Monday 11 September 2017

Très frustré.

I had a bit of a catastrophe when I was having my exhibition in early June. I, with a fortnights leeway of the opening sent the files to the Printer but I got a mail the day before the opening that they weren't able to do the job in the time. So I had a vast space available to me for two weeks with nothing in it. Luckily I had one big image from earlier in the year that I could hang so the place wasn't totally empty.
Anyway it was in my mind to buy a big photo printer and with the Culture Night event on the 22nd that I have on, I pulled the trigger in August and bought a Canon ip8750 A3+ six ink printer.
Together with the printer I added a few other things. Inks primarily; but two flash units; 100, A3 sheets of 260g photo paper; a soft box, a big 47 incher octogon shaped one; and a tripod that doesn't look like it spends it's life living in the surf, knee deep in rivers or/and being knocked about on mountains.
The first Lot of inks haven't arrived. Five sets of six. They started their trip to Ireland in Arras, north east of Paris. They had a little trip to CDG on the east of Paris where they were scanned but seem to have vanished. There are Waybills, but they seem to be the bills of lading for the entire darn shipment. So I had a printer, but still have no inks. Anyhoo's, I ordered another 3 sets on the 6th, using the belt and braces approach, just in case I don't get the first order. And just to make doubilly certain I ordered another two sets on Saturday when the second order didn't seem to be moving.

OK.
As I was writing the postman called with the delivery of the second order of inks. So at the very least I could check if the printer WOULD actually print.











   



This is the file I sent to the printer. And the printer did pick up on the spiders web on the righthand side.


10 comments:

  1. Inkjets have always been frustrating for me. In my experience, I buy a set of inks for it and I will always use up one or two colors and have the rest still almost full so after a couple years, I will have a drawer full of three or four different colors of ink that never seem to go very fast. Also, since most of my printing is black ink, I had one that had a separate vat for black ink but I never seem to get it to use that vat and instead wanted to mix all the colors to get black. I finally gave the think away and went to a laser. You don't have that option though since you work in colors. I hope it works well for you. That first picture certainly turned out well.

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    1. Since writing, the DHL guy rang and said they found the first order and was sending a special delivery to me with the five full sets of ink. Mind you they should have been here last week. But still. Now I have seven sets.
      You see at A3 the inks will go quickly indeed. And for instance the Yellow will yield only 22-44 prints at A3. Call it a dollar a print for just the yellow. Now you get a bit more with blue and magenta, and the grey but not much.

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  2. Looks to me like it did a very good job printing the photo. I use to have a Canon inkjet for printing photos and was always pleased with the results. Mine only had the three colors plus two different black cartridges. It wasn't compatible with my Macbook which is the only reason I don't still use it.

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  3. Agree with Kelly that the printer seems to have done beautifully and you've produced another interesting shot.

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    1. Thanks Bob. The fruit is a Sloe. As in Sloe Gin. It's the fruit of the Blackthorn, Prunus spinosa. What they make shillelagh's out of :-).

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  4. Yes, looks like it did a nice job...now that you finally have the ink. I don't understand how the mail, even into other countries, is SO hard! It's not like they are still going by pony or steamship. Why does that happen so often?!?!

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    1. Actually it showed up that my screen is extremely bright. I needed to to recalabrate the thing and lowered the brightness of the screen.
      Ohh the reason it quite simple. Your delivery and mine represents fractions of a penny to the bottomline of some carrier. The big ones (who in UPS decided that shit brown was a good notion) are putting through millions a day. But what's striking is that the Pose Office, Mails in your money ballzd up an absolute monopoly to the point that they are but a cypher these days. An afterthought to DHL/DPD/UPS, moving the bits they find pesky.

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  5. Like Ed, I get frustrated with inkjets. But I am looking forward to what you'd showing.

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    1. Toner doesn't give the same result as ink for photographs. I just wish I could afford a bigger machine with 10 inks. But this does a really lovely job.

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