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Thread: Black and White Printing

  1. #61
    Wayne venchka's Avatar
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    Re: Black and White Printing

    Switching black inks in an Epson 3800 is a $5 or $6 operation. Switching everything would be expensive.

    Epson isn't the only answer. The Canon 5000-5100 printers are very good. Their ink costs seem to be less than Epson. The bad news is that the machines are more expensive thna the Epson 3800.
    Wayne
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  2. #62

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    Re: Black and White Printing

    Quote Originally Posted by h2oman View Post
    As someone who intends in the next year to start printing B&W on an inkjet, I have enjoyed this thread. It is clear that there is no single answer as to what to do, because one is working with a variety of parameters. If all I wanted to do is print B&W I think I would try the Cone inks, but I may wish to have coor capability out of the same printer, in which case going with the standard Epson inks would be my choice most likely.

    Which brings up a question: how difficult is it to change back and forth from the Cone inkset to the Epson K3 inks? would it be reasonable for a person to just stockpile printing jobs, stay color for a couple months, then change to B&W for a couple months, etc?
    You would need a set of flush carts, which depending on the model of printer, could be expensive.

    I used Cone's NK7 inks for a couple of years. They exibit wonderfully smooth midtone gradation but since they are for matt surfaces only they don't have a great Dmax.

    I now run a 3800 with QTR. For images that benefit from a greater Dmax this is a better solution than NK7s.

    I have reprinted several images with the 3800 (QTR) to compare with the respective images printed using NK7s; In cases where I don't require a high Dmax, the NK7 prints look better to me.

    When space and finances permit, I plan to get a second 3800 to dedicate to NK7 inks. As I still want to print on glossy stock and in color.

    But we certainly do have some great options.

  3. #63
    Michael E. Gordon
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    Re: Black and White Printing

    Quote Originally Posted by h2oman View Post
    Which brings up a question: how difficult is it to change back and forth from the Cone inkset to the Epson K3 inks? would it be reasonable for a person to just stockpile printing jobs, stay color for a couple months, then change to B&W for a couple months, etc?
    It's rather a PITA. I can't imagine anyone liking doing that for long.

  4. #64
    Abuser of God's Sunlight
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    Re: Black and White Printing

    Quote Originally Posted by bob carnie View Post
    This thread reminds me about the Fred Picker demo prints that I bought ...
    Hilarious.

    But I suspect this has more to do with a certain photographer/salesman than with the possibilities of the gelatin silver process ...

  5. #65
    Abuser of God's Sunlight
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    Re: Black and White Printing

    Quote Originally Posted by Brian Ellis View Post
    But those prints that he sold for $25 each I think it was couldn't have been examples of his best work.
    Maybe they weren't, but he said they were! In his catalog ... I have a few around becase I'm nostalgic ... he says that the price is only low because he makes them in quantity from "perfect" negatives.

    I do agree with Mr. Picker that you can learn a lot from looking at other amazing prints ... ones that do the kinds of things you'd like your ownimages do. I don't want them "at my elbow" in the darkroom, but i want to have them around.

    For me, those inspiring and instructive prints were the plates in the big Paul Strand book printed by Steinhour press in 4 colors, a tint, and two varnishes, with separations made by Richard Benson. Holy wow the printing of that book is incredible. It also opened my eyes and mind to the possibility of ink on paper. I couldn't make my silver prints look that good!

    If it hadn't been for that book, I would have assumed my old mentor had been joking when he first called me up blabbing about the wonders of piezography.

  6. #66
    Wayne venchka's Avatar
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    Re: Black and White Printing

    Nobody uses or has tried the Canon 5000-5100 line of printers? Or HP?
    Wayne
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  7. #67

    Re: Black and White Printing

    Quote Originally Posted by Ed Richards View Post
    If you want to get great prints with the minimum amount of pain, get a 3800 and print with the ABW setting, using Harmon FB glossy, regular or warm. This even beats my very expensive RIP. Harmon FB glossy is the best glossy black and white paper I have found, if you want the look of a classic neutral silver print. I am not saying that this the solution for any other paper, it just happens that the ABW setting for Epson Glossy is a perfect match to Harmon. (I even had the RIP maker do a custom profile for my printer, and it still was not as good.)

    If you like to screw with equipment, go for a third party ink solution. If you want to print on matte paper, get a water color kit.:-)

    More seriously, paper is more important than printers, in that you need different solutions for different papers. I have seen nothing that beats Epson ABW on Harmon Glossy FB for the look of traditional silver glossy dried matte prints. But if you want a different look, esp. for matte papers or textured papers, you may need a different solution entirely.

    Ed
    I agree with Ed.After using rag papers for almost 10 years now, I just recently started seriously working with Harman Gloss FB AI and ABW on my 4800 with great results.And ya gotz ta luv the smell of the stuff too

  8. #68

    Re: Black and White Printing

    The high end HPs are quite viable for good B&W. On fine art matte they are true quads, on photo surfaces they are tritones with a gloss optimizer. In fact this seems to be what they are using for the ink Ansel Adams editions. Neither of these options use the color inks, unless the user chooses to change to a mode that does, for toning purposes.
    I believe the smallest model using these inks and processes is 24".
    The image quality still falls short of K7, or even a great quad with the proper inksets, for matte, though it is certainly good. The quality of the photo surface setups rivals anything else on the market for ink, other than perhaps a gloss 2 pass K7 setup with the MPS inkset.
    The Cone sets are doing better than the HP inks in current longevity testing as well.
    I have seen many HP B&W prints from my friend John Dean, a great printer, who also though has Cone K6 and K7 setups when higher quality and different hue is required.
    Canon has an inkset similar to the HP, including a gloss optimizer, that is supposed to work well, but it seems to have the lowest resolution and most visible dither. I believe they have a 17" printer that deserves some attention, but since it has not caught on I've seen no examples. Bowhaus makes an advanced driver specifically for optimizing B&W from the Canons that looks very well thought out-
    http://www.trueblackandwhite.com/
    I know a few people using it, but have seen no prints.
    Tyler

  9. #69
    Wayne venchka's Avatar
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    Re: Black and White Printing

    Thank you Tyler.
    Wayne
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  10. #70
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    Re: Black and White Printing

    Quote Originally Posted by h2oman View Post
    As someone who intends in the next year to start printing B&W on an inkjet, I have enjoyed this thread. It is clear that there is no single answer as to what to do, because one is working with a variety of parameters. If all I wanted to do is print B&W I think I would try the Cone inks, but I may wish to have coor capability out of the same printer, in which case going with the standard Epson inks would be my choice most likely.

    Which brings up a question: how difficult is it to change back and forth from the Cone inkset to the Epson K3 inks? would it be reasonable for a person to just stockpile printing jobs, stay color for a couple months, then change to B&W for a couple months, etc?
    I've investigated it and I don't think it's at all reasonable to switch back and forth. It would require a lot of flushing and cleaning, because the inks are not compatible. Think of how much ink the 4800 consumes moving back and forth between photo black and photo matte, and then multiply that times all the color cartridges.

    If I were going to use a continuous flow system like that, I think my only option would be to dedicate a printer.

    I'm in this situation right now. For now, I'm going to see how good I can get with the built-in capability of the K3 inks using ABW. So far, on the glossy paper that I prefer, the results are really impressive, and already very close to what I could do conventionally back when I was going that way. If I get to the point where I feel like it's holding me back, then I'll explore an alternative. Given that far better printers than myself are not in full agreement here, that suggests to me that exploring the potential of the Epson built-in capability before doing anything else will not be time or effort wasted.

    Rick "who does both black and white and color, and only has one printer" Denney

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