RE: potassium vs. ammonium citrate pd developer

Chris and all,

One way to cut your ink cost by about half is to purchase 220 ml carts sold
for the Epson 4800 and transfer the ink into 3rd party sponge less
refillable carts or use a 3rd part CIS ink system with the ink drained from
the 4800 carts.

Roughly, this reduces the cost of ink from an estimated price of 0.93 per
ml. to about 0.51 per ml.

The downside is that the initial cost of purchasing 8 220 ml carts is almost
$900.

Unfortunately, the Epson 2400 has a voracious appetite for ink. For example,
each time you replace an empty cart (which still has an estimated 2+ ml of
ink remaining -- it may be even possible to siphon the dregs and save it for
refilling 3rd party carts) all of the carts receive a purging cycle to allow
the fresh ink cart to prime its respective print head.

One technique to save a little ink is to print negatives or prints in
batches, printing as many images as possible per batch. Each time the
printer is turned on, a large amount of ink is wasted needlessly.

One of the nice things about using a 1280 printer is that are some really
inexpensive inks available for making inkjet negs. These inks are available
in bulk or cart.

As for the B&W prints from the new K3 inks and new generation ink jet paper,
will they are astounding to say the least but also expensive, possibly more
expensive than palladium prints.

BTW, for an emergency developer for plt/pld prints Dick Sullivan recommends
7-Up.

Don Bryant
  

-----Original Message-----
From: Christina Z. Anderson [mailto:zphoto@montana.net]
Sent: Sunday, April 09, 2006 7:10 PM
To: Alt, List
Subject: Re: potassium vs. ammonium citrate pd developer

Yes I did, Sandy, and it shorted out, and would cost $400 to replace it. I
tried to locate a new one, but the only place I could was a place that I
could not verify if it was reputable, and given my Nikon D200 horror story,
I will not do that again. A refurbished one is in the neighborhood of $500,
so after several weeks of angsting about this, I decided to bite the bullet
and get the 2400. Mind you, that means I have to recalibrate ALL my curves
(VDB, cyano, 4 gum, palladium, argyro, salt, and silver).

Anyone who has a 2200 is blessed....

Now, as far as the 2400:
Upon the first printing of the CDRP in Nelson's system, I was shocked to
find that the black ink does not hold back as much light as the colored inks
(e.g. G255B0) right next to it! I got paper white with a 6 minute exposure
with palladium with no having to up ink density. So, in my book, the 2400
has the 2200 beat if you are using colored inks.

Also, Mark Nelson said that digital BW prints with the 2400 are awesome, but

of course I never do things the easy way....it'll be a cold day in hell
before I print a digital BW print, darkroom junkie that I am (doesn't mean I

don't LOVE digiprints).
Chris
----- Original Message -----
From: "Sandy King" <sanking@clemson.edu>
To: <alt-photo-process-l@usask.ca>
Sent: Sunday, April 09, 2006 4:59 PM
Subject: Re: potassium vs. ammonium citrate pd developer

> Chris,
>
> Did you not have a 2200 before the 2400? For digital negatives, is there
> any advantage to the 2400?
>
> Sandy
>
>
>
>
>>OHMAGOSH john,
>>The 2400 is wonderful. I just finished printing my 10th and final 13x19
>>negative and ran out of ink on one of the cartridges....and I've printed 9
>>of those negs in palladium and the ink is extremely dense, except for the
>>black ink which is less dense than the 2200. However, I am not using black
>>ink, only colored inks. So, as far as I am concerned, the printer is
>>PERFECT (except for the price--$800).
>>Chris
>>
>>>Chris,
>>>I read somewhere recently that pigment inks as on the R2400 function much
>>>less satisfactorily than dye based inks for digital negatives. For this
>>>reason I was going to hang onto my 1290 for the time being, to dedicate
>>>to transparency printing. As a newbie to alternative processes, I was
>>>wondering what the concensus of the forum was on this subject
>>>John Fontana
>
Received on Sun Apr 9 19:03:53 2006