Page 4 of 12 FirstFirst ... 23456 ... LastLast
Results 31 to 40 of 111

Thread: Piezography: Talk me into/out of it

  1. #31

    Join Date
    Dec 2007
    Location
    klamath falls, oregon
    Posts
    1,728

    Re: Piezography: Talk me into/out of it

    Quote Originally Posted by roscoetuff-Skip Mersereau View Post
    This time of year when the outdoors is less inspiring...
    No, no, no!

    Click image for larger version. 

Name:	P1010035.jpg 
Views:	14 
Size:	71.3 KB 
ID:	210175Click image for larger version. 

Name:	P1010036.jpg 
Views:	12 
Size:	59.8 KB 
ID:	210176Click image for larger version. 

Name:	P1010062.jpg 
Views:	14 
Size:	49.4 KB 
ID:	210177

  2. #32

    Join Date
    Apr 2017
    Location
    Annapolis, Maryland
    Posts
    172

    Re: Piezography: Talk me into/out of it

    Well.... yea.... "unless you have snow" ...which we mostly don't here. Especially like the first one with clumps of trees.

  3. #33

    Join Date
    Dec 2007
    Location
    klamath falls, oregon
    Posts
    1,728

    Re: Piezography: Talk me into/out of it

    But seriously, Skip, I love making prints, and I've worked hard recently at getting my prints where they can be seen. It's just that no one wants to buy them, which is in fact sort of liberating, because then I feel better about hanging them without mats and glazing. And I do make prints for friends - I'm putting one off right now until I get up and running with the Piezography, in the hopes that the results will be better than what I get with Epson ABW.

    One of the main points I was trying (perhaps not so successfully) to make to Michael and JMO is that digital printing CAN be rocket science, but probably doesn't really NEED to be. I believe that one can obtain pretty satisfying prints with a minimum of expense, effort and knowledge. Additional knowledge and effort (and possibly expense) will likely give better results, but with decreasing marginal returns.

    Ken, your measured input is always respected, in spite of what my flippancy about print longevity might lead you to think!

  4. #34

    Join Date
    Sep 2003
    Location
    Massachusetts USA
    Posts
    8,476

    Re: Piezography: Talk me into/out of it

    Quote Originally Posted by roscoetuff-Skip Mersereau View Post
    Ken: ...the curious thing is how folks with less scratch manage to produce high quality with less $'s through technique alone. In some measure, I've begun to wonder about Digital Negatives and Carbon printing - processes not without their costs... but at least less prone to technological change. Do you have an opinion on that? My self-retort has been that I already have a lot of Cone's approach in hand and it remains do-able. Just curious whether you ventured that way yourself BEFORE settling on the Cone ink process?
    Without a calibrated system, we shift the cost in the direction of time and materials, to the end of the process so to speak. As with darkroom printing, where we keep making prints of an image until we converge on the final version. Final for that session anyhow. With a calibrated system, we spend our time and money up-front on equipment and measurement. Either way there's a cost involved. When I was a boy I used to ask for photo paper for my birthday. Now I might ask for a large format self-calibrating printer

    Since you ask...

    If I were to print via Digital Negatives, I'd first consider the Piezography DN system, for "best-in-breed" reasons already stated, and then survey the alternatives.

    As with Platinum/Palladium, I found Carbon printing suits only a portion of my photos. I also don't have the patience required for the process. I'm not grounded enough.

    I started monochrome inkjet printing using an Epson 2200 and its inks. In an effort to mimic the lovely effect of Paul Strand printed books, I created some Photoshop warm-tone Quadtone curves. They were lovely but not perfectly linear and 8-bit only so I had to "converge" on the right settings for every photo, via multiple tries at each print: $$$ Ka-Ching $$$

    Then I tried the Quadtone RIP with the Epson 2200 and those prints were lovelier but as soon as I started to deviate from the published curves, I found the documentation hard to grasp at best and I was unable to get linear prints. More paper and ink used: $$$ Ka-Ching $$$

    Then with an eye to image permanence I got some MIS Carbon inks and a spectrophotometer and made some curves for Quadtone RIP. I had to hobble-together a kit from third party cartridges, syringes etc. I found that documentation even harder to grasp. Nothing worked together. I did a show of 24 photographs with that setup and again, had to "converge" on almost every print. Lots of paper wasted. Most importantly, the profiles I made were always off. More paper and ink used: $$$ Ka-Ching $$$ Finally the inks clogged and ruined my printer. $$$ Ka-Ching $$$

    So I turned to Piezography Carbon, which came with robust support and a complete set of tools, profiles and instructional materials. Everything worked great, right out of the box. Eureka.

    Some of my images aren't suited to with pure carbon pigment and matte finish, so I wanted more flexibility. Just at that time Piezography Pro was introduced which gives more control over image tone with only a modest loss of permanence, since the inks are predominantly carbon anyhow. Following their instructions I was able to flush the printer and replace everything with the new inks with no problems. I was able to experiment with endless paper/coloring schemes and settled on one which gives the look I had wanted originally. And... their profiles are linear.

    Currently I hope I have the best compromise of permanence and image fidelity, but keep my fingers crossed that something better will come along. Thanks to this thread I'm now investigating the self-calibrating HP printers. Maybe they let you make linear monochrome prints which last for a long time, with no heavy lifting, special inks, setup etc.

    Is that too much to ask ?

  5. #35

    Join Date
    Apr 2017
    Location
    Annapolis, Maryland
    Posts
    172

    Re: Piezography: Talk me into/out of it

    H2oman: My printing with Piezo has been kind of "intro", but enough to see there's merit in pushing ahead. Some day I'll make the time to take a class. Boutwell will tutor on line with webex if you're up for that. Been headed there, but then I moved and haven't had time since with all the disruption. But that's starting to pass, and that sort of thing is next on the agenda.

    In any case, I meant to speak to your note re: "who'll want my stuff when I'm gone". Of course we won't be there to see (duh), but I wouldn't be surprised if your kids turn out to be more interested than you think. Even if it's only a memento initially, that sensibility readily expands. As they say, memory is biological not digital - and changes with time. We can find more in the same memory with time as we change and mine them for different things.

  6. #36

    Join Date
    Sep 2012
    Location
    Mt. Pleasant, Wisconsin USA
    Posts
    320

    Re: Piezography: Talk me into/out of it

    Greg Waterman, Thank you for sharing your experiences and perspectives about your process which ends with inkjet prints. I, too, have no children, and so no thought that anyone will want my photos when I ‘fade to black.’ And when my wife and I get COVID vaccine jabs and resume our travel plans, maybe my thoughts about Piezography or other B&W inkjet printing will lose priority. But I’ll continue to ruminate about it, and appreciate this thread.
    ... JMOwens (Mt. Pleasant, Wisc. USA)

    "If people only knew how hard I work to gain my mastery, it wouldn't seem so wonderful at all." ...Michelangelo

  7. #37

    Join Date
    Sep 2014
    Location
    Montreal, Canada
    Posts
    1,993

    Re: Piezography: Talk me into/out of it

    Thanks, h2oman, Ken and everyone for the insight.

    It’s a little daunting at the outset, but I think it will be ok once I dig into it. Regarding the rapid obsolescence of any sort of chip-based equipment, yup that definitely sucks. However we also know generally as technologies mature the upgrades tend to become more incremental and less “revolutionary”. If you have a deep interest in the technology itself and/or have the desire or need to be at the forefront, that’s one thing. My take, at this point, is things have come far enough for my digital/hybrid needs, and that if I buy good stuff and learn to use it well, I’ll be well served for a while. I could be wrong but that’s my guess. I’m as obsessive and meticulous about print quality as it gets, and I would say I’ve seen a small number of digital prints that were just wonderful, at least as good as anything that ever came out of a darkroom.

    In the near term, the primary reasons I want to get into hybrid are 1) I’d like to be able to show/present work online, and 2) {related to (1)} I’d like to start shooting some colour film. I know this is all problematic in the sense you have no control over what a viewer on the other end sees, but I’d still like to be able to do high quality negative scans and process/edit them.

    Digital printing might or might not be a next step, but I wouldn’t mind having a setup that could accommodate that. I will definitely be reading up on Piezography.

    So far I’m considering an Apple Mac Mini, and possibly a professional display. The Mac wouldn’t only be for photography, but I would think it is plenty powerful. Then again, I’m a hybrid photography novice so maybe I’m out to lunch.

    Really sorry about the thread drift.

  8. #38

    Join Date
    Apr 2017
    Location
    Annapolis, Maryland
    Posts
    172

    Re: Piezography: Talk me into/out of it

    Ken's comments drove me to look up the HP Z printers. Read through Dan Wells's review of 4/2020 on "new" printers and he has good things to say on Luminous Landscape. Reports that the "head tech" likely surpasses Canon's, but too few in use to have a lot of experience. Suggests that Canon still works best for the infrequent printer, but Canon's approach is the heads are replaceable... but at a steep price that gets more reasonable with their larger printers. Epson's is the head is a lifetime, but given their clog tendencies might have a shorter life anyway - and these are expensive. He adds that Canon inks are better in blues and Epson in greens.

    FWIW, surprised on one else has tried a different RIP like Imageprint whose software works with Canon's and Epson and my experience a few years back found value in their library of paper profiles. Basically what they do is use the highest end profiling gear to build the curves matching paper to printer and create a library for your match. Used to be they'd run a match for you if they didn't have one you needed. I tended to use art papers from Red River on some recs I'd found, but I'm less hung up about that now that with Cone and QTR I've used and found more common great papers everywhere (Cone, H's and the like baryta and matte). I've had good success with the software. Seems like a lot of the head scratching with QTR is driven to build this sort of compatibility with $50 software (QTR). Monochrome... will always retain the question of whether we can't get the same upgrade from 8 or 10 black inks that we see in a monochrome sensor (like Leica M Monochrome or similar).

    So I'm in my own quandry. But fwiw, I won't be trying to put a 200 pound printer into my old home's basement. Can't get it in the door. Can hardly fit me in there.... let alone big bulky stuff. Least that's where I am for now.

  9. #39

    Join Date
    Dec 2007
    Location
    klamath falls, oregon
    Posts
    1,728

    Re: Piezography: Talk me into/out of it

    Ken Lee is an absolute gentleman: "How long we want our images to last, may depend on our artistic aspiration, our intended audience and clients, and our professional integrity."

    No worries about thread drift, this is a discussion forum. And now, in case you haven't been able to tell so far, I'll admit that I'm an absolute hacker at photography! This thread has motivated me to learn about color working spaces, ICC profiles, and all that other techno stuff that I'm really deficient in. I'm waiting until tomorrow (), but as a start I located a book I have on the basics and found an Adobe white paper on "The role of working spaces in Adobe applications."

    One thing I do have a wealth of experience in, though, is abusing Epson printers. I often let my printer go too long without printing, and once I even did something in the neighborhood of 4-6 months. It appeared that I had clogged the heads, but a power cleaning cycle brought it back to life. I can't remember how long I've had my printer, but it is a 3800 from before the 3880 existed. I have a friend who does a better job than me at printing regularly - he has had a 3800 for longer than I have and it still serves him well. The extra 3800 I was just given probably wasn't used in a year or more, and the nozzle check was bad. I did a few normal cleanings, no better. Did the cleaning routine shown in an Inkjet Mall video, still bad. Ran a power cleaning cycle and it was perfect! I'm sure some have had bad experiences, but I'm putting a word in for Epson, in terms of reliability.

  10. #40

    Join Date
    Feb 2008
    Posts
    397

    Re: Piezography: Talk me into/out of it

    Quote Originally Posted by Ken Lee View Post
    Sergey - ...
    On the self-calibrating HP printers, have you tried making any images with 128-step grayscale targets (or even 50-step targets) ? Can you recommend someone who prints with one of these, to whom I can send a sample for printing, so that I can compare results ?
    Ken,

    I have not. Years ago I built my color profiles for 2-3 papers that I use, using both out of the box profiling capabilities of the printer as well as a third party profiling solution. Found the results produced by the in-house made profiles visually better to what I could obtain with color profiles provided by the paper manufactures and that was as far I went with exploring, testing or stretching the printer's capabilities.
    Sure I can make test prints for you. Should be a no brainier if printing of these images does not require profiling of a new paper (sending untagged TIFs to the printed with color management off). If profiling of a new specific paper is required it will be more involving and may take some time.
    Please feel free to email me the details.

    Best,
    SergeyT

    And, BTW, if an image contains pixels with R=G=B values (neutral greys) , the HP printers will use only Grey ink-set (2 - 4 inks depending on the paper) to print these pixels. No other colored inks will be involved.

Similar Threads

  1. Get me started in piezography
    By Darin Boville in forum Digital Processing
    Replies: 8
    Last Post: 7-Oct-2013, 00:52
  2. Piezography K7/MPS and IJC/OPM?
    By Eirik Berger in forum Digital Processing
    Replies: 1
    Last Post: 6-Feb-2010, 20:06
  3. Piezography Printing
    By ageorge in forum Digital Hardware
    Replies: 3
    Last Post: 16-Jan-2007, 22:56
  4. Piezography Printing
    By Ben Chase in forum Digital Hardware
    Replies: 141
    Last Post: 4-Jan-2007, 14:49
  5. Piezography
    By paulr in forum Digital Hardware
    Replies: 8
    Last Post: 31-Oct-2004, 02:06

Bookmarks

Posting Permissions

  • You may not post new threads
  • You may not post replies
  • You may not post attachments
  • You may not edit your posts
  •