Printer for digital negs

[Barry Kirsten]

I'm interested in trying Carbon printing and considering what type of printer to buy. I currently don't have a printer larger than A4, and am only considering making prints up to A3+ size.

I'd like to know if there is any advantage making digital negatives with K3 pigment inks, or whether dye based inks are satisfactory. There is a big price differential between the printers using these inks, and a resolution difference also. So it seems to boil down to two questions: is there an advantage in pigment inks; and do you need the apparent extra quality of a more expensive printer.

The two printers I'm considering are the Epson Atrisan 1430 (dye based inks, $400) and R3000 (K3 inks, $1500). (Note the usual rip-off prices companies apply in Australia!)

Many thanks for any suggestions/experiences.

Barry.

[mdm]

I have a R2880 and its ok, so I expect an R3000 should be too. An R1800 apparently works very well but an R1900 does not produce enough density some say. You can put the Cone selenium inks into an R1900 for B&W and also make digital negatives. an R1800/1900 have 1.5 picoliter drop size so may have better resolution than the K3 printers. You cant use Cone colour inks for digital negatives without substituting stronger black inks apparently. There are often R2880s going second hand on trademe for about NZD650, so you could try ebay australia. You will find that most of your digital negatives for carbon prints will be on 8.5x11 pictorico, for a long time anyway, so a smaller printer would be fine if it is cheap.

The best way to start carbon printing would be with some 4x5 or 5x7 camera negatives, until you get a handle on the mechanical side of it. Artcraft may be willing to send you the chemical stuff you need for carbon printing.

[D. Bryant]

I'm interested in trying Carbon printing and considering what type of printer to buy. I currently don't have a printer larger than A4, and am only considering making prints up to A3+ size.

I'd like to know if there is any advantage making digital negatives with K3 pigment inks, or whether dye based inks are satisfactory. There is a big price differential between the printers using these inks, and a resolution difference also. So it seems to boil down to two questions: is there an advantage in pigment inks; and do you need the apparent extra quality of a more expensive printer.

The two printers I'm considering are the Epson Atrisan 1430 (dye based inks, $400) and R3000 (K3 inks, $1500). (Note the usual rip-off prices companies apply in Australia!)

Many thanks for any suggestions/experiences.

Barry.
You may wish to consider the Epson R2000 which has been released in Oceania or will soon be released there.

http://www.epson.com.au/products/inkjet/stylusphotor2000.asp

http://www.imaging-resource.com/NEWS/1304402839.html

The droplet size is the same as the R1800/R1900, both of which are no longer sold new.

Since this printer uses Ultrachrome pigmented inks it should produce negatives with the needed density range required for carbon pigment printing.

Please note this is the short abbreviated answer, as David suggests you may wish to start with LF negatives to learn the process. Producing digital negatives for any process is a unique discipline unto itself.


For more carbon fun join Sandy King's carbon printing group on Yahoo.com where several experienced and wizened carbon printers hang out. Also you can visit the B&S Carbon forum for more expert information.

My 2 cents,

Don Bryant

[sanking]

You may wish to consider the Epson R2000 which has been released in Oceania or will soon be released there.

Don Bryant

I think the R2000, with the small picoliter droplets, would be a very good printer for digital negatives. Not sure if the native Epson driver will give enough UV blocking for alternative processes like carbon and pt/pd, but if not you could download the QTR driver. Which I would recommend in any event.

Sandy

[Barry Kirsten]

Thanks David, Don and Sandy. I'll take all that advice on board. I must say it's somewhat confusing when having never made a carbon print you read that some inks are not compatible with some types of Pictorico film, and best not to use this printer or that one... So the UltraChrome Hi-Gloss2 are OK with the ordinary Pictorico film? If so, it looks like the R2000 might be the way to go.

Many thanks. I'll drop in on the Yahoo Carbon group, too.

Barry.

[D. Bryant]

I must say it's somewhat confusing when having never made a carbon print you read that some inks are not compatible with some types of Pictorico film, and best not to use this printer or that one... So the UltraChrome Hi-Gloss2 are OK with the ordinary Pictorico film? If so, it looks like the R2000 might be the way to go.



The Ultrachrome inks will work fine with all Pictorico products. In years past there were adherence issues with quadtone or hextone monochrome inks. The kind sold by MIS, Cone and other vendors. That has changed somewhat.

As Sandy noted the use of a RIP, in particular QTR provides a very flexible method of producing digital negatives. However QTR may not support that printer at least yet. There are methods that can be utilized using the the Epson printer driver to increase negative density. Colorized negatives can also be utilized to produce negatives.

In short the road to inkjet negative nirvana can be a bit treacherous. Clay Harmon has written a very good PDF that explains the QTR method which can be found here.

http://www.clayharmon.com/download/downloads/QTR.pdf

[sanking]

Both the R2000 and R3000 appear to be supported by the current version of QTR with Epson inks sets.

http://www.quadtonerip.com/html/QTRrequire.html

But you might want to contact inkjetmall to see if these printers will be supported in the future with K5 or K7 Piezography for digital negatives.

Sandy

[D. Bryant]

The Ultrachrome inks will work fine with all Pictorico products. In years past there were adherence issues with quadtone or hextone monochrome inks. The kind sold by MIS, Cone and other vendors. That has changed somewhat.




adherence - I meant adhesion.

[Barry Kirsten]

Thanks everyone. Just as a final thought, do you think the R3000 with the K3 inks would be better for the occasional good b&w print as well as making digital negs? It seems to me that the R2000 inks are designed mainly for colour. Or, either printer loaded with one of the Cone inksets?

Many thanks for your help with this; I've been spending far more than I should on gear and I want to get this right.

Barry.

[sanking]

Thanks everyone. Just as a final thought, do you think the R3000 with the K3 inks would be better for the occasional good b&w print as well as making digital negs? It seems to me that the R2000 inks are designed mainly for colour. Or, either printer loaded with one of the Cone inksets?

Many thanks for your help with this; I've been spending far more than I should on gear and I want to get this right.

Barry.

Hi Barry,

Wish I could answer your question right off, but in part it depends on whether/when the Cone Piezography ink sets (and specifically sets for digital negatives) will be available for these printers. And who knows when that will be? Jon Cone did a lot of work with digital negative sets some 14-16 months ago, but since then not much from him in advancement.

My suggestion is email him directly and tell him you are interested!! jon@inkjetmall.com

Sandy King

[Jim Graves]

Epson Stylus Photo R3000 ... have been looking at these ... just not ready to commit ... but got an Epson email today with an additional discount code of 15%

The R3000 lists on their site for $849.99 but there is a $200 mail-in rebate offer thru 3/31 ... with special premium right now of 15% off using the discount code SAV15 ...

I tried it on their site and it does apply the 15% discount which gets the price down to $722.49 before the $200 rebate ... meaning the net would be $522.49 ... with free shipping.

Pretty tempting

[Barry Kirsten]

A stark contrast between countries. As I mentioned in my original post, the R3000 costs AU$1499 in Australia. God that hurts! Unfortunately we see it all the time - the small Australian market with little competition, held to ransom and subsidising smaller profits in countries with larger markets. I buy all my photographic equipment from US companies, and would seriously consider buying electronic products also, but for the supply voltage difference. Such is life.

[mdm]

If its any comfort to you it is worse here. Extortionate Australian banks and supermarkets damn near have a monopoly, or collude with their competition.

[Barry Kirsten]

G'day David, It's no comfort to me. I hate it. When businesses see an opportunity to profit-gouge, they make it sound respectable and ethical by using terms like 'supply and demand' and 'competition'. It's happens all over the world.