Digital BW, The Print

Sorry to be so late to contribute to this thread.
For months I have tested two labs in LA to try and
print the B&W on Lightjet and Lambda.
Here at the studio, we need fairly large prints 24x30
to 30x40 which are very cumbersome to print on fiber
base paper. We tested two labs in LA for months : one
equipped with a Lambda printer with Kodak paper and
one with a Lightjet printer with Fuji Crystal.
At this point I could not tell you if it is the
quality of the operator or the printer or the paper
but the combination Lightjet and Fuji Crystal done by
A&I was by far better. The Lambda prints were very
flat and I like deep blacks as you can see on my
website.
We now routinely use the Lightjet at A&I and  we have
worked out a good workflow which is as following: we
send the digital file with an Epson print to show the
lab where we want the highlights and A&I sends back to
us a 14x18 test print  from our digital file and we
work on the tone of that test print, just like with we
would with color print, that is  put it under the Just
ceiling lightbox and use our set of Kodak viewing
filters. We then give them the correction (e.g. +05
Yellow) and they interpret it to adjust the file
accordingly for the final print.
When the final print comes back to us, we mount it on
archival board, put a very fine texture to it with
special plates to break up the RC smooth look. We than
lacquer the print with a light coat of SureGuard
lacquer. 
And frankly it looks beautiful; it took us months of
testing back and forth with A&I, who has been quite
patient with us and very helpful along that process.
The other beauty of this is that we can retouch the
faces as much as the clients want in Photoshop which
is impossible to do on a conventional print. 

Beno\ufffdt
http://studiocharis.com



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