black and white printing services

[Scott Kathe]

Does anyone know of a company that makes good 11x14 black and white inkjet prints from digital files. I've used WCI for color work and I've been very satisfied, they do 12x18" prints for just under $20 but I'm looking to spend less. A local place has an Epson 4000 and charges about $14 for an 11x14 but I'm concerned about color casts. I'd love my own printer but that would be yet another skill I will have to pick up. In the long run it would definitely be worth it but the cost of paper and ink and the fact that I wouldn't be making prints that often in the next year or two count against my own printer.

Scott

[matthew blais]

My local lab has an epson with the cone MIS inkset for B&W.
Don't know the costs, but the owner (Tony) is pretty cool..

In So Cal..
http://www.intellicolorphoto.com/

[Joanna Carter]

Anyone who uses an Epson K3 inkset printer can produce excellent B&W prints with no colour casts. You do not need any special B&W inks. To produce 11x14 prints, an Epson R2400 would be a great investment and would more than likely pay for itself with sufficient throughput.

[Scott Kathe]

Anyone who uses an Epson K3 inkset printer can produce excellent B&W prints with no colour casts. You do not need any special B&W inks. To produce 11x14 prints, an Epson R2400 would be a great investment and would more than likely pay for itself with sufficient throughput.

I have definitely thought about going that route.

One concern is that I wouldn't be using the printer on a daily or even weekly basis so I'm concerned about the nozzles plugging up.

The second concern is that my teenage daughters would want me to make prints for them (or god forbid-make them themselves) and use the printer for their school reports.

And third, one of the girls is a really good soccer player and my wife always ends up in charge of having team prints made. She has them made at CostCo but still doesn't understand why players on the edges are cropped out of a landscape 5x7 print but they are there in the 4x6. On the other hand maybe that's a good pitch to get a nice printer

Scott

[Joanna Carter]

I have definitely thought about going that route.

One concern is that I wouldn't be using the printer on a daily or even weekly basis so I'm concerned about the nozzles plugging up.

I have found that, if you do not switch the printer off at all, the nozzles are a lot less likely to clog, taking only one autoclean at the most to get them going after a couple of months without use.

[Scott Kathe]

I have found that, if you do not switch the printer off at all, the nozzles are a lot less likely to clog, taking only one autoclean at the most to get them going after a couple of months without use.

Joanna,

Thanks, that is good to know. I have found the same thing on a cheap little Epson R200 here at work.

Scott

[Lenny Eiger]

Anyone who uses an Epson K3 inkset printer can produce excellent B&W prints with no colour casts. You do not need any special B&W inks. To produce 11x14 prints, an Epson R2400 would be a great investment and would more than likely pay for itself with sufficient throughput.

I would respectfully disagree. There is a huge difference between color prints made by color inks and those made with black and white. I check Scott's site and he has lots of pictures made in the snow. If he wants to hold clean values with detail in the highlights, I would find someone with 6 or 7 dilutions of black and white inks....

There are a lot of printers who could help you. Custom printers tend do be a little expensive. If you find one that will teach you a little along the way you can ultimately get what you want and get trained as well.

Lenny

[sanking]

It appears to me, and Lenny should feel free to correct me if I am wrong, is that implicit in his answer below is a concept that a B&W print from an inkjet printer should be perfectly neutral in color. If that is the kind of aesthetic one wants, fine, but during the entire history of photography artists have used various toners, sometimes for archival purposes and other times to change the color or tone of the print.

In my own work, where I make my own carbon tissues by mixing whatever pigments I want to obtain a certain tone or color, I generally avoid perfectly neutral tones. They sometimes work well with certain subjects, but for the most part I find neutral tones boring. I am personally much more attracted to colors that just off-neutral, or even split toning which can be really beautiful.

Sandy King

If he wants to hold clean values with detail in the highlights, I would find someone with 6 or 7 dilutions of black and white inks....


Lenny

[Lenny Eiger]

It appears to me, and Lenny should feel free to correct me if I am wrong, is that implicit in his answer below is a concept that a B&W print from an inkjet printer should be perfectly neutral in color. If that is the kind of aesthetic one wants, fine, but during the entire history of photography artists have used various toners, sometimes for archival purposes and other times to change the color or tone of the print. Sandy King

I actually like toned prints very much, even cyanotypes, and gravure, definitely. I didn't mean to suggest that color casts were any lesser, unless one doesn't want them - or I suppose in some cases if they can't control them as they like.

It's really the detail I was alluding to. When I reformulated the Piezotone inks from 4 inks to 6, the highlights held detail I didn't even know was there.

My prints aren't neutral at all - my favorite is a Cone "carbon sepia" look - a bit warm. I find it inviting. I do get asked for neutral black and white prints fairly often, however.

Lenny

[Scott Kathe]

OMG please don't look at my website, it's a work in progress, just like my photography I should be working on updating the site right now, a lot of it is old 135 stuff and I have a lot of nice large format work to add.

I must admit that I have learned a lot and have a lot more learning to do. I do like snow and I am fascinated by running water so I am working on controlling my highlights through exposure and development. And then there is the next step, the print. I like the thought of a dedicated B&W printer that makes use of the inks developed by Paul Roark and sold by MIS (I have a R220 and do BO prints with the MIS inks but I'm limited to 8x10s and the prints are kind of coarse) or the Cone system inkset. I would rather have someone else do the prints since there is a learning curve there as well. It would be ideal to have control from the beginning of the process to end and I do want to do that eventually. Now, I'm trying to focus on composition, development, scanning and ps work along with keeping at my website. Making prints myself is the next big step.

Scott