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Canon iP3000 & the blacks..

T

thirdlegstump

Banned
So after mucho wasted time on this thing, I still cannot get the blacks to look....black. They look like dark gray at best so I'm just thinking the black ink just cannot get as dark as I want it to even on premium photo papers.

So I'm thinking of using a 3rd party ink tank for this thing hoping that maybe it'll be blacker than the Canon's authentic inks. Any suggestions?
 
i know it is subjective, but my blacks are as black as as laser printing when i print a pic with black on the high settings on epson glossy photo paper....
 
You may have done the following. You'll get gray blacks if you're in draft mode. To get true blacks, go to printing preferences and select standard, and be sure to click Apply before clicking OK.
 
Yea done that. Also did it in manual mode and selected the top quality possible. It just looks like the printer IS in fact printing it's darkest black but the pigments just aren't strong enough to make the papers go pitch black.
 
It's a bit on the grainy side even on good photo paper but it looks photographic, just a bit dark and grainy. Even if everything is dark, the blacks aren't that dark. It has that "LCD black" kind of effect.

What applications do you guys print from?
 
I'm using Epson Premium Photo paper and some run of the mill matte paper. The matte looks like utter crap, I can't even begin to tell you how awful it looks.
 
since i just got my camera, i have just plugged it into the printer and tried that out, otherwise i will use either the photo viewer in xp if i don't want to mess with anything or i go photoshop.

in fact, i just did some info sheets for a company that will be used at trades shows and i used illustratotor 10, and the black from there, true actual black, was laser quality and laser black when i printed it out in high quality, using glossy photo paper option.

when you initially setup the printer, did you let it do all of its own setup? let the canon software run its checks? you might want to run the print head alignment and nozzle check, and maybe clean it. also, i know that after i installed all the canon stuff, i went to their site and they had a newer version of the software than what came on the disc, so i installed that also.
 
Originally posted by: deathkoba
Done all of that including downloading the latest drivers. Maybe mine's just a defect. How did you plug your cam direct to the printer?
Click to expand...


i just bought a canon s70 and used the usb cord and plugged it into the "pict bridge" usb port on front of the printer.
 
Yea it's still not uber black. I printed to 4x6 photo paper and it actually cropped maybe 1/4" off the top and bottom of the original image in my G3 camera. Color is also slightly darker although the blacks are dead looking. I don't think I'm liking this printer.
 
i would either take it back and get a replacement as, compared to mine, sounds defective or call canon. i love mine and definately feel it was an excellent bargain.
 
Have you run a print head check to be sure all the nozzles are firing? When I got my 830 a while back it had 2 nozzles that refused to fire, so I got a new print head. Luckily the Canon repair center is only 10 minutes from my house. I have a couple of sunset pictures on my wall with some very dark shadows that are very black. Could be you have very sensitive eyes and can see imperfections that the rest of us can't.
 
Heh! Found out that a neighboring friend of mine has one and just checked it out. Same problem but he doesn't notice it. Maybe my eyes are more sensitive than others since I used to work at a photographer's studio doing retouching and print management but this is obnoxiously bad. I don't understand how you guys aren't noticing how inarticulate the blacks are. If there's a grayscale image, there'd be lots of 'bleeding' banding with little distinction between the shades and the darkest of it would be pretty much very dark gray instead of pitch black.
 
Also I just loaded up the printer's color range profile into photoshop and looked at a bunch of images with various color qualities and is actually quite close to what I'm seeing from the prints. With the profile loaded I cannot get as dark as it should considering it's sold as a 'photo printer.' Maybe it's back to Epson for me unless they come out with a replacement ink for these IP3000's.
 
I am the same way with monitor refresh rates. People work on monitors all day that I cannot sit in front of for more than a minute without experiencing some virtego. Some monitors I cannot even look at indirectly without bothering my eyes.
Now that you know this about yourself you must choose a photo printer very carefully. I guess as far as my photo prints are concerned... ignorance is bliss.
 
I know that Canon advertises this machine as a "photo" printer, but it uses the 3e-bk black cart. Someone correct me if I'm wrong, but I've always gotten the impression that this is more of a text/general use cartridge compared to the 6bk that you find in the iP4000 and up.

If you look at Canon's printer line-up, you'll notice that the iP4000 and iP5000 use BOTH the 3e-bk and 6bk, which leads me to believe that the 3e-bk doesn't work as well on photo paper as the 6bk. You really want two very different formulations of ink for photos and plain paper, since you want your photo ink to be absorbed into the paper, while with text it comes out sharper of the ink just sticks to the top of the paper. I'm thinking that the black ink in the 3e just wasn't quite designed to be as good of a photo ink as the 6bk.

The lack of support for the 6bk cartridge and the fact that it only has four colors of ink (not the six or eight that most photo printers use) make the iP3000's claim to being a photo printer a bit dubious. Aside from the PictBridge support, it is pretty much a normal 4-color general use printer. I personally don't think you really get to a true photo printer with Canon until you get up to the iP6000 with the six-color printing system. If you were using one of those or even an iP4000 you'd probably be getting the deeper blacks.
 
That could be it cause my i860 uses the 6's for photo printing cyan, magenta, yellow, and black and 3e-bk for text or printing only black. The photo prints comes out looking nice. Fast to compared to printing with my epson 820.
 
what you want to do is get a refillable black catridge (3e-BK compatible) for the canon printer, available at a ton of places, and refill it with dye-based black ink, as the type used in their 6BK cartridges (the type used in the ip4000) that can be found here . replace the ink...


... profit!
 
EDIT: While I was typing to post this some more knowledgeable people chimmed in so this post sounds like I'm a parrot. Disregard as you see fit.

From what I understand, cheap printers like the ip3000 only use one black ink tank. Better printers use two different blacks; a dye-based black for photo work and a pigment based black for text printing. The ip3000 only uses pigment based black which has it's limitations.

I'm not an expert on such matters so sorry if I'm wrong on this.

BTW, I receintly bought a ip3000 but haven't hooked it up yet.

Good luck.

Ed
 
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