Paper Saving Trick

I can't take credit for this. I stumbled across it in a posting on Luminous-Landscape's Printers, Papers, and Inks forum. Thanks to someone who goes by "darlingm" for the hint. I did a little testing, cleaned-up his (or her) instructions, and posted them here.

When I print nozzle checks, I do so on plain bond paper-cheap stuff, fairly thin. I feed the page, print the nozzle check, make a couple of notes (date, and the room's temperature and relative humidity, and mark any missing nozzles). I then file the sheet for use a second time. When that time comes I turn the sheet 180° so the previously-printed pattern and notes are at the top, with the clean end of the sheet feeding into the printer. This scheme allows two nozzle checks per sheet. If I used a heavier paper I could print two more on the reverse side. However, with thin paper, inspecting the patterns as I do with an 8X loupe under strong light, anything printed on the opposite side of the sheet is quite visible and distracting.

darlingm's method allows printing multiple, up to five, nozzle check patterns on one side of a sheet, as follows:

Print the first nozzle check as usual. No "trick" involved. This puts the pattern at one end of the sheet, as usual. The next time a nozzle check print is needed, insert the sheet just as before, that is, with the previously-printed pattern going into the printer first. Feed the sheet as usual. When the 7900 is done setting it up, change the feed to roll paper, and then press the down-arrow several times, enough so the old pattern clears the printhead, putting clean paper in the head's path. Finally, switch the feed back to sheet, and then print the nozzle check as usual. Using this method it's very easy to print two more patterns on the sheet, and then feed the sheet with the remaining clean end first, to print a fourth pattern. One can squeeze in five with a little practice. That's great, but I'm a little lazy, and I find four per sheet to be plenty.

Above is a very poor photo of one of my resulting sheets. I'm an obsessive note-taker (more than a little nuts, surely); I like some extra space on the sheet for my scribbles. The top three nozzle checks were printed as described. The one at the bottom of the sheet was printed last, feeding the sheet normally.

A little excessive? More trouble than it's worth? Probably, and maybe. Still, a clever idea, I think.

  --Jay

A Blog Note, And A Small Client Job

It's a slow time for me, not much printing to be done. When the 7900 sits idle, there's nothing to write about, so new postings here have been few and far between. A friend wrote a couple of days ago, wondering if I'd let "Life With a 7900" die. Certainly not! But this blog isn't about daily postings or sharing every thought I might have about the printer. I write when something interesting, something at least somewhat related to using the 7900, has happened, good or bad.

The good news is, this slow period for printing leaves me time to get out shooting. We'd planned a long-weekend trip to Yellowstone for this weekend (now), but that fell through. Instead I've been wandering around the Mission Valley (here in western Montana), mostly photographing our abundant hawk population and the occasional interesting "atmospheric" caused by inversional fog.

Morning sun helps clear out fog over the ice of Flathead Lake in western Montana. The 

Mission Mountains make the background.

A couple of days ago I did get a small print job from a client who shoots only panoramas, that is, wide images made by stitching together multiple frames. These are fun to print. Where the sizes permit I nest them to make best use of 24-inch-wide Epson Luster. That was the case with this small order of three prints. The longest was 37 inches (94 cm), the shortest only 24 inches (61 cm).

The printer had been set up with MK loaded; I took advantage of that to make a couple of small prints of my own work on mat paper. I made the usual nozzle check, found no problems. I made my two small prints, and then initiated the MK-to-PK swap. That too completed with no problems. I then printed a nozzle check, and found VM completely absent. Odd, since the ink swap has nothing to do with that color channel. I did a cleaning on the C/VM pair, and then printed another nozzle check. A few lines in the VM pattern printed, but most were still missing. I then did a "powerful" cleaning of that same pair. That resolved the problem.

I set up and printed the panoramas without any problems.

  --Jay

Snow and Fog

I recently bought a new camera. Choices abound, requiring some research if one is to make an informed decision. For my Web site I recently wrote about making that decision. The camera arrived just before Christmas. I've been spending time working with that, so I've done almost no printing lately. The 7900 has been unused, powered-up but in standby mode, since 16 December.

Today I decided to print a photo I suspected would not make a great print. The image intrigues me; it's one I spent some years trying to get, without getting the photo I'd hoped for. As I wrote for my site back in November, the opportunity is now lost. What I have is as good as it'll get. You can see the photo in the article. It's a winter scene, photographed in extremely foggy conditions. Because of the post-processing done to increase the contrast, the image is more  noisy than I'd like. The subject is (was) something of an icon around here, something everyone in the valley would recognize. I need a couple of new prints for a show that will hang next week; I thought I'd give it a shot, see how the image prints.

Given the nature of the image, it seemed a good candidate for printing on mat paper. I have a roll of Epson Hot Pressed Natural (HPN), which is very nice stuff. Given the nature of the picture, with snow, fog, and rime on the tree, something whiter seemed a obvious choice. But I've only printed client jobs on the HPN and wanted to print one of my own images on it.

I ran a nozzle-check print as usual, and found no missing nozzles. A nice surprise, since the printer had been sitting idle for three weeks. I then loaded the roll and made the print as usual. It's small, only 15 inches high x 11 inches wide (38 x 28 cm), but I think it's quite nice. The noise is pretty well controlled; the mat paper helps with that. I suspect I could print it quite a bit larger with a good result.

I had no "resetting" issues when making this print. See the last posting for details on that.

  --Jay