Digital BW, The Print

Robert,

That's a tough question. I am hypersensitive to print hue and my search for just the right ink (or silver paper for that matter) seems endless. I like both of the blends better than either the Standard or the Neutral FS ink sets. Neither blend is quite what I am looking for but I could work with either one comfortably. I favor the 50/50 a bit over the 80/20 but the 80/20 might be a better choice if warming is a concern. Or perhaps a 70/30 or 60/40 or ?

I am reluctant to compare them to silver prints. I don't think that any inkjet prints vary in hue or have the same chromatic complexity as a silver print. I really prefer to look at them as separate mediums. I do think that people transitioning from silver printing will probably be more comfortable with the cooler Neutral or 80/20 blend and people coming form platinum printing would be more comfortable with the 50/50 blend or the Standard.

To give you some hard information I have posted an Excel file that includes sensitometry data from 21 step wedges of the Neutral FS, 20/80 blend, 50/50 blend, Standard FS, Piezo, Oriental VC selenium toned and Oriental VC un-toned. The Oriental silver paper data are from enlargements of a 21-step Stauffer step wedge done 10 years ago. It should also be noted that the Piezo step wedge was printed about 7 months ago on a different batch of EAM and does show some characteristic warming while the MIS wedges were printed about 10 days ago. Readings were done with a Spectrocam photospectrometer.

It is interesting that some of the inkjet wedges measure out closer to neutral than either silver fiber wedge.

You can find the file in:

Files > Ink Sets, reviews and techniques > MIS FS 

at the group's homepage 

Martin Wesley
http://www.borderless-photos.de/guests.html

  ----- Original Message ----- 
  From: Robert Morrison 
  To: DigitalBlackandWhiteThePrint@yahoogroups.com 
  Sent: Tuesday, April 23, 2002 9:57 PM
  Subject: Re: [Digital BW] Cooling off the MIS-FS inks?


  Thanks, Martin.  What's your subjective impression of these blends?  The
  gray wedges are most helpful...thanks for that...can you compare to
  traditional photographic processes...paper?

  It would be interesting to see fades on these blends.  I'm assuming that a
  50/50 FS/FS-N blend would warm half as much as the FS alone...but it would
  be nice to see this in Paul's fade test.

  Robert

  snip earlier)


[Non-text portions of this message have been removed]