Digital BW, The Print

At last, after decades of darkroom printing and years of mental 
preparation (I have been lurking on this list for 6 years), I am now 
starting to produce my first serious digital prints.

I recently bought an Epson 1400, a box of Hot Press Natural, and 
everything needed to make my first Carbon-6 batch (thank you, Paul).

But first, I wanted to fool around a bit with the Claria inks and a few 
boxes of Epson Archival Matte I had bought years ago for proofing the 
Hahnem\ufffdhle. Thus I set up QTR for some BO printing with the Claria black 
ink.

To begin with, I am stunned by the quality and resolution of details 
this printer is capable of reproducing. Some pictures taken with my 
Nikon D700 on a tripod look like what used to be an achievement in the 
old days with medium format or even 4x5".

On the other hand, d-max is less than impressive. I get a value of 1.56 
(datacolor Spyder3) resp. 1.50 (x-rite 810, calibrated, must be a bit 
old...).

Now, as I said, this is not my final ink/paper setup, and maybe I should 
just move on. But still, I see this as an exercise in my learning 
process and I wonder if I did anything wrong?

Here's what I used at 2880dpi:
- Ink limit 60 (it just wouldn't go higher beyond that,
   even dropped a bit at 65)
- No black boost, since I was afraid the value might drop with
   too much ink (see above)
- HighLight 15, Shadow 15, Gamma 2 (this brought me very close
   to linear, linearisation afterwards was minimal)

Maybe this is just a combo to avoid? What experiences do others have?

Louis