I'd like to print some of my more abstract images on silk or a translucent cotton cloth - thinking of lighting from a window behind... I'm on the verge of buying a 7900, mostly for printing on Baryta papers, with a smaller amount on matte fine art media and sometimes relatively inexpensive semigloss or luster papers, but the cloth is a big experiment. I've been printing for many years, starting with the original Epson 2000P - the first pigment-ink printer a photographer could afford. It's amazing to look back and forward - from matte papers only, with a spiky gamut that didn't cover sRGB to today's choice of media, with well-behaved gamuts beyond Adobe RGB
Has anyone used cloth media other than canvas? Is Jacquard the best source of unusual cloth media? Jacquard REALLY don't understand profiles - they have FOUR profiles among their 50+ media types, and they don't even say what printer they're for - reading the directions carefully, they're for the old 7880. Has anybody used their fabrics, and how did you profile them? Would a ColorMunki handle the job, or do I need to do the much more expensive upgrade to my ancient (pre xRite takeover) i1 to get it running on a modern OS?
Assuming I did manage to create a profile, what sort of image quality can I expect? Are there handling problems with the cloth media? As I understand it, they're very thin media on a paper backing - you separate them after printing... I would think that a 7900 would take such things just fine - between the straight paper path and the rotary cutter.
I'm leaning strongly toward the 7900 instead of the Canon 6400 for a couple of reasons - most importantly, Spectraflow (who strongly prefer Epson, and keep a lot of Epson stuff in stock, while having to order Canon ink and other consumables) has an outpost up here (Vermont), and they've been extremely helpful - I think the local support/ink availability is a big deal (the only problem I ever had with a Canon 6100 was when a cartridge chip failed with the cartridge more than half full, and there was no quick way of replacing it while I was printing for a friend's show in a few days). The "tale of the pink ink" ended up with a cartridge of Light Magenta on the bus from Boston, at great effort for me, and especially for my father, who had to buy the ink and drive it to the Greyhound station. Canon is represented in VT by Spectraflow (reluctantly, and without the contacts they have w/Epson) and a couple of copier dealers who don't have much interest in iPF stuff
I think the 7900 is perhaps a better bet on odd media as well - straight paper path instead of a reverse curve, and the rotary cutter well clear of the printhead. I don't have room to consider either Epson's or Canon's 44" printer.
An additional consideration is that I believe the 6400 has inherited the "tilt me and I die" subtank system from the 8300 (I was present at the loss of an 8300 to this very problem), and I'm going to have to move the printer sometime in the next couple years. It's going to be a close call getting it out completely flat! As I understand it, the 6300 didn't have that problem, but when the 6400 picked up the 300 ml cartridge option, it also added the subtanks from the 44" printers.
