thanks in advance for any responses!

[Geraldo Garcia]

(a)  The Canon inks are all at 100% using the network "Remote UI" monitor, so little ink is wasted in charging as compared with Epson.  (Although the maintenance tank is at 80% which contradicts that to some extent.  The tank apparently received small amounts of ink from all 12 cartridges, enough to use up 20% but not enough to reduce the ink measurements from 100% to 99%.

I was reading while waiting for an appointment and will have to leave shortly, so I will address only this remark for now, but surely I will be back to share a bit more of my experience with the 8400.

First, DON'T TRUST THE REPORTED LEVELS, I would write this with blinking fonts if I could! 
Canon does not take into account the ink used to fill the lines, only the ink fired trough the heads. That is why it reads 100%, but it may be like 60% actually. After the first tank replacement it starts to work better, but even so the levels only change on 20% increments, same with the maintenance tank but it is pessimist while the ink tanks are optimists: If your maintenance tank is 99% it will read 100%, if the ink tank is 81% it will read 100%.

The best way to actually control the volume of ink on the tanks is to weight them.

Congrats on your new printer!   

[alan a]

I was reading while waiting for an appointment and will have to leave shortly, so I will address only this remark for now, but surely I will be back to share a bit more of my experience with the 8400.

First, DON'T TRUST THE REPORTED LEVELS, I would write this with blinking fonts if I could! 
Canon does not take into account the ink used to fill the lines, only the ink fired trough the heads. That is why it reads 100%, but it may be like 60% actually. After the first tank replacement it starts to work better, but even so the levels only change on 20% increments, same with the maintenance tank but it is pessimist while the ink tanks are optimists: If your maintenance tank is 99% it will read 100%, if the ink tank is 81% it will read 100%.

Geraldo,

Thanks very much for those comments!  I could tell that the ink level reporting on the printer itself is pretty crude in terms of accuracy, but i incorrectly assumed that the Remote UI, since it uses percentages, was more accurate.  Is the maintenance tank reporting equalling as crude and prone to errors?  As I noted, it does report that it is 20% filled, so I wondered about that contradiction.  The ink cartridges can't logically be at 100% while the maintenance tank is 20% filled.  Therefore, just to be balanced given my earlier comparison of the Epson 7900 and the Canon 8400, this is one area where Epson is superior.  (Except that when it reports 1% of ink left, you can run many prints, so the 1% is clearly wrong.)

So, if the ink reporting for the first set of cartridges is way off (I call a 40% discrepancy being way, way off) -- how can I tell when the first set of cartridges will be empty?  Will the printer provide any type of accurate early warning that it is time to order new cartridges?  I assume it will NOT, if the percentages do not reflect the ink used to charge the lines, but only the prints that have been made.   So it sounds like the first set of cartridges will just run out with no advance warning at all?

Canon did tell my dealer that little of the ink is "wasted" in the first ink charge but is rather actually used to charge the lines, etc -- so is available for printing.  So, how accurate is the report that 20% of the maintenance tank is full?  That sounds like quite a bit of ink is wasted in the first charge of the printer.  Whether it is more or less as compared with Epson. . . .well who knows.

Geraldo, if you are others can comment and advise me on my other questions, it would be greatly appreciated.

[BillK]

I second what Geraldo has said 100%.

Its been awhile, but I seem to recall that when one of your first set of cartridges gets to around 40%
You can expect it to show empty at any time after that.

When the warning light flashes that you have a low cartridge, that cartridge is empty, unlike Epson that still has ink in it.
With the canon there is a internal reservoir with ink still in it so you can still print several images, when the actual cartridge is empty.
This does give you a little extra time to get a replacement cartridge.

All your colors are not going to get low all at once. When you see which one will run out first, order a replacement a little early. when it show 60% or so.
When you see when it actually runs out, you will now be able to judge when the other cartridges will run out.

The levels on your second set of cartridges are reported much more accurately. But still in 20% increments.

I have never used the printers hard drive features so no help there.

There was a recent post that answers you calibration paper concerns.

http://www.luminous-landscape.com/forum/index.php?topic=96633.0

I also came from a epson 7900 to canon ipf 8300. While I have had some issues, overall the canon is a far more pleasant user experience
than the clogging nozzle check/cleaning dance the 7900 required. You are going to be glad you changed.

Bill

[Landscapes]

Canon does not take into account the ink used to fill the lines, only the ink fired trough the heads. That is why it reads 100%, but it may be like 60% actually.

I'm not sure I agree with this 100%.  I just got a new iPF6400, and it does only ship with the 90ml carts.. not even full 130ml.  But after it was done priming, my levels dropped to about 60%.  But follow my logic here.

Its true that the Canon printer is incredibly bad at reporting levels.  (I have an older 6100).  Essentially there are only about 5 or 6 levels.  Lets say 5 to make the math easy.  So if the cart is at 80.5%, it will still show full... then you make a print it and it drops to 79.9% and all of a sudden it looks like you've lost a whole bar which looks to be 20%.  (I'm going with the theory that it can only report 100%,80,60,40,20)  

When a new printer is primed with ink, lets say it uses 35mL from each color.  So for the 6400, the carts went from 90ml to 55ml, and this would account for the roughly 40% ink used, and the levels report that they are at about 60%.  But when you prime an 8400 from 330ml carts, if it uses even 50ml of ink, this is still less than 66mL, which is what 20% would be.  So if the printer can only report either 100% or 80%, until the cart falls to below 80%, it still shows 100% full.  The printer knows very well how much is in each cart... it counts every drop... it just doesn't report it in enough resolution.

This is all my guess of course though.  If the printer really didn't account for the ink taken from the tanks to prime, it would assume that it has 330ml to use, and since there isn't this much in the cart left after priming, there is no way that it would let 330ml to be used up before reporting empty since the carts would essentially have been drained of ink while still thinking there is more from the 330ml to use.

[Landscapes]

(3)  The hard drive reports 250 GB capacity, but only 140 is available.  That was the case when the printer was first set up. What happened to the other 110 GB?

I think you're right on all your points.  I simply don't know why people prefer the Epson these days.  Between all the clogging reports, the cost to switch blacks, etc, I see no benefit to the Epson other than the straight paper path.  Under a loupe the dither pattern may be ever so slightly better on the Epson, but there is no way any client would ever be able to tell or care... and the person paying for the print is certainly whose opinion matters most I think.

In regards to this... I have an ipf6400 so no hard drive, but I assume it needs this space for spooling and such.  The 6400 probably has to do this in RAM, and although the 8400 for sure has RAM as well, perhaps it doesn't have as much to account for this??  Its like your PVR to record TV shows.  Once you fill it up and it says its 100% full, it still records live TV for 2 hours because it reserved this space for the other functions it needs to do.  Just a guess about the printer on my part though.

[Geraldo Garcia]

Just to clarify what I said earlier: If your ink tank is 81% full it will report 100% full. If your maintenance tank is 99% empty it will report 80% empty. A maintenance tank reports 80% almost immediately after being installed. Don't worry, your dealer was right, it only wastes a very small amount of inks testing the heads, the rest is inside the lines and not wasted.

As Bill said, the IPF 8400 has a subtank that holds a few ml of ink (no exact info about its volume but I estimate something around 5 to 10ml). When the printer displays a (!) warning it actually means that the tank is empty and you are running on the subtank, so you can replace the tank. You can remove the ink tank even during printing because of the subtank. Depending on the usage and on the color you may even print for a few days before the subtank runs dry and an (X) is displayed.

I can tell you for sure that the gray ink will be the firs to go, the printer drinks it way faster than any other color. The best way to know the real level of ink is to use a digital kitchen scale and to weight the carts once a week. A full 330ml cart weights 458g (1.01 pound), an empty cart weights 118g (0.26 pounds), you have only to take notes and make some easy math to figure the real level of the tank. Don't worry about removing and reinstalling the tanks, the IPF printers will not suffer from air entering the lines this way.

I am not on the studio, where the printer is, so I can't tell you exactly about the hard drive from memory as I rarely use that feature, but I can tell you for sure that the "common box" of my 8400 has way more than 15 jobs, I mean, way more. I believe it keeps storing jobs until the HD is full, than it starts trashing the older jobs to store the new. But I can be wrong and will check it on Monday.

[Geraldo Garcia]

When a new printer is primed with ink, lets say it uses 35mL from each color.  So for the 6400, the carts went from 90ml to 55ml, and this would account for the roughly 40% ink used, and the levels report that they are at about 60%.  But when you prime an 8400 from 330ml carts, if it uses even 50ml of ink, this is still less than 66mL, which is what 20% would be.  So if the printer can only report either 100% or 80%, until the cart falls to below 80%, it still shows 100% full.  The printer knows very well how much is in each cart... it counts every drop... it just doesn't report it in enough resolution.

I don't know if something is different with the 6400, but I can tell you for sure what happened with my 8400 because I weighted the tanks. Right after the initial setup the inks still read 100% but weighting the carts I could verify that they had "lost" between 30% to 40% of their ink volume.

[bill t.]

The initial amount indication just after priming is wrong.  You have used an average of about half the carts.  You will find the bars will indicate relatively full for quite a while, then suddenly go down fast.  Starting with the second tanks, the indications will be more accurate, although reporting is highly averaged for reasons I don't understand.

If you want a very accurate, up-to-minute report of ink used, invoke the Imageprograf Status Monitor which should be installed on your system.  Click through Accounting->File->Show Ink and Paper Consumed.  You can Copy the ascii report to refer to later.  I don't know if that total includes the priming ink use, however, but when I was following it closely it seemed to be a dead-accurate way to predict ink left in cartridges of interest.

You should be aware that the 8400 will not stop during a printjob for you to change a cartridge.  It checks the ink it has available against the job, and will make you change a cartridge before printing if necessary.  So there is no need to change cartridges on spec before a big print.  I always wait for the printer to demand a change and that has always worked correctly for me.  On one occasion at the end of a giant print it demanded THREE cartridge changes back to back, but the print was fine.

FWIW here's the ratio of inks used on my 8300, normalized to GY Gray.  IIRC Photo Magenta was the champ on my 9880, so 8400 useage will be a little different than you are used to.  You'll probably need to replace your GY, Y, and your favored Black cartridge before anything else.  IIRC Yellow is the first one to go after a startup, only after the first changeouts does GY take the lead.

GY (Gray) Ink Consumed[ml] 1.0
Y (Yellow) Ink Consumed[ml] 0.84
Both Blacks sum 0.83
PM (Photo Magenta) Ink Consumed[ml] 0.65
MBK (Matte Black) Ink Consumed[ml] 0.57
PC (Photo Cyan) Ink Consumed[ml] 0.48
PGY (Photo Gray) Ink Consumed[ml] 0.44
B (Blue) Ink Consumed[ml] 0.43
C (Cyan) Ink Consumed[ml] 0.35
R (Red) Ink Consumed[ml] 0.33
M (Magenta) Ink Consumed[ml] 0.24
G (Green) Ink Consumed[ml] 0.21

[Geraldo Garcia]

IIRC Yellow is the first one to go after a startup, only after the first changeouts does GY take the lead.

Well, it obviously varies accordingly to the "style" of the images. I guess your images demand a lot of yellow (vegetation uses more yellow than green).
That was not my experience at all! My first tank to go empty was the GY, followed by MBK, then Y. Counting the empty tanks I have 3 GY, 2 MBK, 1 PGY, 1 Y, 1 PM, 1 C. I am still using the original carts on the following colors: PC, M, R, G, B, BK.
I do print a lot of BW images, but not so much on the 8400 as I prefer the BW output of the HP Z3200.

[bill t.]

My list is based on 100% color images, mostly on canvas and matte media.  Sample size is over 33 liters, which would be 100, 330 ml carts.  33 liter-sized soda pop bottles would fill my refrigerator a few times over, to put things in meaningful perspective.  Or they could 2/3 fill my gasoline tank.  It's late.

Looks like I've spent at least $15,000 on ink over the last three years, now there's a very meaningful perspective!  The 700ml carts are definitely more economical.  It's no wonder they're just about giving those printers away.

Somewhere Canon recommends 6 months as the in-printer life for carts, I don't recall where I saw that but I'm sure I did.  There's a criteria for deciding whether or not to go for 700 ml carts on a particular color.  I usually buy 700ml carts for GY, Y, and whatever black I'm using most and 330's for the rest. 

Keith Cooper has good articles about linearizing his 8300 for b&w in these articles relating to Museo Silver Rag and Museo Max.

http://www.northlight-images.co.uk/reviews/paper/museo-silver-rag.html
http://www.northlight-images.co.uk/reviews/paper/museo-max.html

[alan a]

Many thanks to everyone for the great information on the Canon 8300 and 8400!  It is most appreciated.

I am not on the studio, where the printer is, so I can't tell you exactly about the hard drive from memory as I rarely use that feature, but I can tell you for sure that the "common box" of my 8400 has way more than 15 jobs, I mean, way more. I believe it keeps storing jobs until the HD is full, than it starts trashing the older jobs to store the new. But I can be wrong and will check it on Monday.

You are correct.  I'm not sure why the printer didn't behave this way before, but now it is adding print jobs to the common box.  I also discovered that the way jobs are sent to the other "mail" boxes is through the print plug-in through Photoshop or the "additional" setting in LR

BTW, the advantage of the hard drive is that if you will be printing one image repeatedly, you don't have to go into LR or Photoshop each time.  You just print it off the drive.  It is a big time saver in that situation.

My main mystery now is that ALL of my print jobs get one of two names, rather than their file name itself.  So it is impossible to tell which print job is which.  For some reason, when printing through LR, LR assigns a name to the print job, and that is what the printer reflects.  The problem is that the names it assigns, in my case, refer to two file names that were previously used.  So now all print jobs carry one of two names.  This kills the feature and means it is not functional.

I have carefully looked through LR to see where it applies the print or file name, and I can't find the setting or function that is doing this.   Do any of you know and can explain this?  

How does LR assign a name to the printer job?  Why would LR name all printing jobs by only two names, as in assigning the same name to a dozen different print jobs rather than using the file name?  (see below though)

I also checked the preferences, including external editing file name preference and library settings.  None of that is the issue, as far as I can tell.  I think this is some setting in LR that is hidden and not immediately obvious.

REVISED -- I need to do more tests, but it appears that the print templates in LR apply a print name to the job.  That print name is based on what you were printing when you created or revised the user template. This is NOT the name of the template, but rather the file name of the image that you worked on at that time.  So it is HIDDEN and a user can't modify it,as far as I can tell.  That means that the file name used when creating the template will be applied to every subsequent print job when using that template.  So, I was getting only two file names as job names in the printer, because I was using two different templates, and so the two file names I used when creating those two template are sent over and over and over.

But maybe I am missing something.

Many thanks for any responses on this mystery!

[alan a]

In addition, the "additional" setting in the print driver, when using LR and Photoshop, allows you to save a print job to a mailbox.  For those with an 8400 or a Canon printer with a hard drive, these features are potentially a major time saver for prints that you repeat on a regular basis.  You don't have to go into LR or Photoshop to print, you would just go to a mailbox and print directly.  You can even tell the printer to print multiple copies of any saved job.  And since there are over 20 mailboxes, you could save prints for various clients.

It is potentially a big time saver -- if we can get it to work.  That means we can't use the printer templates to send jobs, unless you want the same file name to appear over and over for different prints, which is useless.  I think that is a failure of LR and is a hidden setting.  See my posting above, explaining that the printer templates send the FILE NAME used at the time the printer template was created and that becomes the job name on the printer.  So 20 different print jobs with 20 different file names will all appear the same if you use the same template over and over.  I don't know how to fix that in LR.

I did finally get the job names to work using mailboxes -- by using the "additional" setting in Photoshop and Lightroom, but there are gremlins to account for.  Photoshop can save to Mailbox 1, but apparently LR can't, at least not in my experience.  LR can save to Mailbox 2 or higher.

But you need to go to the "additional" setting in the printer driver, and select "print" first and then select "mailbox."  Only by selecting print first, and then mailbox, will the dialogue show up to designate which mailbox. More importantly that allows you to save a file name -- and change a file name to something really short that will show up on the LCD.

The next step is to save it, and then you must hit "print" to send the data to the printer.

Also, when you do this, if it doesn't work, wait a few minutes for the data that is received to show up.  I saw situations where the green data light comes on and the printer says it is receiving data.  Then nothing shows up in the job list.  But later, like 20 minutes later, it suddenly appears.

Like I said, gremlins in the system.

One final comment.  Assume a friend or client wants a quick print.  Using this feature, you don't need to turn on your mac or PC, and open LR, and go through the print dialogue or print template.  You only need to go to the mailboxes and job list on the printer, and print it off, if it is a previously saved job.

[Richard.Wills]

WRT the accuracy of the ink reporting, both our old 8300 and current 8400 will happily jump from 40% to [!] (0%) within a couple of 40x60" prints, and have sometimes crashed to x Very shortly after. We're on a print maintenance plan (last machine got through well over a dozen heads while on extended warranty), and our dealer has the monitoring system set to overnight 700ml tanks the moment we hit 40%. Even then, we occasionally hit X, before the replacement cart has arrived, and on one instance, completely ran out (MBK) before the pre-noon delivery. That was not a particularly early start, or high print load

So, I take not only the primer 350ml carts levels, but also the full bottles remaining ink levels with a very large pinch of salt. I keep a parallels instal of XP for those times when I want to look closer at ink usage, though my dealer's ink usage monitor seems to be pretty efficient for billing purposes, so haven't looked too closely recently.

Re the HDD, I thought I was losing the plot WRT file names, and so stopped using it. Given  that we run editions for various artists, I'll have another look.

In the UK, I had (and took) the option for EFi Express with both the 8300 and 8400. Does anyone else use this software? Although we use LR for a lot of our client image manipulation, the RIP does make life (even) easier ,though it has a few quirks.

[alan a]

An additional comment about the mailboxes. This feature is very useful for amateurs who might only turn on their printers every one or two weeks. We all know that we should push a test print through any ink jet printer once a week, but don't always bother to do so.  If you save the multicolored test strip, like the Atkinson test strip, to mailbox #1 or #2, it then becomes really easy to turn the printer on, access the mailbox, and run the test print.

See my previous post for directions on how to send images to the mailboxes.

What I haven't figured out is why the print jobs in the "common" box that are sent from iLR using print templates will be listed over and over with the same filename. It appears to be the file name of the image that was used to create the print template.  (NOT The name that you assigned to the template.) That appears to be a hidden setting that we have no control over – but the experts on light room might have a better idea.

Therefore, I think the listing of print jobs in the "common" mailbox is an utterly useless feature since it repeats the same name over and over and over -- if you are printing from light room using print templates. But prints can be saved to specific mailboxes and  use a  specific name that you assign, so you can use a short name to appear on the LCD.