Digital BW, The Print

Well, I'm psyched.

I just made a pictorico negative with a C80 printer I bought off of Epay
last week for printing snapshots for my wife. It's a 4 color pigment desktop
size, there are a bunch getting dumped on ebay at about $100 each, new in
the box along with $45 worth of ink that comes with.

Both of my biggest problems with previous negative making attempts appear to
be gone.

Apparently the 2880 dpi is a major improvement over the 1160 I was using
when your printing on zero dot gain material like the pictorico OHP.
Artifacts are way down in the mud with this printer.

Most of all, the curve I need to apply to straighten out the density's on
the pictorico is very, very tame compared to what I was doing with the Epson
dye and peizo inks. This is a biggee, the old curve took such a wild swing
at the dense end I found it almost impossible to avoid posterization in the
light tones of the resulting print. This curve is so reasonable compared to
that.

I'm able to get a 1.3 density max (densitometer) with these inks, and just
made a P.O.P. Zia print on Rives BFK (treated with Stuart Melvins oxalic
acid coat), I overexposed this print, but it looks like I may be able to get
a full range of tones for this process that takes a good 1.8 or so density
units, this may be due to a difference in opacity between  u.v. and visible
light for these inks. The jury's still out on this one, but worse case I may
need to go to more contrasty ingredients for my coatings.

So Mike, thanks for the kick in the pants your note provided. I'd really
like to see how your 1280 and 10000 curves look.

Does anyone know which wide carriage model the C80 is akin to?

Larry

-----Original Message-----
From: mkravit [mailto:mjkaia@...]
Sent: Saturday, June 29, 2002 1:35 PM
To: DigitalBlackandWhiteThePrint@yahoogroups.com
Subject: [Digital BW] For Paul: Digital Silver / Platinum


--- In DigitalBlackandWhiteThePrint@y..., "Paul Roark" <
paul.roark@v...> wrote:
> Stephen,
>
> You wrote:
>
> >Have you tried your MIS dye mix with Pictoro media,
> >especially the transparent media. Some of us are still
> >looking for the holy grail for digital negative making.
>
> Yes, and the ink densities that work on paper don't work well
on the film.
> I've increased the midtone ink densities so that the steps in
the ramp are
> close, but there appears to be non-linear absorption
compared to the
> pigmented inks.  I'm not sure without a separate profile that I'm
going to
> be able to tame the combination.  (Since I'm about to take off
for a week, I
> probably won't have more information for a while.)
>
> >I suspect the 2880 printers will have a slight advantage if you

Paul,

I have been getting very nice results utilizing Burkholders Curve
for the 1280 and tweeking it a bit. On Pictorico film and Epson
dye, my silver prints are visually indestinguishable from the
enlarged negative prints. Except of course, all of the
manipulations are already complete on the digital negative.

I am now working on silver and platinum curves for my  Epson
10000.  The platinum prints are stunning.  Yesterday I made a
17"x22" platinum negative on Pictorico film. Pictorico has just
released a the film in a 24" roll size.

The 1280 negatives look very close to the 10000. The curves are
a bit different, but the results are very close.  I am very excited
about the results I have been getting. No more building enlarged
negatives to meet the contrast requirements of platinum.

Mike



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