Does Printer Jockey’s channel flushing function clear nozzle clogs?

When I reviewed Printer Jockey recently (here is the original posting) I found that it did not recover total ink channel loss on my Epson 4800 inkjet printer, but I did not know whether the idea that single channel flushing might be able to solve the odd nozzle going missing would work or not. After a couple of months of trying it out here are my conclusions.

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Originally I found that even running selected channel flushing several times at its full intensity it did not cure the complete loss of single or multiple ink channels that I have experienced. I was not sure, however, whether channel flushing would be able to restore the odd clogged nozzle without having to resort to a full cleaning cycle. It has to be said that I was really hopeful that it would as this would potentially save quite a bit of ink.

In the last couple of months I have had a few instances of the odd line of the nozzle check going missing and each time I have tried to use Printer Jockey’s selected channel flushing mode to clear it. Sadly it has had no effect in the all the cases I have tried it on – around half a dozen. In each case a small number of lines (1 to 4) in the nozzle check were missing and I tried to flush the affected colour on its own. I have tried different combinations of channel flushing in several different intensities and repeatedly, but to no avail.

Unlike the experience I had with completely lost ink channels (where no ink was used at all during channel flushes of the affected channels) channel flushing with just the odd clogged nozzle does certainly print the selected channel/s and plenty of ink comes out on the page, but this does not clear the clogs.

In each case a single running of the standard cleaning cycle cleared the problem.

Conclusion
So my conclusion is that, sadly, Printer Jockey’s channel flushing mode does not clear nozzle clogs at all. I am disappointed as I really hoped it would work… Read more...

Is humidity the key to avoiding nozzle clogging on my Epson 4800?

Recent experience has told me that 40% humidity is the bottom end of acceptable to keep my 4800 running relatively nozzle clog free - I try to keep my 4800 at 50%, along with a routine of printing a little often - see this posting for details.

I recently had to go away without leaving the computer on for 10 days so I could not use my normal regimen – so what happened?

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Because I could not follow my tried and almost trusted regimen of printing a little often along with keeping the humidity at around 50% I had to come up with an alternative to try to keep my printer clog free.

I puddle soaked the print head to make sure that the print head in its capping station was humid/wet; I added a pot of water inside the printer cover to the usual wet sponge in the paper tray and really wrapped up the printer in its cover, including wrapping it under the paper tray, and turned off the printer.

When I came back the humidity inside the machine was reading 72% (according to the max/min function on the weather station I use, 73% was the maximum that it reached in the 10 days I was away), with 73% in the paper tray - the room reading was around 50%.

When I turned on the printer it ran an auto cleaning cycle (I have called this an "auto something or other" before, but this time I watched the print head move around and the following nozzle check showed that it had used 9.6ml of ink since I turned it off, so I am pretty certain that it is auto cleaning, despite this function being turned off via the LCD panel...). This would normally cause a whole ink channel or two, or three, or four… to drop out, but the following nozzle check was perfect and I then ran a batch of 30 A4 prints without a hitch.

During this the fan inside the printer reduced the humidity to 43% so I put the water pot back inside the print cover to raise the humidity to 50% again as quickly as possible... leaving myself a note to remind me to take the pot out before turning on my computer or Harvey Head Cleaner would initiate a nozzle check automatically with nasty and expensive results.

Strangely the printer also ran an auto clean before the auto nozzle check first thing the following morning – why? The printer had been recently used the nozzle check was perfect etc. Luckily the following nozzle check was also perfect.

Anyone who has looked at the rest of my blog postings will see that I have had lots of problems with nozzle clogging on my 4800 and this episode just makes me think even more that humidity is the key, along with a really all enveloping cover and printing a little and often. Read more...

Two different types of Costco / Kirkland Signature Professional Glossy Inkjet Photo Paper tested

For some time I have used Costco’s own brand Kirkland Signature Professional Glossy Inkjet Photo Paper as one of my draft/proofing (before committing ink to an expensive paper) and contact printing papers and for prints for friends & family with my Epson 4800, and before that on my Canon 9000S. I have been very happy with it, but noticed recently that the box had changed and whereas all the paper I had used before was made in Switzerland, the latest batch was made in the USA. So are they the same? If not, what’s the difference?

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According to the gossip on the web Costco sell several papers under their Kirkland label, with the paper made in Switzerland being rumoured to be made by Ilford and the USA made paper being made by Kodak. There are also some stories about it being made by Epson as well.

For several years I have bought A4 Kirkland paper in the UK mostly via eBay as I do not have a Costco account and until recently it always came in boxes containing 125 sheets and was made in Switzerland - below is a scan of the box top. Initially the paper was rated at 260gsm (69lbs), but this changed to 255gsm (68 lbs), although both were 10 mil thick and had the same product code: 77755 (circled in the image below). Since the rumours had it being made by Ilford and that it was the same as Ilford’s Smooth Gloss Paper I did try it with Ilford’s SGP ICC profiles – the results were OK, but I decided to get a bespoke profile made; which unsurprisingly was better still. The two different weights of paper seemed to look identical (or so I thought – see below) so presumably used the same paper substrate and ink receiving layer coating.



The most recent batch (May 2008) came in a 150 sheet card wallet rather than a box, and said that it was made in the USA, and although the same weight and thickness, it had a different product code: 80623 - below is a scan of the front of the wallet, with various key clues to its difference circled I red.



So before using it in anger I put it through my normal paper test process (If you want to know how I test papers I wrote about it in an earlier posting here) to see which if any of these papers it behaves like.

The Comparison
First off I was quite confused for some time in this test as my perceptions changed each time I looked at the prints, until I realised that the Swiss made Kirkland papers I was using were different – some from the 260gsm box and some from a 255gsm box. I thought that they were interchangeable until I realised that the 260gsm paper was whiter on the coated side than the 255gsm paper; or was it the other way around?

I compared sheets in Northern morning light from the Swiss (the whiter one was actually used) and US made batches of Kirkland papers with a sheet of Epson Premium Gloss, and Ilford Smooth Gloss and Omnijet papers (I have never used any Kodak paper so do not have any to hand to compare with).

Looking at the coated sides shows that the Ilford Omnijet is the most cream coloured, with the Swiss Kirkland the whitest, with the other two looking extremely similar; but slight variations of light shifted my perceptions. The less white Swiss Kirkland looked much the same as the US Kirkland and the Epson.

Looking at the back of the papers, however, showed up significant differences (besides having Epson printed all over the back of the Epson paper). The USA made paper was whiter than the other four, and the Ilford Smooth Gloss looked whiter than the Swiss made Kirkland, which looked much the same as the Ilford Omnijet; the Epson was the most cream coloured and had a more glazed look to it and was smoother. The Epson and US Kirkland had the most fibrous looking backs in certain lights.

Since the USA made paper was rumoured to be made by Kodak I looked for a generic profile to try and the only one I could find was for their Professional papers (the same profile seems to cover both gloss & lustre papers) @
http://www.kodak.com/global/en/professional/member/photoPrinters/ICCProfiles.jhtml

I made the following test prints through Qimage:

• The Swiss made paper with its bespoke profile
• The USA made paper with exactly the same settings as the Swiss paper (profile, printer driver settings, rendering intent, black point compensation etc).
• The USA made paper with the Kodak Pro profile with all the settings as per Kodak’s instructions; most notably with black point compensation (BPC) turned OFF.
• The USA made paper with the Kodak Pro profile with all the settings as per Kodak’s instructions; but with BPC turned ON (because I do quite a lot of printing from Lightroom 1.4 and, as far as I can see, there is no way of turning BPC on or off in Lightroom).
• The USA made paper with standard Epson Premium Glossy Photo Paper (PGPP) settings, using the Pro4800 PGPP profile – in case it is actually made by Epson.

I let the prints dry for 24 hours and then examined them.

In the Northerly morning light the most striking difference is between the B&W prints made with the Kodak profiles and the rest. Both the Kodak prints have a distinctly less neutral look to their B&W renditions, looking much warmer - on the yellow side. The other three look pretty similar with neutral B&Ws. With its whiter base the Swiss Kirkland looks cooler with there being very little to choose between the bespoke Swiss Kirkland and canned Epson profiles on the US Kirkland paper. The bespoke Swiss Kirkland profile probably makes the closest rendition of B&W images on the US paper to the Swiss paper, but the Epson profile is pretty close.

In the colour images things are a bit different.
The main difference is between the Swiss made Kirkland with the bespoke profile and the rest. The blues are more solid and skin tones are better, but the differences are pretty subtle. The Prints made with the Kodak profile look a bit brighter and thinner than the others. The mountain range image (in the multi-image test print I use) looks brighter with slightly less dense shadows, but skin tones look a bit washed out and greens look yellower.

Viewed in isolation they all look pretty acceptable, and friends and family were quite happy with prints from all of these combinations and even viewed side-by-side no one picked one over another consistently.

Even looking at the colour bars at the bottom of the test image nothing was clear – I had to look pretty carefully and stare and shuffle strips around to see any difference. Changing the light made much more difference than the profiles.

I could not see any effect of turning the BPC on and off with the Kodak profiles, so printing through Lightroom should be fine if I chose to use this profile.

I might have been able to see some numeric differences between the profiles’ actions if I had looked at the per channel ink usage information that the Epson LFP Remote Panel utility produces, but by the time I had thought of that the data was overwritten by subsequent prints. Perhaps another time, but I do not plan to redo the prints just to gather this data.

Conclusions
As is often the case B&W images show differences in printers, papers and profiles better than colour. The Kodak profiles clearly produce a warmer, slightly sepia look, while the others produce a more neutral, cooler image.

So assuming that colour rendition is not absolutely critical for contact printing or friends & family prints then the US Made Kirkland paper looks pretty good with a range of profiles – I’ll probably get a bespoke one made in due course just to be sure. In the meanwhile I’ll use the bespoke profile made for the Swiss made Kirkland as it is easier just to treat all the Kirkland papers the same to avoid confusion.

Unless the real difference in B&W rendition is deliberate then I do not think that this batch of US made Kirkland paper is made my Kodak, or the profile I used (which is the only one I could find on Kodak’s web site) is for a completely different paper altogether.

In any case I am quite happy to continue to buy Costco’s Kirkland paper for non-critical prints whatever the source is. Read more...

Testing inkjet papers to use with an Epson 4800

This posting is about how I test new inkjet papers for use on my Epson 4800 inkjet printer; in future postings I will go into what papers I currently use for my for B&W and colour printing. Since I only use gloss paper, partly because that is what people seem to like and partly to avoid having to switch between the Matt and Photo ink cartridges with all the ink loss that that incurs, I can only share my experience of printing on gloss papers. I also include sources for several printer test images available on the web.

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I bought the Epson 4800 so that I would be able to print images onto all sizes from A4 up to 17” width roll paper. I want to be able to print B&W prints as well as colour and I have three basic print modes; Exhibition, draft/proofing and friends & family prints. The criteria for paper choice clearly vary considerably from Exhibition prints needing excellent quality and longevity, through draft/proofing prints needing to represent what the final exhibition print will look like as cheaply as possible, to friends & family prints looking about right first time at a sensible cost.

I have never been one to blindly use the papers that the manufacturers sell as they are almost never either the best quality or the best priced solution. So when I got the 4800 I got hold of samples of all the likely candidates available in the UK, along with any ICC profiles that were available to use with them. As new papers have come out that look interesting I have tried them out as well.

I am not going to go into technical aspects of paper properties such as Dmax etc as I do not have the test equipment nor do I really understand what the technical results mean! I am most interested in how the prints look – there are plenty of technical paper tests around the web and published in magazines. I tend to have a look at them before trying a new paper just to see what professional testers think of them.

I test a paper by printing out known test images and comparing them in the light that they are most likely to be viewed in with a library of competitor papers prints that I have created and keep stored out of the light.

Over the years I have accumulated several printer test files that I use to evaluate new papers. These represent a wide variety of images on one sheet of paper, for both B&W and colour images. I have also collected some specialist B&W images to use. If I like the test prints I then use some of my own “keepers” to finally decide whether I want to invest in a new paper or not.

There are quite a few printer test files available on-line and I have listed some below:

Multi image B&W and Colour from Neil Barstow
http://www.colourmanagement.net/downloads.html

B&W multi image and tone gradient file from Northlight Images
http://www.northlight-images.co.uk/article_pages/black_and_white_test.html

Both a multi image B&W and Colour file and a B&W and toned images file from Marrutt
http://www.marrutt.com/print.php

A B&W Tonal range printer test chart and a multi image colour file from Tim Grey
http://www.timgrey.com/books/ccdownloads.htm

Three multi image B&W and Colour files from Imageplace
http://www.imageplace.co.uk/testfiles/downloads.html

Multi image B&W and Colour from Digital Dog
http://www.digitaldog.net/tips/

Three multi image B&W and Colour files from InkJet Art
http://www.inkjetart.com/custom/

The printouts that I find give me the most information are the first two: the multi image B&W and Colour file from Neil Barstow and the B&W file from Northlight Images (both shown below). I also use the B&W tonal range file from Tim Grey to check likely shadow and highlight detail properties for a paper.




Over the last two years I have tested dozens of gloss and semi-gloss/satin papers from manufacturers such as Permajet, Lyson, Fotospeed, Tetenal, Ilford, Harman, Epson, HP, Da Vinci, Olmec and Fuji as well a own label products from Costco (Kirkland), MX2 and 7dayshop etc etc, with prices ranging from 7p per A4 sheet to £1. You can pay a lot more, but I tend to research the cheapest source for papers (nearly always on-line) before trying a paper and I nearly always find widely varying pricing.

I always leave the prints to dry for at least 24 hours to make sure that they are fully dry - I have noticed that some papers seem to have a magenta tint at first which disappears on drying and some also look "fuzzy" before drying. Read more...

Lowepro D-Pods 30 case for Ricoh GX100 compact digital camera

A couple of months ago I posted my experience of the Lowepro D-Pods 30 case with my Canon G9 - Click here to read it. Recently I have been able to play around with a Ricoh GX100 compact digital camera, so I thought it would be useful to report on my experience with it and the D-Pods 30 case, and to compare it with the G9 as well.

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Description and specifications
The D-Pods 30 was designed by Lowepro for small digital cameras. It is made from a black stretchy, water-resistant fabric; it has a Velcro secured belt/SlipLock™ compatible loop on the back, a battery/accessory pocket on the front of the case and a memory card pocket in the inside of the front flap. You can also slip something under the memory card pocket (as shown in the photo below). It also comes with a removable shoulder strap and the table below lists the dimensions. In the UK it costs around £7.99.

	Interior - Inches / cm	Exterior - Inches / cm
Height	4.9 / 12.5	5.4 / 13.8
Width	2.8 / 7.0	3.2 / 8.2
Depth	1.4 / 3.5	2.5 / 6.3

Lowepro D-Pods 30 case with the Ricoh GX100 in it, along with a spare battery in the front pocket and a spare SD card in the memory card pocket. The GX100 has the supplied wrist strap fitted.

What is it like in use?
Well the good news is the GX100 fits nicely into the pouch; it is not nearly as tight a fit as the G9 and it is easy to get the camera in and out. Being a looser fit means that you can not really feel any of the buttons, dials and flash bracket through the case that you can with the G9. This is also partly because the GX100 has a smoother body outline with fewer protrusions than the G9.

You certainly can not use the case with the VF-1 electronic viewfinder attached to the GX100, but it fits OK into the bottom of the case without the VF-1’s supplied case; but I feel that the “naked” VF-1 might well get damaged in transit. With the VF-1 in its supplied case I could fit it in at a squeeze with the Velcro closure tab just making contact, but I felt that it was just as likely to damage the VF-1 as protect it. I suppose for “gentle” transport situations it would be OK – at least the viewfinder would not get lost – but not for carrying on the belt or hanging off a rucksack strap.

The Ricoh DB-60 battery for the GX100 (I also use Hähnel HL-005 batteries with the wide range of Panasonic, Leica and Fujifilm cameras that use the same battery) is much slimmer (10mm vs. 16mm) and lighter (26g vs. 43g) than the Canon NB-2LH battery used in the G9, (as shown in the photograph below) so it fits into the front pocket very neatly without making the whole package too bulky, as you can see in the photo above. In fact I did not really notice the battery in the pocket at all as it fits in nicely just below the GX100’s lens bulge in the case.

The Canon battery on the left - the Ricoh on the right

A SD card fits neatly into the memory card pocket, which is made from stiffer material than the stretchy outer case. If, however, your camera takes Compact Flash (CF) cards then it might be worth knowing that the memory card pocket is not big enough to take a CF card. CF cards will slip in behind the memory card pocket, although it is not as secure as the proper pocket and might easily fall out. The front pocket takes a SD or CF card in a protective case quite securely.

The weight of the whole package (camera, strap, spare battery and SD card, and VF-1) comes in at 386g. Without the VF-1 it weighs 364g. By comparison the G9 weighed in at 500g.

I found it much easier to slip the GX100 in and out of the case when on my belt than the G9.

I have not used the neck strap so have no comment to make on it other than it looks like the standard one that Lowepro supplies with most of its small cases.

Conclusion
All-in-all it is a pretty good choice for a Ricoh GX100. It is a good fit; slipping in and out easily. It is no bulkier than it needs to be and gives good enough protection against accidental knocks and abrasion that occurs when these things rattle around inside bags, glove compartments and sundry other places day-in and day-out.

There is, however, no room for any much larger accessories such as wide angle attachments or with a viewfinder attached (although it can take the dismounted VF-1 at a pinch) – for these you will need a bigger case. Read more...

Epson 4800 nozzle clogging solved - well, nearly…

About six weeks ago I was despairing that my Epson 4800 inkjet printer would ever be reliable again and that it would forever more be clogging/losing ink channels.

This may be premature and stupid, but thanks to the advice from lots of people (an example of mass collaboration?), mostly on the Yahoo 4000/4800 forum, I think that I have pretty much resolved the problem (now that is a really stupid thing to say…) – here’s how.

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If you want to know the sort of frustration I have had with this printer over the last six months then clicking the “Nozzle Clogging” label will show you, most specifically – this posting.

In a previous posting I said that I was going to try someone else’s solution – here are the details. At the time I was not that confident that it would work simply because I had tried the “print often” approach to try to keep the printer happy; and it had not worked for long. Anyway I tried it and it initially did work, but after about a week the printer went back to its bad old ways and I went through a particularly traumatic weekend trying to coax it back into health, which I managed very early on the Monday morning, just in time to go to my day job. Being a bit sceptical that the new regime would work I did not use a cover because I could not find one, although I did use a wet sponge inside the printer cover; but I had been trying that for sometime anyway.

I decided to redouble my efforts.

That was six weeks ago – since then I have tried a few more things, learnt quite a lot, but most importantly I have only suffered from 5 clogs/ink channel losses, all involving the LM ink and twice the LK as well. In nearly all the cases this happened after an "auto something or other" happened - it sounded awfully like an automated cleaning cycle, but I have turned that function off, so I am completely in the dark as to what is actually happening when this happens and why.

In the first four cases only one simple nozzle clean brought back the nozzle check to perfect, with no repeated clean/rest/puddle clean cycles – the fifth, and most recent, took a full set of clean/rest/puddle clean cycles to clear, but I think I know why...

This is what I think is the reason for the worst case of clogging happening – Initially I bought a cheap interim solution (see cover posting here) and then bought a bespoke cover for the 4800 in anti-static vinyl on eBay. I used the cheap one for a couple of weeks and when the bespoke one arrived I put it on. I had stopped monitoring the humidity inside the printer by then. I restarted it when I had the problem and was very surprised to see that the humidity inside the printer head had dropped to about 40% – clearly, given my recent experience, this is on the borderline.

The bespoke cover fits better, but is not as long, leaving a gap around the bottom of the printer; does not have an apron to wrap around the under the paper tray (which is actually the transparent zip around top of the cheap storage bag/cover I tried – see photo below) and has a big gap at the back to allow access to the roll paper cover etc. All this means that there are plenty of gaps for the humidity to escape from the machine with the proper cover; much less so with the cheap interim one. I have now reverted to the cheap one and the humidity has climbed back to 50+% again. Leaving the under wrapper undone causes the humidity at the print head to reduce by 5-10% points (e.g. 55% to 48% humidity) – I guess, because humid air is heavier than dryer air, it simply falls out the bottom of the printer…



So effectively the printer has been available to print whenever I wanted it to except for one day.

So what have I done?
Below is the recipe for what currently works for me.

The recipe comes in three parts:

1. General set up and printer configuration
2. Printer exercise routine
3. Materials and techniques to have to hand

1. General set up and printer configuration

First – USE A COVER… an all enveloping cover, for the reasons described above – see photo below with the apron tucked under the paper tray.



I believe that this was the single most important thing I did. The cover is not to keep the printer clean, although that is not a bad idea in itself, but to keep the humidity inside the printer up. In a previous post I reported on what I found it did for the humidity, but essentially I found that combined with a wet sponge it keeps the humidity inside the printer at about 50%. I believe that keeping the humidity up is the key to a happy (not-clogging much) printer.

Place a wet sponge in a tray in the paper tray – see photo below – the aim is to provide a source of humidity inside the printer. I find that I need to refresh the sponge about once a week.



Be careful not to put too deep a tray in the paper tray. The paper lifting mechanism lifts across the whole paper tray width and if the sponge tray is too deep it will be pushed into the rod (arrowed in the photo above) and cause miss-feeds.

I also now permanently monitor the humidity inside the cover by placing a wireless remote sensor out of the way of the print head carriage to the far left of the printing area - see photo below. This sensor tends to read about 10% points below the sensor near the sponge in the paper tray (e.g. paper tray humidity reads 60%, inside the cover it reads 50%). If you do this be careful not to impede the print head movement at all, or you will hear a nasty and probably expensive crunching sound!



Turn off the auto nozzle check and cleaning function on the printer – this only seems to cause clogs. See my earlier posting about why and how to do this.

Turn off the auto paper size checking function – See my earlier posting about why and how to do this, but suffice to say that you will be using plain paper in the printer as part of the print “little and often” routine. I have found that this tends to cause the printer to stall as its sensitivity to correct paper size seems to be greater than the size tolerance on plain paper.


2. Printer exercise routine

Fill the paper tray with plain paper – I have found 100gsm paper to feed more reliably than normal cheap 80gsm copier paper.

Download and install the free utility MIS Autoprint (see here for instructions on how) and choose a purge file that exercises all the ink channels (here is why). Also make sure that you have “Print Preview” turned off in the printer set up, as that will stall the process as well. In my set up this uses about 0.6ml of ink a time, or 1.2ml a week.

Buy a copy of Harvey Head Cleaner – unless you are willing and able to print nozzle checks manually every morning and evening. Harvey makes sure that, by running a small amount of ink through all the ink channels by printing a nozzle check, you exercise the whole print head regularly. I have set Harvey to print twice a day at 7.00am and 7.00pm; I have also set it to run if I turn the computer on within 24 hours of the last scheduled run time – circled in red in the screen shot below. This makes sure that you automatically run a nozzle check even if you turn your computer on after the scheduled time.



The printer reports using 0.1-0.2ml of ink per nozzle check, although this seems high compared with 0.6ml for a full page of colour for the Autoprint output. In any case it uses around 2ml of ink a week, which is about the equivalent of 1-2 A4 prints, or 1/50th of the ink to clear a bad clogging problem.

The combined Autoprint and Harvey ink usage over a year would be around 180ml of ink if you religiously stuck to the regime, although even over a month I have only really managed to do 90% of it. This equates to a couple of major cleaning bouts – only you can tell whether the time and frustration vs. routine ink wastage equation works for you.

I am pretty sure that I can reduce the actual number of nozzle checks and Autoprints, but don’t want to tempt fate just yet. As you can see in the screen shot above you can also tell Harvey to "Skip check if printer used within xx hours".

For me the reduction in frustration and the increased availability of the printer to print when I want it to are well worth the effort, even if it is something that Epson should be ashamed of…

(If you think that this is wasteful of paper I put the nozzle check paper back into the paper tray so that I get 4 checks per sheet…).


3. Materials and techniques to have to hand

Learn how to do a “Puddle Clean” – my method is posted here.

Become aware of the head cleaning protocols that have built up as “lore” for Epson printers. This effectively amounts to:

• Do not use Auto nozzle check – it often just moves the problem around
• Only run two consecutive nozzle cleans before running a full page print of some sort
• It is often wise to let the printer rest for an hour or so if a couple of nozzle cleaning cycles and full page print have not cleared the problem
• For major clogging/ink channel losses use puddle cleaning

Buy some “Fixyourownprinter” head cleaning solution – I have found it is very effective in clearing clogs; more so than distilled water.

Useful things to have at hand are:

• A small torch/flashlight
• A 20ml syringe with plastic extension (Kwill filling tube)
• Distilled water
• Lint free wipes – Pec Pads, the same ones I use for sensor cleaning on my DSLRs - I use these wrapped around a stick instead of cotton buds which might leave strands of cotton around to upset the print head etc
  
• A sense of humour
• …and one final requirement: patience!

So if I have one piece of advice it is – KEEP THE HUMIDITY UP AT AROUND 50% – all the rest helps but does not do enough if the humidity drops significantly below 40%.

Now all I have to work out is what the "auto something or other" is and how to stop it and why the LM channel is always the first one affected – any ideas?

Good luck – please let me know if you have any suggestions, refinements or comments to make.

Just one more thing - I have no commercial connection with any of the companies producing any of the products or services mentioned in this blog, other than as a happy customer. Read more...

Speculation over new Canon DSLR models

I have a pair of Canon DSLRs – a 10D and a 30D. I have hankered after a 5D since it was launched and would generally like to upgrade. Like most people I do not want to buy a camera and find a newer, better and cheaper one launched the next week, so I have been looking into what the speculation is.

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The table below lists the announcement dates (and the sensor’s megapixels) for the non-Pro Canon DSLRs launched since the 10D. I have broken them into the two families of double and triple digit ranges, and included the 5D. I have also put in the time in months between the intra-family launch dates.

Model / Megapixels	Model / Megapixels	Date announced
10D / 6.3		27/2/03
+ 18 months	300D / 6.3	20/8/03
20D / 8.2	+ 21 months	19/8/04
+ 18 months	350D / 8.0	17/5/05
30D / 8.2	+ 15 months	21/2/06
+ 18 months	400D / 10.1	24/8/06
40D / 10.1	+ 19 months	20/8/07
+ ?	450D / 12.2	24/1/08
	+ ?
5D / 12.7 - full frame		22/8/05
+ 32 months and counting

Firstly the 5D is getting on a bit in terms of the digital world product life cycle; there has been a lot of speculation about its possible replacements – 3D & 7D, 5D mkII etc, whichever rumour you believe. Northlight Images have a useful rumours page here. There were strong rumours that Canon would be announcing something on the 22nd or April this year, but nothing materialised. There are rumours again for the 22nd May, but my bet would be on Canon announcing something in August 2008 - around the end of the month, somewhere between the 20th and the 26th, as they seem to stick with mostly February or August announcements towards the end of the month, unless they want to see even more defections to Nikon.

The 5D price has come down considerably since its launch and there are plenty of near mint used ones around so I could buy one now, but I would really like to have a newer version with all the advances such as weather sealing (partial or otherwise), Digic III / IV processor, 14 bit processing, the dust reduction and removal systems, improved focusing etc etc. I also anticipate Canon having to respond to Nikon’s recent resurgence with its fantastically well received D3 and D300 DSLRs, so I expect the 5D replacement to be a considerable step up.

I’ll wait…

I would ideally like a full frame and cropped frame camera in my arsenal as they meet different needs. The 30D is OK for the time being, but the 40D is tempting. Looking at the table above Canon have stuck with an 18 month replacement cycle for the double digit range, but the 40D is under severe attack from Nikon along with Sony, Pentax/Samsung and Olympus so the 50D (presumably based on the 12.2 megapixel 450D) may not wait until the 18 months is up (February 2009).

Canon do not seem to be so fixed on their triple digit family replacements cycle – varying from 15 to 21 months – probably responding to market challenges more promptly.

All in all I think I’ll wait – Canon have to respond to Nikon in these market segments and soon. I have even thought of moving to Nikon myself, but for the time being my investment in Canon lenses it too great, but I’ll not wait for ever… (actually probably not past the end of the year) and with eBay to help sell old gear the cost of switching is not as great as it used to be. Read more...

MIS Autoprint purge file update…

In a recent posting I suggested changing the purge file used with MIS Autoprint from the MIS 8 ink file to a multi patch file. I said I would post any evidence that I got that it was worthwhile or not to make the change when I had it – here it is.

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Recently the LK & LM ink channels dropped out on my 4800. So I ran the MIS 8 channel purge file and the combined 936 patch file through Autoprint manually to see whether it was worth changing the purge file.

Firstly – the MIS 8 image file printed out exactly (to my eye at least) as it had with only LM missing. So it looks as it the LK is not doing much either.

Below are scans of the combined 936 patch file. The first image is with all nozzles firing perfectly. The second is the same file printed, onto the same paper with the same printer settings, with both LM & LK missing (confirmed by nozzle checks before and after the prints were made).




As you can see there is quite a lot of difference between the two, mostly in the columns from “K” onwards. It is also clear that the M ink is being used, which it was not in the 8 ink file.

So my conclusion is that it was worth making the change. Read more...

Changing the purge image file I use with MIS Autoprint

In a previous posting I have gone through my experience with setting up and running MIS Autoprint. I have recently changed the purge pattern I use – this posting tells why I felt I needed to and what I changed it to.

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In my previous posting I have explained what MIS Autoprint does and how it fits into the nozzle clogging avoidance scheme for my Epson 4800 inkjet printer.

The whole point of using Autoprint it so “exercise” all the printer’s ink channels more thoroughly than just printing frequent nozzle checks alone manages.

I thought I was doing this by using the 8 channel purge file supplied by MIS, but recently I found a printout of it printed with the LM channel completely missing, as confirmed by the automated, via Harvey Head Cleaner, nozzle checks printed out in the morning before and an hour after the purge file automatically printed.

Below is a scan of what the 8 channel purge print looks like when all nozzles are running perfectly:



Below is a scan of what it looked like with the LM channel completely missing (but the M channel was perfect):



The M & LM ink blocks have tuned blue with no sign of M in either, and the blacks (K, LK & LLK) have taken on a bit of a green’ish tint; the Y, C & LC look normal. This tells me that whatever is going on the purge print is not faithfully using all the ink channels as I thought it was – which rather misses the point of the whole exercise. It is possible that the paper setting affects what inks the 4800 uses, but I don’t have any way of checking that without losing a channel again – which I have not intention of doing deliberately. Currently I use copier paper in the printer for these maintenance prints with the media type setting set to "Plain paper" in the pinter settings.

So now I have swapped the MIS 8 channel purge file – if you want to know how to do this then look at an earlier blog posting here – for one I made up myself (see below). This is derived from a couple of colour patch files from Permajet used for creating ICC profiles of their papers; each set having 936 patches. While I have no proof that they are any better at exercising all the ink channels than the simpler 8 channel purge file from MIS, it seems logical to think that it has a better chance.


If/when an ink channel goes missing I will check out the results and post them.

I have done that now and here are the results Read more...

Eliet Minor shredder review follow up

Two months ago I posted a review of the Eliet Minor garden shredder. Two months later I have had a chance to review the composting results from the resulting shreddings and to test the courage of my convictions following the test results to decide on whether I would buy one or not.

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Composting results
When I trialed the Eliet Minor two months ago I had basically two types of material to deal with. The first was general woody garden prunings and trimmings etc; the second was the contents of a rough mixed open composting bin that had a mix of semi-rotted down woody and soft material gathered over about a year.

Two thirds of the first lot of shreddings was mixed into a 1m³ wooden composting bin along with what was already there and the general composting material over the next couple of months, including the first lots of lawn mowings. The rest was put into a bin with the product from the second type of shreddings. In the two months that have passed since the shred-fest this material has essentially rotted down into usable compost. It has been turned into a 0.5m³ (500 litre) bin where it is maturing and being used as needed. The Head Gardener is very happy with it.

My experience (about a decade of competent composting) tells me that this is pretty quick for the time of year. Since we have had a cold couple of months and I have not done anything exceptional to make this material rot down quickly I am impressed and can only conclude that the claim from Eliet that its “Hatchet Principle™”, which cuts the woody stems lengthwise, does indeed work and produces material that composts quickly.

The Minor dealt with the second lot of material with the optional general purpose screen. At the time I picked out the largest unshredded bits (the screen is pretty course) and re-shredded them. The rest filled a second 0.5m³ bin along with the remainder of the first type of shreddings, where it was watered occasionally and turned once in the two months it was in it. After about two months it was pretty much completely rotted down and it was then spread onto the borders as a mulch. The Head Gardener was pretty happy with the quality of it.

So my conclusion from observing the composted shreddings for the Eliet is that it produces shreddings that rot down quickly and easily.

So did I buy one?
Recently I realized that we had built up a mound of woody material needing shredding as big as the one at the end of February. So presented with the choice I had to decide whether to spend days (literally) with my old Scheppach Lonos, hire or buy.

It was really a very easy decision– I bought the Eliet Minor, along with the optional general purpose screen.

I looked around for the best price and delivery option and decided to buy it from the on-line UK retailer Gardenlines (who often appear in Google AdSense listings). They were helpful and courteous on the phone, both before and after the purchase, and it arrived exactly when they said it would.

I have just spent most of a day shredding the mountain of mixed woody and mushy material, producing about a cubic metre of shreddings which is now in my compost bins steaming as I write. The time consuming bit was not the shredding itself, but getting the material to the shredder and carting the shreddings away from it. The actual shredding was as easy as I remembered it.

So I am happy and I expect this lot to rot down in record time.

In case you think that I have any commercial relationship with either Eliet or Gardenlines, then I can categorically say that I have never had any dealings with Eliet and my only dealings with Gardenlines were for this one transaction. I am just a happy customer. Read more...

Turning off auto paper size check on an Epson 4800 Pro inkjet printer

I find that the Epson 4800 is very sensitive to paper size variations. This post tells you how to turn it off, and why you might want to.

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Why would you want to turn off auto paper size checking off?
On the face of it having the printer automatically check that you have loaded the right sized paper every time you print sounds a really helpful idea.

In reality, however, I print a lot of nozzle checks via Harvey Head Cleaner and purge prints via MIS Autoprint to try to keep my printer nozzles clear. I use a stack of copier paper for this and I often find that the odd sheet brings up the “Wrong paper size” warning message, although I can not ever remember the nozzle check failing because of it – the printer does not seem to check for paper size when doing nozzle checks. I also quite often get this problem in a print run using A4 or letter photographic paper. Since this is inconvenient, or in the case of automatic timed printing to reduce nozzle clogs completely counter productive, and since I can not remember every trying to print on the wrong paper size I turn off the auto paper check function.

The risk of course is that the printer will print on the wrong sized paper. If the paper is larger than needed it is just a bit of a waste, but if it is smaller you risk having it print all over the platen – which is, at best, messy.

You could of course just turn it off when you are running in automatic mode and need to be sure it will print each time.

The choice is yours.

How?
The picture below shows the LCD printer display and the various buttons mentioned in the instructions below.
You can turn off the auto paper size checking function by following the button pressing sequence detailed below in the LCD control panel on the printer:

1. With the display saying “Ready”, press the “Menu” button twice – the screen will display “Printer setup” then “ Platen Gap” on the second line of the display


2. Press the “down arrow” button five times – the screen will display “PPR SIZE CHK”


3. Press the “menu” button once - you should see “PPR SIZE CHK, *On”


4. Press the “down arrow” button once - you should see the word “off” on the second line of the screen


5. Press the “menu” button once – an asterisk should appear next to the word “*off”


6. Press the “left arrow” button three times to bring you back to the “Ready” screen

To turn it back on just follow the sequence again, swopping “on” for “off”. Read more...