Epson 4000 w/Piezography vs wet prints

[michael Allen]

I'm considering purchasing Epsons pro 4000 printer and using Piezography inks and softwear.

Does anyone have any experiance with either product?

I'm trying to choose between building digital darkroom or wet.

[Andre Noble]

Do you want ink jet prints or silver gelatin prints?

I think a good compromise is a B&W wet darkroom, and a color digital darkroom consiting of high quality dedicatied film scanner, and Photoshop software for output to a traditional material printer such as the Fuji Frontier or Lamda Lightjet.

[Kirk Gittings]

That is a difficult question to answer without more info on where you want to go. For myself, I have been a traditional since the 6th grade, 44 years! I was forced into digital by requests for scans by my commercial clients and I can now see the potential for my personal work.

I have a retrospective show coming up of about 60 b&w and color images. The b&w will be traditional (they are already printed) but the color will be digital inkjet printed on a 4000 that I just purchased. I intend after this show to explore digital b&w, but what interests me most is the ability to create enlarged negatives on the 4000 and contact print them on silver or platinum.

There is no simple answer.

[Bobby Sandstrom]

Michael, I've struggled with this question myself. Afterall, I'm a very advanced user of photoshop. What could possibly be better than doing all my dodging and burning and contrast control and sharpening and touching up... etc, on my computer! This is how I learned! I started with a digital camera 4 years ago and moved to film. You can get amazing images by scanning and inkjet priniting, however, the problem for me is inkjet prints don't have what wet prints have. They're different! I scanned, on a coolscan 8000, a medium format image and had it printed on a 1500.00 rip Using an Epson 7600 (which is what I have at home) at Calumet. (Supposedly the rip will give you similar results to the piezograph.) I then printed the same image in my "newly built" darkroom. Because the inkjet print is on matte paper and the wet is on fiber glossy the comparison might be questioned. However, each paper, IMO, represents the "best" quality in it's format. Hands down, the fiber print has more "depth." When asked which appeared to have more depth, my 70 yr old mother picked the fiber print instantly. Wet prints are more elegant. They look like a window back into the place you took the photo. They look real. There's a 3D quality that gives the eye something to grasp onto. The continous tone seems to be hard to recreate with dots on an inkjet. Your eye and brain know this on a subconscious level. Color, on the other hand, is a different story. I must say color images look really, really nice printed on an inkjet. With black and white, you have no color to distract hence you are able to notice the quality difference. OK. In a nutshell, they're different! Do you need filet mignon every night? Or, will pasta and meatballs hit the spot once in a while? Happily we are not forced to use one format exclusively. We can let the situation and images dictate which format to use. Don't toil with it. Save your energy and your money, then get both! :-)

Enjoy your photography!

[Brian Ellis]

Cone's Piezography system no longer requires its own software, they've changed the system around completely in the last year or two. I use MIS inks rather than Cone because of Cone's reputation for poor customer service plus they've had a lot of problems over the year making claims that turned out to be untrue. MIS makes excellent inks, their customer service is very good - a human being answers the phone when you call (plus Paul Roark, who developed the forumlas and curves for many of them, is an active participant in the Yahoo digital black and white printing group) - and there are many different options for different ink tones, degree of complexity in use, things like that. I don't know how the prices compare with Cone but I'd be surprised if MIS was signficantly if at all more expensive.

[Bruce Watson]

I use PiezoTone inks with my Epson 7600.

Inkjet prints and darkroom prints don't compare well IMHO. Inkjet is a different media, with different characteristics. Comparing inkjet to silver gelatin is about like comparing silver gelatin to platinum. Different media, with different characteristics.

It comes down to you deciding what's important to you. Do you like working with computers, or do you like getting up to your elbows in the soup? Do you like specifying exactly what you want, or do you like working on a more intuitive level? Do you want a print with linear response, or do you want one with a traditional toe and shoulder? Do your images respond best to a wide range of detail, or to really deep blacks? Basically, lightroom or darkroom?

The advantages PiezoTone inks give me is better shadow detail, and better highlight detail, in the same print, than I was ever able to get in a darkroom print. Smoother tonality, amazing control of contrast and intricate masking capabilities. Prints with no artifacts. Spotting an image exactly once, not every print. A huge range of substrates and surfaces to use.

The disadvantages include pigment inks work best on matte surfaces. Matte surfaces give lower Dmax (you don't get blacks you could "fall into," at least not yet). The pigments lay exposed on the surface of the print. The print surface is therefore more fragile and you can easily ruin a print by scuffing and scratching. Then there's the machines and aggravation of computers, printers, and printer maintenance (clogs).

You pays your money and you makes your choice.

[paulr]

What's a reasonable amount to expect to spend to get up and running with piezography?

Not counting a computer, scanner and photoshop, is there anything needed besides a printer, the piezography software and inks, and possible color management software? Is there a wide range of differences in printers available (say, ones that print 13x19)?

Looking around the web (without really knowing anything) it seems like I could get going for $1200 or so, not counting all the paper I'll probably waste. This is based on a printer like an epson 1280, piezography inks with the external tanks. If I start doing color I'd probably get a second printer a mid-level color matching software package.

Am I overlooking anything major?

[Bruce Watson]

http://www.inkjetmall.com/store/bw2/iquads.html

This should get you very close to WYSIWYG. With this, it looks like all you really need is a printer, paper, inks, and an iQuad profile. I would definitely calibrate/profile my monitor also using something like a ColorVison Spyder:

http://www.inkjetmall.com/store/cm/colorvision-products/index.html

That should be all you need, but check with your supplier to be sure.

BTW, if anyone cares, I'm not affiliated with InkJetMall in any way other than being a satisfied customer.

[Brian Ellis]

You don't mention Photoshop or another editing program and you don't mention a scanner, so I assume you already have these. If so, then you should be able to start for a lot less than $1,200. If not, then you may have to spend somewhat more than $1,200 depending on your choice of scanner and editing software. I wouldn't suggest starting out with a continuous flow system (which is what I assume you mean by "tanks"). They're great for cost savings once you're up and running and have everything under control but they're just something else to worry about when you're getting started so I'd suggest cartridges at first.

An Epson 1280 printer will cost about $300, the 2200 will cost about $700. They produce prints of equal quality (I have both) but if you think you might do color some day then the Epson color inks for the 2200 have definite longevity advantages so you'd probably want to get the 2200 rather than the 1280.

With either printer you can then buy the MIS Eboni black ink ($10) and you're ready to make great black only prints. Though it may sound odd, black only produces excellent results and if nothing else is a good way to get your feet wet for almost no money beyond the basic equipment. If that's your choice Google for Clayton Jones' web site, he has an article that discussed black only printing in some detail. You can use the matte black ink that comes with the Epson 2200 cartridges but most people seem to prefer the Eboni black from MIS. That's what I use when I make black only prints.

If you want more options than black only gives you could buy the 1280 printer and get the MIS Ultratone 2 inks or the MIS variable mix inks (I use the variable mix because that's what I started with and haven't seen a need to change to the newer Ultratone 2 inks). They cost about $50 for a full set. Then download the appropriate curves from the MIS web site for free and you're ready to go, this time with the ability to print cold, neutral, or warm on the same paper just by selecting the appropriate curve.

The next level of cost would be the 2200 printer instead of the 1280. The newest MIS inks for the 2200 are the Ultratone 7 inks. Again, you have the ability to make prints any way you like - cold, neutral, warm.

Or, taking it to the next level of complexity but not significant additional expense, buy the 2200 printer, use Epson color inks, and download Roy Harrington's RIP for $50, then you can make color and black and white prints with the same printer and the same Epson color cartridges.

For black and white printing I haven't found it necessary to profile anything beyond the "built-in" paper profiles that are a part of the Epson software. At the worst I might occasionally need to make a second "final" print because there was a slight difference between what I saw on the monitor and what I saw in the print but since I'm not a high volume printer that's not a real problem even when it happens. If I printed a lot of color or a big volume of black and white I would be more concerned about profiling my scanner, monitor, and printer.

[michael Allen]

Thanks for the feedback everyone, I'm leaning more towards Hogarth and Bobbys postings on this subject. Brian very infomative as usual. I like Kirks thoughts and will try a few LF negs made on the 2200 we have at school. I took a recent class on making digital negs, but used some of my old MF stuff for class. I think I'll try using a LF neg which should make a nicer contact print than I was able to make with the MF neg's I used.