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Thread: new digital neg system from cone

  1. #1

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    new digital neg system from cone

    have you all seen this?

    http://piezodn.inkjetmall.com/

    "PiezoDN is a set of tools and QuadtoneRIP curves for printing and calibrating high-quality negatives using Piezography ink. PiezoDN is also a set of quality standards and ideas for revolutionizing both darkroom printing and digital printing as a whole."

  2. #2

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    Re: new digital neg system from cone

    Andy...

    Thank-you, for posting this information about 'PiezoDN'. Greatly appreciated!
    Regards, -Tim.

  3. #3

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    Re: new digital neg system from cone

    Sounds great ! And very interesting. However, no indication of the cost.

    Clearly, a "work in progress" with kinks to be ironed out along the way.
    Important to note the timeline schedule for certain milestones and functionality with different hardware.

    Perhaps best suited for those already familiar with piezography.

    I'm not a very good Guinea pig ! So, I'll probably wait till the system is further along and perfected.

    I don't know Jon Cone, but I'm impressed by his dedication and many years of research that raised the bar w/r/t high quality inkjet printing.
    I know just enough to be dangerous !

  4. #4

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    Re: new digital neg system from cone

    It may add to darkroom printing, but I don't think that it replaces it.

    The test is whether it can convincingly print silver gelatin prints. That would be interesting to see.

  5. #5

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    Re: new digital neg system from cone

    i'm really looking forward to trying this out!

  6. #6

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    Re: new digital neg system from cone

    If you are interested in printing on silver gelatin paper using digital negatives, you should check out my monograph on making digital negatives with QTR and Epson Inks.. It is free, and does not require switching out inks. I have had feed back from a lot of people who have tried this and they report success. The profiles and curves work with a variety of silver gelatin paper.

    Mike

  7. #7
    bob carnie's Avatar
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    Re: new digital neg system from cone

    I would be interested in a ink system that has the same blocking power and sharpness as silver film, I am producing enlarged contact film for silver with very
    good results, I use a Durst Lambda with 20 inch and 30 inch Rollie ortho 25 developed in HC110. We are able to make up to 28 inch x 40 inch live area on film.
    I also make inkjet negs but have not seen great results to silver gelatin - basically a lot of light bleed through the ink.

    We are using Ron Reeders QTR system on a Epson 7800- though great for alternative rag prints , not so great for silver contact.

    Michael - could you describe how your system is different to allow better blocking power using ink sets and pictorico?

  8. #8

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    Re: new digital neg system from cone

    Quote Originally Posted by bob carnie View Post

    We are using Ron Reeders QTR system on a Epson 7800- though great for alternative rag prints , not so great for silver contact.
    Bob,

    Are you still printing digital negatives on the 7800 with the Matte Black ink installed? If so, switching to PK would improve greatly the smoothness of your negatives on any process that uses smooth papers. You would have to create a new profile, of course.

    Sandy
    For discussion and information about carbon transfer please visit the carbon group at groups.io
    [url]https://groups.io/g/carbon

  9. #9

    Re: new digital neg system from cone

    Quote Originally Posted by sanking View Post
    Bob,

    Are you still printing digital negatives on the 7800 with the Matte Black ink installed? If so, switching to PK would improve greatly the smoothness of your negatives on any process that uses smooth papers. You would have to create a new profile, of course.

    Sandy
    Yes, I'm curious about this too because I can get densities in the 3.5 or higher range using stock Epson PK ink on film. That's way too high for SG printing, so if I were looking to print SG, I'd be looking are developing a 'shades of gray' approach that meets the density requirements you want. In the case of SG, it may be possible to use a 7-ink printer and set the maximum somewhat higher for other processes (gum and pt/pd), and then only use the lower density inks for SG. That would help avoid gritty highlights associated with high density black ink that is too high at the individual ink droplet level.

    I recently put together an all-black inkset for my old 4800 with help from Sandy, but I took a slightly different approach than he did because I was focusing on pt/pd and he focused on carbon.

    Anyway, the point is that I used all 7 inks to put it together, but I'll bet that a solid negative could be produced using 5 inks for pt/pd and gum, and similarly for SG. What could be done is set the ink densities so that there are a few dedicated to pt/pd and a few for SG, and the rest are used for both. Two of each dedicated, and three used for both produces 5 inks in each system without changing the inks.

    Something like this:




    #1_________#2_________#3___________#4_______________#5___________#6___________#7______
    pt/pd

    PK_______.5PK/.5LK______LK_______.66LK/.33LLK________________________LLK

    SG

    _______________________LK_______.66LK/.33LLK______.66LK/.33LLK_______LLK_______.5LLK/.5base

    This will allow you a wide latitude for laying down ink in both density ranges but still have reasonable steps in density so that the highlights aren't gritty, and the shadows have enough ink to not be real spotty as well.

    You could use #5 in the pt/pd as well, but it is probably unnecessary, based on my tests and the general low response curve in the shadows for pt/pd. This, in particular, is one place where I made a substantial change from the normal approach that many people have used.

    You probably wouldn't want to use #1 at all in the SG, and probably not #2. I don't recall the Dmax that this blend should produce, so I don't know how useful it will be for SG.

    An alternate is to do 2 steps between the PK and the LK instead of one, and then just do a single step between LK and LLK. All of this will require some basic testing to determine what appears to be the best approach.


    ---Michael

  10. #10

    Re: new digital neg system from cone

    I'm the one who R&D'd the system with Jon and did all the math and programming. (I've been a lurker here for a long while fyi.)

    PiezoDN is drastically different than any other dig-neg process as it takes into account the full trip from camera to print including film acuity requirements, durability, physical ink bit-depth, 16bit calibration and print-path, nozzle frequency, dMax of final ink (4 to 5 inks overlapping in the dMax makes a black that is significantly more opaque than what you can make with epson OEM) and much more.

    For those who print in the darkroom and use LF equipment, this is simply a logical extension of that idea and process.

    We built a silver curve for it for the Epson 4900 that works well (Bessy 23c, Ilf MG IV, 16sec, f8, Sprint Dev is your baseline). Alan Vlach up in Maine can speak for the silver curve more eloquently than I. Another great photographer and artist (Ray Meeks) has used an early early variant of it at Light Work when I was managing that lab. He actually enlarged 4x5 versions of this negative but frankly I think it's best suited for contact-printing.

    Our main goal was to build a truly professional system for Platinum and Palladium. We inadvertently also profiled full tonal separation into Cyanotype, Ziatype (one variant), Salted, and a few others.

    We are Gold Master Release Candidate 1 as of tonight and will be releasing version 1 tomorrow morning. Over the intervening months and years we will slowly add support for all Piezography-capable printers and all hand-process types. Hopping on board (cost of $75) gives you access to all the tools and updates and community forever.

    regards,
    Walker
    Last edited by WalkerBlackwell; 2-Jun-2016 at 16:25. Reason: typos
    ------------------
    Walker Blackwell

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