Granularity

Printed photo © Stephen E. Ross.

A couple of days ago I made another print for my client who shoots only multi-frame panoramas. As usual, prior to printing the job I made a nozzle check print on plain bond paper. I unloaded the roll paper, printed the nozzle check (no clogs), and then loaded the same roll back into the printer.

While doing this I didn't notice anything unusual on the 7900's LCD. For some time it's been showing three inks, C, VM, and LK, as low, flashing a warning icon above each color on the display. This icon appears when the ink level drops below 20%. I have occasionally looked at the ink levels in the status display. Most of the inks are in the 30%—40% range. This should last quite a while considering the number of prints I'm likely to make over the next several months. The three colors flashing the warnings have been in the low teens each time I've checked, and are clearly the ones I'll need to replace soonest.

Since making the panoramic print I've not needed the printer. When it sleeps the LCD turns off, but the low ink LED continues to flash. Unless I'm setting up to make a print, I generally don't pay much attention. Apparently one learns to ignore the presence even of something as large as the 7900.

Today I was quite surprised to learn that the LK ink level was at 2%. I don't recall it's level the last time I looked at the status menu on the LCD or the printer utility on the computer, but I'm sure it was 8%, maybe 9%. I'd guess that was a week or perhaps ten days ago. In any case, I need to order ink right now.

What's interesting about all of this is the granularity of ink level, and remaining maintenance cartridge capacity, as reported by the 7900. Unless and until I learn otherwise, I'll assume these levels are reported fairly accurately. My Canon iPF 5000 reported these data in 20% increments. When a new ink tank was installed, the printer's LCD would display a "full bar" for that color, and the status report would show 100%, just as one would expect. However, neither the bar nor the status report would change until the ink level dropped to 80%. Then, the bar would shorten by two pixels, and the printed status report would show 80%. These would not change again until the level had dropped to 60%. This limited the usefulness of the information. Once the level reached 20%, there was no way to know when the level had dropped to a point where one should order ink. To be fair to Canon, a later firmware update added a new "level", helpfully shown as "replace soon". I operated that printer long enough to learn when, during the period between 20% and "replace soon", to order ink.

The Epson's 1% granularity is nice, but I need to develop the habit of checking ink status a little more regularly. The LK seems to have dropped suddenly, or rapidly, from the high single digits to 2%. That could indicate some kind of problem, but it's more likely I simply missed seeing levels in between.

  --Jay

Fixing the Paper Basket

I've mentioned that the fabric basket that's supposed to catch prints as they exit the 7900 seems a less than ideal solution. In my 1 December posting I showed a photo of the corner of a panoramic print, as it emerged from the printer, catching on the fabric of the basket. I mentioned I'd rigged a temporary "fix" for this.

Today I ran a small print job for a client. These weren't large prints; they were made on paper from a 17" wide roll. The cut length of each was 19 inches (a bit over 48 cm). Shown here is my hardware hack.

Ugly, but cheap, and effective for reasonably sized prints. Note the extensions
to the Velcro straps, which allow the basket to hang open a bit, providing
an edge, of sorts, to catch the print.

The cardboard sheet is obvious; it provides a smooth and rigid surface over which the corners of the paper slide easily. Less obvious in the picture are the extensions to the pair of Velcro straps that normally hold the paper basket in its closed position. If these straps are released, the paper basket in its front-feed mode becomes a ramp; when the print emerges and is released (or cut) by the printer, the paper slides down that ramp onto the floor. But at least it does that with the print side up. I've sometimes put my large self-healing cutting mat on the floor so the prints could "land" on its smooth, slippery surface rather than the concrete floor.

If the basket is arranged so prints are fed to the rear, the prints drop (or in the case of long panoramic prints, coil up) under the printer, and do so with the printed side down.

My temporary fix to this is for feeding prints to the front, and allows them to exit smoothly, without catching on the fabric. They are caught and held by the basket. Prints are not dumped onto the floor. Of course, for large prints this hack isn't appropriate, and would no doubt present its own set of problems. I think for large prints the basket should be deployed as designed for front-feeding, a piece of cardboard or foam core should be used to prevent the paper from catching on the fabric, and a protective mat, something like the cutting mat I've used, placed on the floor.

If you've found a good solution to this, please share!

Prior to making today's client prints I'd had MK ink loaded. These newest prints were made on Canon HW Satin paper, which I use for most of my contract print jobs, so it was necessary to switch to PK ink. I removed the roll of matte paper and then pressed the printer's ink swap button. The process took a couple of minutes, displaying a progress bar on the LCD. When it finished I inserted a sheet of plain paper and initiated a nozzle check print. The LCD showed "Cleaning" for about six minutes, and then the nozzle check printed. It showed no clogs. I then installed the roll of HW Satin and printed as usual. The prints dropped nicely into my "improved" paper basket.

  --Jay

More Client Jobs, and a Firmware Update

Sunday (4 Dec) I picked up a small photo restoration job. The final prints would be made on a gloss paper (GGFS -- see the shortcuts list at right for definitions of this and other abbreviations). From the previous job, PK ink was already loaded, so I did the restoration job Tuesday and then set up to print as usual. I printed a nozzle check, and found both O and G significantly clogged. I'd recently read a posting on the Luminous Landscape forums in which the poster theorized owners of 7900/9900 printers aren't really seeing nozzle clogs, but rather, a lack of ink being delivered to the head. I've no way to know if that's true, but the result is the same; a nozzle check print looks terrible in one or more channels. In this case, O and G are conveniently paired; doing a cleaning on that pair cleared the clogs. I then made the three 5 inch high by 7.4 inch wide prints on letter size (8.5 x 11 inch) sheets, paper size set to "US Letter (sheet)", with the Center image box checked. The print was off center on the long axis by about half an inch. For the second print, exactly the same size, I unchecked the Center image box, added .25 inches to the left margin, and then printed with no other changes. The print was close to centered, off only a sixteenth of an inch, give or take. For the third same-size print I adjusted the left margin slightly; the print was then exactly centered. Trial and error seems the only way....

With that small job out of the way, I returned to an earlier client's job, the one I mentioned in the 25 November posting. The client was happy with the first set of four prints, and asked that I photograph and print a fifth drawing. Each drawing requires four photographs, which are then stitched using Photoshop's PhotoMerge application. I set up, made the captures, did the Photoshop work, and then prepared to make the print.

The earlier prints were made on matte paper (Moab Entrada Natural 300 gsm). Since PK was loaded, I needed to switch to MK, reversing the process described in my 1 December posting. This took about two minutes. I printed a nozzle check, which showed no clogs. Interestingly, unlike the ink swap on 1 December, this time the printer started up and made the check print immediately. It did not go through the several minute process I'd seen before after an ink swap, in which the head traveled the full width of the carriage several times, the printer made noise for a few minutes, and then, finally, the image printed. I've no idea why the behavior was not consistent.  I loaded the roll of Entrada and made the client's print. It was perfect, and it's properly centered, as seems generally to be the case when printing from roll paper. When finished, I removed the roll of Entrada.

I then installed a new firmware update from Epson. This is HN030B9. It had been reported on the Epson UK site a week or so ago, but I decided to wait until it appeared on the US site. It did, so I used the Epson LFP Remote Panel 2 application (Macintosh) to perform the update. The Firmware Updater was unable to find the printer, or reported it as "not ready". Since I'd just completed a print job, I knew there was no communication problem with my networked printer. After trying several times, I realized the "not ready" message should be taken literally. I'd removed the roll paper, and with no paper loaded, the 7900 is "not ready"! I loaded a sheet of plain bond paper and tried again. This time there were no complaints from the Firmware Updater. It found the printer, downloaded the update from some Epson server, installed it, and then restarted the printer.

This afternoon I spoke with the drawing repro client and learned she wants a total of four prints of the most recent drawing. A few minutes ago I printed a nozzle check (no clogs), opened the client's file, loaded the roll of Entrada, set up the print job, and set the quantity to three. It's the first time I've printed more than one of anything as one print job. The 7900 printed each image, cut the paper, and then printed the next. All nicely centered. Rather than stand and watch the process so I could catch each print as it was cut from the roll, I made a slight modification to the catch basket. The basket now catches these smallish prints (17 inches wide by 14 inches high) in front of the printer, rather than dumping them on the floor as the normal "feed to the front" basket arrangement does. I'll describe this more after I make my temporary rigging more permanent.

  --Jay

Busy, Busy....

November was a busy month. It's looking like December won't be much less so. While working against deadlines on several projects, a few days ago I received a print order via my Web site. About the same time I got an order from an existing printing client, to print one of his images. Interestingly, both jobs were for panoramas, although the files to be printed were quite different.

A woman in Connecticut ordered a print of one of my photos of the Mission Mountain range. This was made in January, 2003, on a morning when inversional fog was moving into the valley. It had been a fairly mild winter so far, and the cottonwoods were still in pretty good shape, adding some nice color to the image. I was still shooting film then.

This has always been a difficult image to print. It's a film scan (Fuji Provia F-100), a little grainy to start with. It's also a significant crop, with nearly half the slide cropped out. The buyer wanted a 32 inch (81cm) wide print. I first printed this image with my Canon iPF 5000 for a commission back in 2007. That client wanted the print "as large as you can make it", which turned out to be around 54 inches (137cm) wide. Still, even at 32 inches it is a challenge to sharpen. The image is a little soft, and as mentioned, somewhat grainy.

I sized this as usual in Photoshop, upsampling to 360ppi, bicubic smoother. I used Photoshop's Smart Sharpen and printed several 6 inch test strips, mostly from the right edge of the frame. I wasn't happy with the result. The right-most cottonwood tree, and the fir tree to its left, were softer than I'd remembered from my prints made with the Canon. I have a slightly smaller version of this print, made with the Canon, framed and hangning in a local gallery. I took my test strips to the gallery and compared them to the framed print. Hmmmm.... Pretty close. Perhaps I've become pickier about print quality since the framed print was made (my wife would say that's impossible to imagine).

Returning home, I tweaked the file a bit more and then made the print on Moab Entrada Natural 300, a 17 inch wide roll. To make the print I created a custom paper size, 17 inches x 34 inches. Top and bottom margins: 0.6 inch, left and right margins: 0.25 inch.

The print is perfectly centered. I'd call the print quality acceptable, especially considering the mat-finished paper tends to soften the look a bit, but my work is typically better. When I have some time I'll work on this, perhaps with different software for upsampling. It's possible there's simply not sufficient data to make better prints at this size, but I won't know until I've explored some options.

The second job was quite different. The file was from a client who shoots very wide panoramas. His file was too large for Photoshop's .psd format. He wanted a 34 inch (86cm) wide print. The file easily accommodated 720ppi without upsampling. I printed this on 17" wide Canon Heavyweight Satin 300, the paper I use for most client jobs, and one which this client likes. This required switching the printer from MK (matte black) to PK (photo black) ink. By default the printer does not do this automatically; it requires the press of a button on the machine's control panel. I removed the roll of Entrada, and then printed a nozzle check print on plain paper. This showed clogs in the orange channel. I pressed the button to switch inks. The switch took about two minutes, during which this progress bar was displayed on the printer's LCD. When the progress bar disappeared and the LCD showed the standard "ready" status, I printed a nozzle check. That's when I learned that the ink swap really wasn't finished. Upon setting up to print the nozzle check, the printer made noise and moved the carriage around for over five minutes! I'm guessing it did a head cleaning. Eventually it printed the nozzle check and showed no clogs.

I fed the satin paper (love that roll holder!), set up the print job, and printed. Color and sharpness are perfect.

When printing images from heavier roll papers, the paper curl as it exits the printer is significant. The leading corners of the paper tend to catch on the fabric of the paper basket when the basket is set up to feed paper to the front (that is, spill the paper onto the floor in front of the printer). You can see in the picture at left that the bottom-right corner of the print is hung up on the fabric of the basket. I found it necessary to stand there holding the leading corners to assure smooth feeding of the paper out of the machine. It may have worked fine without my intervention, but I didn't want to risk damaging the print if it hung up on the basket and couldn't feed out of the machine properly.

The alternative is to set up the basket to feed paper under the machine. This would drag the printed side of the paper against the plastic strips supporting the basket. This seems like a bad idea. If the print is long enough it might continue to feed out the rear of the machine onto the floor or, in my case, pile up against the wall behind the printer. Given the design of the paper basket, I think I'm going to be hand-holding the printer's output of large prints. More likely I'll place a sheet of foam-core over the fabric basket, making a smooth ramp over which the paper should slide easily.

The photo being printed is © Stephen E. Ross.

  --Jay