ray .

Just started printing with the P800 yesterday and have made a few thumbnail 3 inch prints and a couple of prints on letter size paper.

The screen just popped up with a message 'Install the maintenance cartridge'.

I'm wondering now if they sent me an open box printer. The outer box looked normal but I had noticed when I opened it the thick semi-opaque plastic around the printer looked a bit dented up. Also it came with two 7 page booklets that apparently explain the warranty, but neither of them are in English.

The exterior of the printer looks new though, and it had 20+ pieces of tape that Epson puts on to protect parts in shipping.

Thanks everyone. Wasn't aware there were responses here since I hadn't gotten any email notifications.

Unless I'm mistaken, I believe digital ICE doesn't work on Tri-X. It's worked well for me though with color transparencies. I've used Kodak film cleaner before and that stuff is nasty. Since it sounds like these aren't cleanable, and since I've got the scans and don't want moldy film sitting around, I'll probably just toss them now.

There are a couple of the other scans that are quite useable with a bit of cloning.

Just scanned a couple strips of old 35mm Tri-X negs (about 10 frames) and I'm pretty sure the spots the images show are mold.

Is there a way to clean the negs at this point? Is it best to toss them out?

The two strips were shot 20-30 years ago and stored by themselves without sleeves curled up in a small cardboard box. I'm pretty sure the issue is confined just to these negs. I haven't encountered it before.

1st image posted here is the worst one of the bunch. A couple negs show only 5 or 6 spots.

Thanks for any input

There's a guy on ebay who cleans the mirror and does lube on Nikon scanners. He sells them as well, CLA'd and at reasonable prices with warranty. He's able to do or get done some repairs as well.

I made the mistake of selling my lightly used 9000ed along with Hasselblad equipment a couple years ago. Then decided I wanted it back and ended up buying a used 8000ED a couple months ago from him. I'm one of the few around I guess who actually enjoys scanning. I like the delayed gratification that to me is similar to watching an image come up in the developer tray, but without having to mess with chemicals….. I also use a Leica digital M. I like all of it and go back and forth at different times depending on what I feel like using.

The P800 should arrive at my doorstep this week.

I hope the bottom feet are made of something more durable than the plastic/rubber/whatever material the 3800 had, that left a gluey residue on the table top.

I was thinking smaller ink cartridges on the P600 in a way would be better because I don't print a huge amount, and go without printing at all sometimes for a year or more.

But looking at it more closely, even not printing that much, I'd need to replace 25.9ml cartridges pretty soon, so I may as well order another full ink set with the printer. At that point the difference in price between the 2 printers is not much, and I'd still have less than the quantity of ink the P800 comes with.

My thought too was the P600 would be a little more compact, but that's probably not enough reason to choose it.

Yeah that’s how mine looked a few days ago when I did it, except they were printed in two groups split between the colors and monotones.. There may have been only 4 colors- yellow was virtually empty. Now magenta is empty & cyan almost. I must have tossed the paper- should have saved it.

At this point I’d have to spend another $160 for 2 cartridges after spending $60 to replace yellow before doing anything else, with no guarantee it can easily be fixed.

Do people expect the P600 model out now to be at least as good and well built as the 3800? Stylus Pro 3800’s aren’t fetching much on eBay.

Also couldn't do a cleaning when in the Epson utility menu.

Driver version is 9.33

Did a cleaning by holding the menu button down 3 seconds. Got the same result with a test print with setting on advanced B&W. Where the blacks or dark greys are, it prints a blueish hue. The darker the grey tone should be, the lighter the blue.

Tried to do the nozzle check again and instead of getting sets of lines with colors & grey tones (which I think looked pretty normal last time), it gave me the following:

Ah forgot. I'll get to that today, thanks Nick.

I've been checking on the Epson P600 if I end up getting something new.

Hi Jeff,

The description on the Printhead Hospital kit on Amazon says it’s not compatible with Stylus Pro printers.

I emailed the Printhead Hospital to confirm.

- Not the Leitz Focomat V35 I've had sitting in the garage for years. It's rock solid. I hang onto it for the 10% chance I'll ever use it again.

Also, if you get it exactly right, a nice silver print can be more beautiful than inkjet. It's just that it takes 10 to 100 times the time and effort.

Almost makes me want to go back to the darkroom. If not for exposure to chemicals, I would.

Photonet seems to have virtually evaporated. 10 years ago there would have been at least a half dozen people in on this discussion. I had the same experience a couple weeks ago with one person helping me through with a couple of pages of posts on Hasselblad questions.

Thanks for your help.

Just checking here:

Looks like something I don't want to get into. Apparently the switching valve can be found on ebay, but otherwise Epson only sells the entire $160 assembly.

Seems to be a common issue and supposedly regular maintenance issue with these printers. Are the new Epsons built the same way? Ink for the P600 seems more expensive in smaller quantities than the 800, but I don't need the larger print size and don't do a massive amount of printing. Canon cameras are known for being very reliable- no idea re their printers.

I could take a look but I'm not too mechanically inclined if it gets past a certain point.

The printer is over 10 years old, so if the cost is even $200 to repair it I may as well scrap it or sell on craigslist for a nominal price and pick up a P600 or 800.

The ink leak has occasionally happened to a lesser degree for most of the time I've had the printer and hasn't really been much of a problem, at least up to now.

I printed your Printer Test in color with Preview and with Photoshop and they're pretty much identical. Following is a close facsimile of

the photoshop print. The paper is slightly yellow so I'm not sure if it's old or a different batch of paper. I printed the Preview print in the middle of a whiter paper and it looks the same- just slightly better. Both are pretty close to the Test as it shows on screen but not as saturated and slightly less contrasty- so slightly faded. Noticeable is the section of the woman's hair at top left that didn't print dark.

The ink leak along the edge of the paper here has happened at times before since I've had the printer new but this seems more than normal. It's not on the print that's centered on the other paper so I don't know if this is an issue with printing small close to an edge.

- Also cyan and magenta lights are flashing and both of those inks are very low, so I don't know if that affects the results here.

Printing from Preview doesn't give me the option to set controls but it printed what mostly looks like a normal b&w photo, but with a slight cyan cast- I suppose similar to the photo up top. In the very darkest (or black) areas, it prints that same light blue, even tho I printed a different image.

I wonder if Photo Black is not fully getting through.

Also, this may sound silly, but at the beginning of this problem I looked in my applications and couldn't find the Epson 3800 driver. I tried to download and install the latest version from Epson without success.

Could it have been uninstalled at some point when I installed a system update? Would it print at all and show 3800 in the print menu without the driver?