View Full Version : What does a newbie do nowadays in the printing game?
OK...
I'm not a newbie. I have owned a couple of inkjet (bubblejet) printers a loooong time ago. In fact, because of their continuous clogging I went to a colour laser printer. This was before I got seriously into photography. So the latest printer purchase was a Samsung CLP350 I think it is. And that never gave me a reasonable service life before it needed a new drum ...
Question: Where are we at nowadays in the printing game as far as printer serviceability and reliability are concerned? Are they (the inkjets that is ..) way better than the 90's? Does buying a high-end printer mean you get a better reliability? (eg. SureColor P800 -vs- SureColor P5070 -vs- SureColor P7070) Do you need to do some printing on a regular basis? Semi-regular?
I see some threads mentioning cleaning with various things like ultrasonic baths or alcohol based fluids like Windex. Perhaps even straight alcohol or even something more potent like thinners? Is this still the go even at the more professional end of things?
I also see that some kits makers are not able to get around the inbuilt 'protections' inside chips and such for some printers. Does this mean it is better to buy something older? (I do also realise that companies like Epson will release a new printer to just get around the fact that other manufacturers learn how to get around their consumable grips ...)
I'm sort of after an industry overview and frank assessment really as I've got a wife baying for more output from my photography and I think that printing is a viable option now.
Cheers,
Steve
Ha ha
I print online only and have it shipped to me
And vastly prefer my Darkroom
This will be interesting!
+1 for what Randy says. I use on-line services for color printing from digitally captured or scanned films, as I prefer to spend most of my time in the dark room making B&W silver gelatin prints.
Pere Casals
6-May-2019, 03:34
printing is a viable option now.
I also think that on-line services are nice and this allows to spend time for working or (my case) learning in the darkroom.
Yes, inkjet prints are nice, but not many collectors buy inkjet prints. Inkjets are a kind of reprography and often considered a decorative object more than a collectible handcrafted object of art. Perhaps a photographer may make more money by inkjet pinting than with other ways, because the photography art market is not easy. Authentic handcrafted optic prints from masters are expensive, but the rest is difficult to sell, even at low prices...
In practice darkroom printing almost disapeared, laser (on photopaper) and inkjets are good choices, even many carbon printers (etc) depart from digital negatives... all for good reasons. Anyway, IMHO, those that are still able to make extremly good prints from a pure optical process have an strategic advantage. That also requires a very refined technique to obtain what one wants without labour and materials waste, not easy.
Jim Jones
6-May-2019, 05:44
My Epson 3800 lasted 6 or 7 years and produced over 6000 prints with negligible trouble. I've used an Epson P-800 for 27 months and produced 1800 prints with no trouble at all. It's good to be able to make a small print to check everything before using a big sheet of paper and to produce prints in minutes instead of days.
Inkjet printing can be superb if you have the right equipment and know what you're doing. There are many excellent papers out there to suit every taste. There are also many excellent options for printers at a huge range of price points. I'm familiar with Epson but other manufacturers make good printers too (e.g., HP, Canon).
How much do you want to print? How big do you want to print? Serious printing can become expensive quickly. The printer is usually the least costly part of the equation over the long haul. Ink and paper can cost a lot.
I only print black and white at the moment. I'm running an old Epson 3880. I bought one of the last refurbished ones I could find a couple years ago. I have a spare one in storage. The reason I use these ones is they're the last generation of 17" wide Epson printers that will easily take refillable carts. In North America Epson has locked out most refillables. Jon Cone (Inkjetmall.com) has developed an add-on board that you can use in a P800 to defeat Epson's lockout, but it's expensive and it voids your warranty because you have to open up the printer.
One other quirk for me is that I mix my own inks according to Paul Roark's formulation, so it's a true monochrome inkset. Lately I've added in a blue toner in one of the channels so I can print from warm to neutral on the cotton paper I like. This approach dramatically cuts the cost of the ink. If you want a fully monochrome inkset, but you don't want to go the "mix up your own" route, you could try Piezography (Jon Cone again). It is not cheap, but Cone provides the technical support and software you need to make it a turnkey system.
Hmmm.
From my perspective, my living arrangements dictate that I can't setup an optical darkroom. Yet I would like to see results. The local CameraHouse is a joke. They looked at me as though I had green Shrek ears when I told them my file sizes.
rdeloe, size wise I'm thinking 17" is good and 24" is better. I might have to tone down my thoughts!
Defeating circuits like the one made for the P800 are good. I would want one available for the printer I buy.
I'll look into the online services too. I did check one out the other day maybe I'll have a re-think and get a quote!
Cheers to all.
Pere Casals
7-May-2019, 02:00
The local CameraHouse is a joke. They looked at me as though I had green Shrek ears when I told them my file sizes.
There are silver gelatin printing services like the ilford one that produces true silver prints, that of course will take big files for big prints. The one form ilford for example https://www.harmanlab.com/page/57/Black-and-White-Prints-from-Film.htm , but they usually work with RC paper.
You only need to send big files for big prints, for an small print you only have to send the exact amount of pixels that the printer will actually print. If you are not skilled in optimizing the print at pixel level for best sharpness (and wanting that) then you may send a (say +40%) larger file to allow the printer optimize it, today printers have very good optimizations.
Other services specialized in fine jobs, like Bob Carnie, also print on FB photopaper with a Lambda. Those services will use the necessary digital information for the print size.
Inkjets easily handle color tones in BW prints, some ink sets allow to print more cold the shadows and more warm mids or highlights for example, but IMHO a silver print made with a lambda, a frontier or a lightjet is a superior product compared to ink. Nothing aganist inkjets but... silver is silver.
For on-line services it is important the digital proofing, a print always look different than what you see in the monitor, so it's important to learn how to proof, this is adjusting the display profiles, adjusting room illumination and learning to guess how it will look from the what you see in the monitor.
At the beginning one may order a print 16 small images with different adjustments in a single print to later order the big print. If you order a print to a Lab specialized in fine jobs then they will always make a good print.
Silver is silver. But carbon is carbon. And platinum is platinum! These are all just ways of making a physical photograph. Which one you prefer is simply a matter of taste. I started printing "carbon on cotton" with an inkjet because I ripped out my darkroom a decade ago, but even if I had the money and space, I wouldn't go back to silver printing. At the same time, I'm just delighted that we have so many options these days that didn't exist even a couple decades ago.
I just noticed that you're in Australia. On the Epson Australia website, for the P800 printer (17") it says "The use of 3rd party supplies (particularly Options and Ink) is strongly discouraged". That suggests that Epson was not able to lock down the printers and prevent third party inks. You may not need a defeating circuit. That would be fantastic if you wanted to use 3rd party refillable cartridges. I'm not sure what's available in Australia in terms of inks, but if you can afford the cost of shipping from the US there are many good choices, e.g., Cone Color inks are plug-in replacements for Epson inks. I don't use Cone inks but their refillable cartridges are genuinely better than the ones you can get on eBay or from your local camera store. They look the same, but Cone is able to enforce higher manufacturing standards in China, where he gets them. (I switched to Cone's carts after one of my locally-sourced refillable carts leaked and dumped 80ml of ink inside my printer... I was able to clean it up but that was not fun.)
As for size, that's obviously a matter of personal taste. I too thought I "needed" a 24" wide printer. I'm glad I didn't get one. The Epson 3880 (and the newer P800) is a big printer, but it can sit beside me on a little cart in a room I use as an office. The next size up 24" printer sits on a stand and starts to dominate the room. For my own purposes, I've found that a 17" wide print is actually very large. By the time I frame one that size, it's an imposing picture. Again, everyone has different tastes and some people like mural-sized prints, but for me 17" x 25" (if I'm printing a 2:3 format file) is plenty big.
Hmmm.
From my perspective, my living arrangements dictate that I can't setup an optical darkroom. Yet I would like to see results. The local CameraHouse is a joke. They looked at me as though I had green Shrek ears when I told them my file sizes.
rdeloe, size wise I'm thinking 17" is good and 24" is better. I might have to tone down my thoughts!
Defeating circuits like the one made for the P800 are good. I would want one available for the printer I buy.
I'll look into the online services too. I did check one out the other day maybe I'll have a re-think and get a quote!
Cheers to all.
Neal Chaves
7-May-2019, 06:24
A B&W laser printer that can output at 1200 dpi can produce a very satisfying print. I have a HP4000 that you can buy used for as little as $100. Aftermarket laser cartridges cost about $35. To print an 8X10 at 1200 dpi, the printer must have 100MB or more of RAM. I abandoned color inkjet long ago and just do the occasional color print on the Fuji Frontier at Walmart. I'm looking at buying a late model HP color laser printer now. They come from the factory with 128MB RAM, enough to print legal size, 8.5X14 at 1200dpi. You must use a high quality laser paper to make the best prints.
Interesting thread on archival properties of laser prints.
https://www.pcreview.co.uk/threads/fading-of-laser-printed-images.3778130/
Pere Casals
7-May-2019, 06:40
Silver is silver. But carbon is carbon. And platinum is platinum! ... but even if I had the money and space, I wouldn't go back to silver printing.
Of course it is a personal choice...
Me, I do the counter, I have inkjet and lightjet printed but now I'm learning darkroom printing and I wouldn't go back.
I inspect my (small) 8x10" contact prints with a x20 or x40 magnifier, this is total technical quality (and low artistic quality in my case). And also I bring the magnifiers to the exhibitions. I was asked by security guards about what I was doing... :) in the Genesis exhibition. In that case some 4x5 Delta 100 negatives were printed with a film recorder (in fact a LVT Rhino, 4 images in a 8x10") and then optically enlarged... I was comparing with the Salgado's TXP 645 optically enlarged share vs the para-digital LVT workflow. The guards saw me in the monitors and they came :) Now I beg permission before showing the magnifier !
I've inspected many other exhibitions with the magnifier, and of course also from far... It is true that at 1m all prints are good... but silver prints have a better texture. Many viewers won't perceive that, perhaps...
My personal conclusion is that good prints made in (say) the 1970s by people really controlling well their processes are incredibly good, well beyond what we see done with modern reprography systems. Today digital image manipulation is powerful and flexible, but those masters excelled with simpler tools. A bit is like making La Pietà with 3D Blender software or with a hammer. The hammer is better, in the right hands.
I personally find Sally Mann's exemplary work is great to get inspiration, she mostly departed from raw chem and bare glass to end in the most impressive silver prints many have seen. To me this is the path. Of course inkjets are also an excellent path...
Pere Casals
7-May-2019, 06:52
A B&W laser printer that can output at 1200 dpi can produce a very satisfying print.
A Lambda may print is equivalent to 4000dpi... (commercial info says...)
Neal, dpi and ppi are sometimes mixed. A Lambda prints only 200 or 400 PPI, pixels per inch, but each pixel is continuous tone, a Lambda pixel is not made from several (or many) ink droplets (measured in ppi) but with a single light shot that can be more or less intense.
The 1200 dpi are not there, what it can be said is that a Lambda prints better than a 1200dpi inkjet printer, or better than some 4000dpi printers, but this also depends on the inkjet printer and how many droplet sizes may be used in the same pixel made from several dots.
_____
"The Durst Lambda exposes digital information (raster pixel) directly to conventional photographic media at full continuous tone with a linear writing speed of up to 65 cm (26 in.) per minute with the choice of two resolutions of 200 and 400 ppi (equal to an apparent resolution of 4000 dpi)." https://www.manualslib.com/manual/41211/Durst-Lambda-131-Hs.html?page=2#manual
Very interesting!
Which exact model laser printers are you referring to. Both B&W and Color.
What about laser printed digital negatives.
I made digital negatives on a very high end office copier in 1997 but they were not acceptable to me.
22 years may make a difference.
A B&W laser printer that can output at 1200 dpi can produce a very satisfying print. I have a HP4000 that you can buy used for as little as $100. Aftermarket laser cartridges cost about $35. To print an 8X10 at 1200 dpi, the printer must have 100MB or more of RAM. I abandoned color inkjet long ago and just do the occasional color print on the Fuji Frontier at Walmart. I'm looking at buying a late model HP color laser printer now. They come from the factory with 128MB RAM, enough to print legal size, 8.5X14 at 1200dpi. You must use a high quality laser paper to make the best prints.
Interesting thread on archival properties of laser prints.
https://www.pcreview.co.uk/threads/fading-of-laser-printed-images.3778130/
Neal Chaves
7-May-2019, 07:33
1200 dpi seems to be the limit for affordable laser printers, but is good enough for me in a "machine print". In 1990 I had a seascape of the rocks at Kennebunkport, Maine made into posters by a very good printer following the reproduction recommendations of Ansel Adams. The 16X20 print I made from an 8X10 TXP negative was scanned and separation negatives made for duotone printing at 1200 dpi. Search "Kennebunkport poster" on eBay to see it. You have to use a magnifier to see the dot pattern.
My primary interests and goals involve silver printing and I just dabble with computer printing, so I'm not the guy to ask technical questions about it and I run Linux and use GIMP. To the educated eye, in a side by side comparison there is no contest between a contact or optical print from a large format film and anything digital.
bob carnie
7-May-2019, 07:45
If I was starting today . I would make high quality inkjet or silver digital negatives, and I would profile these negatives to any and all processes I was interested in and do only contact prints. No need for enlargers or complicated workspaces and I would make sure I could do all processes in the same room.
Laser printers are getting better -- no doubt about that. However, I have yet to see a laser print I'd use for anything other than a quick print.
In a course I teach every fall for 12 students we use digital photography and make prints using a Xerox Versant press (basically a huge laser printer). For this purpose it does a great job. I can send 60 digital files to the printer and get 12"x18" prints back on the same day. We use a heavy paper stock and the students are thrilled because most have never made prints before, let alone prints that size. Colour fidelity is excellent (assuming the monitors are calibrated). However, it all falls apart in areas of the print that have anything approaching a continuous or smooth tone. There you see all kinds of artefacts. I'm quite happy to live with these problems because there's really no alternative in this environment.
Neal Chaves
7-May-2019, 08:00
You know the game. It's the same as the old Nassrudin joke about fashion shows, "They show you the women and then try to sell you expensive clothes."
The HP color laser printer I looked at was HP533n. It has 1GB of factory RAM and costs about $500 new. It comes with full capacity cartridges. Black will always run out first, but a full HP set of all colors will cost more than a new printer. For this reason, many businesses just buy new printers instead of replacing toners and deals can be had on nice used printers. I have had excellent results from the aftermarket toner brands in B&W and they cost a fraction of genuine HP. Sellers claim equal performance, so I would try them for color. They look like they came from the same factory as the genuine HP.
A neg that you scan at 1200 dpi for 8X10 or 8.5X14 should make a good same size print. I have laser transparency film and can scan an 8X10 negative at 1500 dpi on my Umax Powerlook 300 ($100 used like new, but you must have Linux to run it, SCSI) just haven't tried it yet, probably never will.
Very interesting!
Which exact model laser printers are you referring to. Both B&W and Color.
What about laser printed digital negatives.
I made digital negatives on a very high end office copier in 1997 but they were not acceptable to me.
22 years may make a difference.
Neal Chaves
7-May-2019, 08:08
"I made digital negatives on a very high end office copier in 1997 but they were not acceptable to me."
Even today, if you ask to see a sample print, the photos on the page it puts out are not close to 1200 dpi. Most people don't know what they looking at and don't put a loupe on it, and if it did print at 1200 dpi, it would take too long and potential customers would think the printer is slow.
Pere Casals
7-May-2019, 08:25
If I was starting today . I would make high quality inkjet or silver digital negatives, and I would profile these negatives to any and all processes I was interested in and do only contact prints. No need for enlargers or complicated workspaces and I would make sure I could do all processes in the same room.
Yes, but for silver prints, what better than a lambda print on FB paper ? You save the digital negative... Printing 65cm long each 60 seconds... Single problem is paying the lambda, so having enough orders. A Lambda can eat what 10 Photoshop staff people may edit their best day, not counting all post work, like toning and conditioning the FBs.
bob carnie
7-May-2019, 08:44
Yes, but for silver prints, what better than a lambda print on FB paper ? You save the digital negative... Printing 65cm long each 60 seconds... Single problem is paying the lambda, so having enough orders. A Lambda can eat what 10 Photoshop staff people may edit their best day, not counting all post work, like toning and conditioning the FBs.
the original question was for a newbie starting out... Lambda is such a niche market and impossible for someone to get into these days.
Pere Casals
7-May-2019, 10:13
the original question was for a newbie starting out... Lambda is such a niche market and impossible for someone to get into these days.
Of course, but the OP may pay for a Lambda service to get top notch FB silver prints, instead paying for ink and gear.
Also today RC photopapers are very good and durable, single drawback is if wanting selenium toning...
faberryman
7-May-2019, 10:25
Also today RC photopapers are very good and durable, single drawback is if wanting selenium toning...Never met an RC paper I liked. Why go to all that trouble and use a plastic paper?
RC is fantastic for beginners as it washes very fast.
I use it for testing purposes, then switch to FB.
Some also use it for paper negatives.
Especially good for experimenting with Oriental 20 X 24 RC as it's $22.50 for 10 sheets. https://www.bhphotovideo.com/c/product/166115-REG/Oriental_18_RR320X24_10_Seagull_RC_20x24_10_3_Luster.html
Pere Casals
7-May-2019, 12:04
Never met an RC paper I liked. Why go to all that trouble and use a plastic paper?
Frank, no doubt that (life expectancy) LE500 "gallery grade" paper is FB, but RC it is also very, very good today.
At some point there were some RC pitfalls, some papers failed, but this was several decades ago.
"There's alot of hyperbole going around about how much better fiber looks than RC", it looks slightly different. To me the drawback in the toning capability.
RC papers made today will last beyond a century...
It should also be pointed that color papers are RC, IIRC, and some have some prestige like cibachrome/ilfochrome !!
I concede that FB is top notch, of course, but RC is also a great choice in many cases.
IMHO a lot of inkjet work is made on expensive fibre paper to get that prestige that digital/ink reprography cannot get easily.
To me what has prestige is a sound handcrafted work.
Me, I value much more a RC silver print than a inkjet work on Hahnemühle, but's only a personal point of view.
Then... a LF optic enlargement on FB, Se toned... crafted by a master... this is another level...
invisibleflash
7-May-2019, 13:28
OP, Inkjet is excellent. But you can't let em sit too long. I run mine every 4 to 6 week. Usually does OK. 6 weeks sometimes is too much. Some big inkjets have to be run every couple weeks. When I do lots of printing it is not big deal. If I'm not printing, I just run off some RPPC postcards when they need running. I used to print junk photos and trash em. Now I print something useful.
invisibleflash
7-May-2019, 13:32
Frank, no doubt that (life expectancy) LE500 "gallery grade" paper is FB, but RC it is also very, very good today.
At some point there were some RC pitfalls, some papers failed, but this was several decades ago.
"There's alot of hyperbole going around about how much better fiber looks than RC", it looks slightly different. To me the drawback in the toning capability.
RC papers made today will last beyond a century...
It should also be pointed that color papers are RC, IIRC, and some have some prestige like cibachrome/ilfochrome !!
I concede that FB is top notch, of course, but RC is also a great choice in many cases.
IMHO a lot of inkjet work is made on expensive fibre paper to get that prestige that digital/ink reprography cannot get easily.
To me what has prestige is a sound handcrafted work.
Me, I value much more a RC silver print than a inkjet work on Hahnemühle, but's only a personal point of view.
Then... a LF optic enlargement on FB, Se toned... crafted by a master... this is another level...
I print extensively with DUO paper making artist's books. Curl is a big issue with smaller papers that are cut from a large roll. Depending how close to the center of the roll the paper is cut, this will affect the curl. The largest books I've made have been letter size and smaller. Ink and paper cost is an issue with me as my budget is very meager. Unfortunately one cannot predict what part of the roll the paper comes from when we buy a box…or 50 boxes. I’ve ended up with thousands of dollars of useless paper. If you have a slight curl, just alternate pages from front to reverse. If you don't do this, your book will develop a curl to it and not be flat. The plastic covers and interleaf also suffers from curling as well as defect issues. Once the box of paper is opened it is generally not returnable. If you are able to return the curled paper for a refund, the dealer generally wont sell you more if you keep returning order after order.
With matte papers you will have ink transfer to the preceding page if you have heavy blacks. Over time the blacks will develop a shine to them similar to wet prints that develop silvering. I'd advise to use 'bound in' archival plastic interleaf to avoid ink transfer if you use matte. Semi gloss or gloss RC paper has no ink transfer problems. Matte paper and non RC semi gloss fine art paper has issues with marring. This is a big problem with some of the nice looking air dried 'F' surface inkjet papers. To test, run your fingernail lightly over a sheet of unprinted paper to see if the surface gets marred up when looking at it from an angle. For book printing you want to use paper that is somewhat durable. If you use a textured matte paper it tends to flake off small specks of the image and is kinda delicate. It is best left for prints under glass. Just rub a cured print with rough fingers to test. The issue is the cotton base, it is not durable under abuse. Hahnemühle Photo Rag Duo Matte is very durable as far as flaking. The flaking issue is with textured matte, not so much with the ultra smooth matte papers.
Umm Bob ...
Re: #16
What is a silver digital negative ? Is it a normal film negative that is scanned into a digital file ?
Iluvmyviewcam ...
Re: #26
By 'run' what do you mean? A simple printer calibration test or a full-on print of some sort?
Pere Casals
7-May-2019, 15:56
What is a silver digital negative ?
Form any digital file, you expose (and develop) regular film (say TMX or Rollei Ortho) with a Lambda that is intended to expose paper, or with a LVT Rihno (a film recorder machine) that it is intended to expose film at high resolving power. Digital silver negatives exposed with a Rhino can be later optically enlarged, those made with a Lambda are suitable for contact copies.
A "silver digital negative" negative is made with regular (kodak, ilford) silver gelatin film. A digital negative is usually a transparent (mylar...) sheet printed with an inkjet or with an Image Setter (graphic arts gear).
rdeloe ...
Re: #10
I think the SureColor P5070 is the new P800. The P5070 ha 99% gamut with 11 inks whereas the P800 has 93% gamut with 9 inks. However, I also see that Mr Piezography does not yet have a get-around solution to the electronics of this printer (yet).
Personally, if Mr Piezography gets too much traction, Epson will do away with him eventually. They could do this instantly by offering an inkset from initial purchase that does the same as Mr Piezography. So the business model is not secure.
If I am to print B&W with something like a P5070 I personally would want to use the 3rd party inks simply because it will be a better outcome. What I'm not enjoying is the idea that it means I need to have a dedicated B&W printer. It gets expensive to think of buying 2 printers of the same build at the same time (so that there is only one learning curve, one supplier, one everything ...)
I like the idea that inkjet printing isn't a dead art. Buying anything to do with optical printing means buying secondhand items 99% of the time. Having said this, I cannot imagine what further noticeable gains could be had from a P5070 or its cousins. I don't think there has been or will be a significant increase in the printhead density because they would clog too much and surely 11 inks is enough?! All the noticeable R&D has been in the inks I think perhaps for the past decade almost. It is certainly a mature technology.
Cheers,
Steve
Steve, regarding 11 heads versus 9, 9 is already more than you need for a full monochrome inkset. Paul Roark's approach is called "Eboni 6" because it only needs 6 positions for a pure carbon print. His Eboni Variable Tone formulation replaces the Y position in Eboni 6 (which is very dilute) with a light blue toner. On a 9 ink printer like the P800 or my 3880, one of the 9 is glossy (so not used in matte printing); the other 2 are duplicates of other positions, and used as cross-cutting toners. You drive the printer with a piece of software called Quadtone RIP. Jon Cone's Piezography works in a similar fashion (but last time I looked at what he offers, he had nothing comparable to Paul Roark's variable tone approach).
If this all sounds like gibberish, did I mention there's a learning curve!
If you want to dip your toes into the world of dedicated monochrome inkjet printing, you could invest in a version of the Epson Artisan 1440. I think it was called the 1500 in Australia. It's a nice little 14" printer that uses Eboni 6
Would it make sense to get a sample print from someone to see if you even like the results? The money you would spend on the printer and inks is actually the least of the costs. The major cost is the time it takes to figure out how everything works. This is where Cone's Piezography has an edge: it's closer to a turnkey system. Mind you I prefer Roark's system because it's vastly cheaper (and it's also kind of neat that I'm mixing my own inks...).
There's a P5070 on our local Craiglist going for 2/3rd RRP at this very moment ... I asked the seller what configuration it had been set to (LLK or violet). Does anyone here know whether it needs to be LLK or violet ?
rdeloe I don't mind whichever setup I use. I see the reasons for going to a dedicated B&W printer as ongoing costs are lower and I think one re-uses things like cartridges. Chances of me meeting someone who has a sample for me to look at are Buckley's and none. I did look at maybe getting something clapped out and trying to see if I could get it running (unclogging it ...) but there is nothing like that for sale at present. Yep, I do understand 11 'inks' is not needed and that one of them is a archival covering or gloss as you say. My point is that the technology is very stable.
Another thing I won't like is having to have a dedicated Windows computer for the thing.
Pere Casals
8-May-2019, 01:36
I like the idea that inkjet printing isn't a dead art.
Yes... inkjet technology is amazing, for good reasons it's the most convenient way for home HQ digital printing.
Buying anything to do with optical printing means buying secondhand items 99% of the time.
This is a great advantage, today an amateur can have a super Pro darkroom for little money, me an amateur I use a Durst 138S with lenses resolving an insane overkill of image quality on paper, making prints that are totally sharp even when inspected with a x4 magnifier. That image quality overkill may not be perceived by a viewer, this is true, because human eye has its limits, but anyway this is technically impressive.
Having said this, I cannot imagine what further noticeable gains could be had from a P5070 or its cousins. I don't think there has been or will be a significant increase in the printhead density because they would clog too much and surely 11 inks is enough?! All the noticeable R&D has been in the inks I think perhaps for the past decade almost. It is certainly a mature technology.
Yes inkjets are mature and do a great job, but a silver print (say FB with some toning) has refined nuances that provide great pleasure to the educated eye.
Also it is not the same bending curves in Ps than crafting a silver image from a scene visualization by a refined chemical/optical process, this requires a wise artisan in command.
The traditional process sports autenticity, the hand of the artist is seen in the art object, and if the artist is a true master then this object has a great value.
Here you have the "new acquisitions" of the Schott Nichols gallery: https://web.archive.org/web/20180802141503/http://www.scottnicholsgallery.com/recent-acquisitions/new-acquisitions/
An inkjet print (IMHO) will never reach that status, the single value it has it's the artist autogragh on it, the rest is reprography substituting a monitor. For this reason galleries are reluctand to sell inkjets, they sell art objects, not reprography.
This said, inkjets may fullfill what a photographer wants, of course, the single question is if bare RC BW photopaper printed with a Lightjet or Frontier service is a better alternative.
Pere,
I have no shortage of enlargers. I have nowhere to set them up and get them running ! In the meantime ... it might be a good idea to dive into the inkjet world.
Pere Casals
8-May-2019, 02:10
Pere,
I have no shortage of enlargers. I have nowhere to set them up and get them running ! In the meantime ... it might be a good idea to dive into the inkjet world.
No doubt it's worth, this is something I did before (diving into the inkjet world) and really it's amazing, in special because of the freedom in the tonality, we can make shadows more or less cold easily, this is really great. Later I started using the ilford lab direct service to print on RC photopaper, they print with a frontier for 10" and under and with lightjet beyond, the drawback is that control on tones is lost, having only pure BW, but I liked the prints a lot more, then I started contact printing 8x10, and now I'm enlarging, still most of it in RC because I'm still learning, a lot of people moved in the counter sense, this is from darkroom to digital... YMMV !
rdeloe I don't mind whichever setup I use. I see the reasons for going to a dedicated B&W printer as ongoing costs are lower and I think one re-uses things like cartridges. Chances of me meeting someone who has a sample for me to look at are Buckley's and none. I did look at maybe getting something clapped out and trying to see if I could get it running (unclogging it ...) but there is nothing like that for sale at present. Yep, I do understand 11 'inks' is not needed and that one of them is a archival covering or gloss as you say. My point is that the technology is very stable.
It is possible to clean a clogged printer... However, some clogs simply can't be fixed. If you're getting the printer for next to nothing it's worth a try. Were I you I would look for a used Epson 3880, or a 3800 in a pinch. Inkjetmall has excellent videos and instructions on how to clean. You don't need to buy their special cleaning fluid; I have a recipe you can use to mix up a safe solution from cheap ingredients.
Another thing I won't like is having to have a dedicated Windows computer for the thing.
You don't need a Windows computer to run Quadtone RIP. The operation is a bit different on a Mac, but it works fine. In fact there are some extra tools you have access to on a Mac that you don't have on Windows. If you do use Windows, an old laptop with Windows 7 on it will do just fine.
bob carnie
8-May-2019, 06:37
Umm Bob ...
Re: #16
What is a silver digital negative ? Is it a normal film negative that is scanned into a digital file ?
It is Ilford Ortho Film that I run in large rolls off my Durst Lambda... the film is then processed in trays as normal with Ilford sequence for permanence...
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