Fast Delivery!


With our fully automated Online Webshop Ordering System, you should be able to receive your ordered goods the next day if you order before 1.00 pm.

Of course, as long as the goods on order are in stock. Details of the shipping can be found on this page http://www.imaging-expert.co.uk/products/shippinginfo.html


Posted on June 16, 2009 at 10:49 am by Udo Machiels





Our experience

We started as Colour Management Consultants at the very beginning of the Digital Imaging Revolution 10 years ago!

Posted on at 10:46 am by Udo Machiels
In: Why Using Imaging-Expert as your Supplier


Why buying Epson Printers from us?

Posted by Udo Machiels in Uncategorized on June 3rd, 2009

Because the Epson and HP Printers we sell are supplied via FujiFilm. Because of that, we enjoy the benefit of getting excellent support . In the unfortunate event of your printer breaking down, there is no need to spend a day on the phone to convince Epson (or HP) that your Printer is having a problem. Just 1 phone call to us is all what you need to do and we will contact the main suppliers.

Posted on at 10:21 am by Udo Machiels





Lyson Quad Inks and Canon Printers?

A customer is asking us:

Hello Udo,

I have a couple of questions please ! as I have just discovered that
Lyson produce a series of “Quad inks” for specialist black & white
printing ?

Can you supply this system ? If so is it possibly to use it with a
Canon IPF5100 range printer ?

Thank you in advance,

Our reply:

Quad inks are actually a bit outdated ink-set and were developed for Printers like Epson 1160 and 1290.
6 or 7 years ago we used these inksets when getting B&W prints was difficult from a
dye-based ink jet printer with drivers which did not behaving very linear.

Small Gamut was already a lot better, but performed a lot of
metamerism. (Unusual strong drift of colours under various viewing conditions)

The modern printers with pigment inks allow to be profiled very well,
and particularly with Epson printers we get stunning B&W using a custom profile and colour inks!

I guess, it’s not much different with the new Canon Printers.

I was never fond of using third party inks in Canon printers either.
The printer heads could not cope with that as good as the Epson printer heads.

A custom Profile might to the trick for you,

Regards,

Udo J. Machiels

Posted on at 10:21 am by Udo Machiels
In: Inkjet Technology





A short basic overview of inkjet technology

To really understand printing with inkjet printers we have to look at the following issue’s:

1. Pigment and Dye-based inks.
2. Longevity
3. Color gamut
4. Matt, Gloss and Fibre based Photographic Papers
5. Black and White Printing
6. Using Matt Black or Photo Black Inks
7. Running Costs and Third Party Inks

1. The vibrancy of colours using Pigment inks printed with an Epson 2400/3800/7880/9880 will NOT be better than when using an Epson 1160/1290/5000/7000.

2. Then why use pigment inks? We use them because of the longevity of the colours which is much, much better. As an example longevity with the Lyson Fotonic inks was definitely not as good as advertised and was ONLY reasonable on a very limited amount of papers (Lyson Color Gloss for example). It actually had poor longevity on Matt and Fine Art papers: I have personally seen prints which were hanging on the wall, but NOT behind glass, fading within a matter of month’s.

3. If we want to get the best Color Gamut (color vibrancy?) which papers should we use with these new pigment inks?

a. Generally NOT with Matt and Fine Art Papers for sure! Dye-Inks gave a much better color gamut on Matt and Fine Arts papers than Pigment based ink, but the pigment based inks perform much better in respect of longevity of colour.

b. The best color gamut to be achieved with Pigment based inks will be on Gloss, Semi Gloss and The Fine Art Photo Graphic papers. In case you want to print on Matt and Fine Art papers, you should definitely use Matt Black ink, which is optimised for printing on Matt papers.

4. So what are Fine Art Photo Graphic papers?

The easiest way to describe them is as an ‘between’ Fine Art and Photographic Papers trying to combine the good things of both type of papers. Here we have a couple of different papers.

a. Firstly there is a group of papers which reminds us the most of the old fashioned traditional wet darkroom semi gloss / gloss fibre based papers. These are called for example Hahnemuhle Glossy Fine Art, FujiFilm Fine Art Museum ‘Baryte’, and Permajet Traditional Fibre Base Photo.

b. Secondly there is a group of papers, that are like a Fine Art Matt paper with a kind of semi-gloss coating on top of it. So it’s a bit like a fine art paper with a much better colour gamut, but with only a slight sheen on it, that can be seen by looking at it at an angle.

5. One of the major advantages of the new pigment inks with printers like Epson’s 2400 / 3800 / 4880 / 7880 / 9880 and so on is this: once profiled we are able to print both Colour and Black & White from one and the same printer. We do not need to use inks like Small Gamut specifically designed for Black & White Printing any more.

6. Matt Black and Photo Black (pigment) Inks

a. Using Matt Black ink on Semi Gloss and Gloss papers will cause a strong differential of sheen across the print (a sort of matting with less sheen in the darker area’s than in other area’s of the print where there is less ink / and lighter colours).

b. This ink will tend to rub off from Semi Gloss and Gloss papers.

c. The other way around: Using Photo Black ink on Fine Art and Matt papers will result in a rather ‘weak’ black and as a result the overall images will have a ‘lack’ of contrast.

So these combinations described here above (6a,b,c) are simply NOT good combinations and should be avoided.

7. If you have 2 Epson 2400’s and still want to print on both Gloss, Semi Gloss, Fine Art and Matt Papers, you better decide to set up 1 printer for using Photo Black and the other one for Matt Black, so you do not need to switch over the printer from 1 type of ink to another each time. The printer is having never installed these 2 inks simultaneously. With every time you change the Photo Black Cartridge to Matt Black or the other way around, the printer will perform a couple of head cleaning sessions and so you will loose ink every time you do this. Unfortunately, this is how Epson designed these systems.


8. An example comparison of an Epson 2400 using either genuine Epson ink or a third party ink like Lyson.

Quality:

a. Colour Gamut = As good as Epson ink

b. Differential of Sheen: On Matt paper no differential of Sheen. On Gloss / Semi Gloss papers the sheen with genuine Epson inks is more even, however the Lyson inks do give very good results as well, it’s just that Epson is having slightly the edge over Lyson ink in this respect.

c. Bronzing: Is the phenomenon of a bronze / copper like colour showing up if we look at prints under an angle in the lighter area’s (nearly white area’s) of the print. This was very visible with prints coming from the following printers using genuine Epson inks: Epson 5500 / 7500 / 7600/ 9500 / 9600 / 10000 / 106000

Newer printer models from Epson are using besides Black ink also Light Black and Light Light Black. These channels hide the problem, so bronzing is far less with the latest printer models. here we do nt see much difference between Epson and Lyson ink.

Running Costs:

d. First of all, if you persist in using only genuine Epson ink, then the Epson 2400 as a printer is really a very bad choice in terms of running costs for example!

An Epson 3800, which is slightly bigger and allows you to print on A2 as well, will be far more cost effective, since it is using 80 ml high capacity cartridges.

Click here for the latest price list on Epson Cartridges form Epson 3800

 
The price of an Epson 2400 cartridge containing around 10-12 ml of ink is: £ 9.99 + VAT = around £ 0.90 per ml
The price of an Epson 3800 cartridge containing around 80ml is: (RRP) £ 37.89 = £ 0.47 per ml (Half the price!)
http://www.imaging-expert.co.uk/products/epson-ink-epson-ink-for-3800-80ml-c-99_318_335.html
The price of 125ml of Lyson Pigment ink = £ 24.99 = £ 0.20 per ml = 4 times cheaper than the standard genuine Epson ink Cartridges for the Epson 2400 !

Click here to see latest prices on Lyson ink for Epson 2400

Reliability:

Particularly if a printer is not used for a couple of weeks, we have to perform a head cleaning session (even with genuine Epson ink) because inks are water based and eventually ink at the very bottom of the printer head might dry up over a period of time.

Out of experience we can say that the very latest inks from Lyson do NOT seem to clog up printer heads permanently, but we might have to perform more cleaning sessions in order to unblock the printer head after it has not been used for a while.

Our own Epson 7600 and Epson 2400 are both using Lyson ink. The 7600 since the year 2005 and the 2400 since 2006 and both machines did not have any major problems during that time.


Posted on at 10:20 am by Udo Machiels
In: Inkjet Technology