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Thread: Going digital!

  1. #1

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    Going digital!

    Everyone on the forum has helped me out over the last couple of years and now I NEED your help more than ever! I am a committed black and white (traditional) photographer and have spent the last few years promising that I will NEVER go down the digital route! BUT circumstances have changes and due to a house move I will not have space for a darkroom!! So, my question - can anyone suggest a good quality 5x4 scanner and a printer that will allow me to print 12x16 "quality" prints. I will still process film myself. Any of you good enough to reply please bear in mind that I am a digital dinosaur! Thanks!

  2. #2
    Yes, but why? David R Munson's Avatar
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    Going digital!

    Don't sweat it - the digital waters, though choppy at times, can be quite warm. For 12x16" prints, I think one of the Epson Perfection scanners (I've lost track of the current model number) would do the job just fine. They're not perfect, but a ridiculosuly good value. As for printers, any of the higher-end Epsons would do the job well. I've gotten a lot of color prints out of my 1280 that have been mistaken for c-prints, so they're definitely capable of quality work.

    If your initial results in digital are disappointing, do not dispair. Though naysayers like to make the (false) point that digital requires no skill, in fact it requires a decent amount of skill, the amount required rising in accordance with the quality of output you desire to produce. I can produce good prints digitally with great frequency at this point, but my first digital efforts were unadulterated crap. But, my understanding and skills grew and my results improved. If you work at it, it will work out.

    Good luck.

  3. #3

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    Going digital!

    Try an Epson 2450, 3200, or 4870 for the scanner. They all do a good job and I can't really see much difference between them. They all appear to have a resolution between 1800 and 2000dpi - at least the 2450 and the 4870 that I own. For the printer I would go with the Epson 2200 combined with the QuadToneRIP from http://www.harrington.com. This combination uses the factory inks, so you can reatain color printing ability, and produces nice black and whites without metamerism (differing color casts in different light). If I had to give up my wet darkroom I could be happy with this combo, though I still prefer a FB wet print.

  4. #4

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    Going digital!

    The quadtone RIP is a freeware download, available here

  5. #5

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    Going digital!

    I would like to try digital printing some day, but I've heard that printers use an incredible amount of ink to produce photographic prints and that replacement cartridges are expensive. Is this true?

  6. #6

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    Jun 2004
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    Going digital!



    Ben, yes it is true -- replacement cartridges are quite expensive. I print frequently on 8.5 x 11 and 11x17 papers on my Epson 2200 and my cartridge expenses are around $90 every six weeks! The consumables are quite expensive. There are cost-saving measures, however, like creating custom, smaller paper sizes for your proofing needs and replacing your intake system with a continuous flow setup. The latter route will decrease your ink costs dramatically, or so I've read.



    Non-manufacturer brand ink in cartridges can be significantly cheaper but I find the quality of them to vary widely -- in my experience there are some brands that are just prone to clogging either due to the ink makeup or the process that is used to fill the ink cartridge. Quality control matters.



    I've tried several different printing methods in my 2200 and 1280 and have now more or less settled on Quadtone RIP + standard Epson inks in the 2200. I've achieved better results at times using other workflows with the MIS quadtone inks, but for whatever reason with that setup I could never reproduce consistent quality, which is believe is the magic bullet of digital printing. Your mileage may vary.


  7. #7
    Ted Harris's Avatar
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    Going digital!

    Just so the waters don't get too clear <smile> you oshould look at a second group of scanners as well, the Microtek family that call themselves 'dual platform' in that that scan transparancies/negatives in a second, glass free path under the scanner glass bed.



    The new Microtek i900 brings these scanners down under the $1000 range selling for $600. The next one up is the 1800f and then the 2500f. Several of us here use these scanners .... Ken Len Lee I know uses the 2500 and I have recently started using the i900. I much prefer the i900 to the 4870 for a number of reasons: 1) IMO the build qualityis better, 2) it handles up to 8x10 transparancies and that is important to me 3) IMO the glassless scanning has fewer image degradation problems. So far I have found my scans to be superb (of course I am comparing them to a six year old UMAX PowerLook III). Sometime in the next month Ken and I may be able to get together and do a comparison of the o900 v. the 2500f v. the 4870 but it is my schedule that dictates and I ahven't gotten it together yet.



    Bottom line, don't run out and get the 4870 until you consider the Microtek i900.

  8. #8

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    Going digital!

    There are many ways to get started but here's a brief summary of one way (not the only way, not necessarily even the best way, just a way). Buy an Epson 4870 flat bed scanner. I don't use it, I use an older Linoscan scanner that isn't made any more but by all accounts it will do an excellent job with 4x5 film. There are two versions, the difference is in the software that comes with them. Unless you have thoughts of doing color get the less expensive version, it costs about $350 in the U.S. If you like the software use it, if you don't switch to Vuescan which you can download from the Vuescan web site for about $50.

    Then get either an Epson 1280 or 2200 printer. I have both, either will produce the same quality prints and the 1280 is less expensive, also smaller if space is a concern. The 2200 has some big advantages with color printing but less so with black and white so I'd probably suggest the 1280 unless you plan to also do color or want to use Epson's color inks for black and white printing (see discussion below). The 1280 sells for about $350 in the U.S., the 2200 for about $700.

    Once you get a scanner and printer you're faced with the big decision - what inks to use for your black and white prints. You have at least three choices. One is to replace the standard Epson color inks with dedicated black and white quadtone inks. MIS makes quadtone inks for both the 1280 and 2200 and curves can be downloaded for free from the MIS web site. One nice thing about these inks is that you can use them to print different tones - cold, neutral, warm - on the same paper, whichever seems best suited for a particular print. There are other manufacturers of quadtone inks (Cone, Lyson, et al) but MIS inks probably are the most popular among serious black and white digital printers. Also, their customer support is excellent whereas the repuation for support from Cone and Lyson is poor (I've always used MIS so I can't speak about the others from experience, just from what I've heard and read).

    Your second choice is to use the Epson color inks for black and white printing. If you plan to do that you should probably get the 2200 for archival reasons and use a RIP to avoid color tinting. Most RIPs are very expensive but Roy Harrington's RIP costs $50 and supposedly is very good. I know he has a version for the 2200, I think he has one for the 1280 but I'm not 100% sure. I haven't tried that yet because it looks like it isn't easy to download but I plan to.

    Finally, you could try printing black only with either the 1280 or the 2200. You can use the Epson black cartridges to do this but people who do it a lot say that the MIS Eboni black produces better results (I've used both the Epson matte black and Eboni n my 2200, I frankly don't see a clear difference but Eboni only costs about $10 per cartridge so it's probably the way to go with black only). Black only is certainly the simplest, least expensive way, and produces excellent results. It does of course limit you to purely black and white, no warm tones, no cold tones, just a neutral black and white. If you do that with the 2200 printer go to Clayton Jones' web site and read his article on black only printing, it will give you the printer settings to use.

    I've only touched the surface here, a lengthy book could easily be written on digital black and white printing and obviously there are many makes and models of scanners, printers, and inks other than those I've mentioned here. An excellent source for information about digital black and white printing is the Yahoo discussion group digitalblackandwhite:theprint (or something close to that).

    The learning curve for printing black and white digitally is fairly steep, especially if you don't have any background in Photoshop, but it's also very rewarding. The results that can be achieved are quite amazing. When I first started a couple years ago I thought I'd do it side by side with my traditional darkroom printing but I've ended up printing exclusively digital except for 8x10 contact prints which I still make in the darkroom. Once I got used to it I found it very difficult to accept the limitations of a traditional darkroom. I think you'll find that you spend about as much time making an excellent black and white print digitally as you did in the darkroom but you'll spend that time much more creatively.
    Brian Ellis
    Before you criticize someone, walk a mile in their shoes. That way when you do criticize them you'll be
    a mile away and you'll have their shoes.

  9. #9

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    Going digital!

    " I've heard that printers use an incredible amount of ink to produce photographic prints and that replacement cartridges are expensive. Is this true?"

    It's been said that printer manufacturers do their best to sell printers at low margin, expecting to make real profits through sales of "consumables": paper + ink.

  10. #10

    Join Date
    Jun 2004
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    Going digital!

    Sort of relevant to this thread: Canon today announced the new CanoScan 9950F Color Image Scanner

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