Digital BW, The Print

To: "daintreeriver2002" <workmantx@...>

>I'm happy with my color prints, but not so with 
>my black and whites.  I would greatly appreciate any tips or sources 
>of information to successfully print black and white
>photographs.

I had a long quest for good B&W prints, starting with a Kodak dye-sub (streaking in uniformly light-colred areas like skies) and than a Fuji Pictrography 4000 (compressed dark tones and highlights), until I moved to Piezography. I find that the Piezography software gives the best gradation and smoothest tones that I have seen. I did find the Piezography inks a little too warm, and you may want to try the new Selenium Piezotones.

My recommendation would be to get another 1280 and dedicate it to Piezography with a CIS. Alternatively, you may want to get the new 2200 for color (because print life is suppposed to be 80 years) and use your 1280 for Piezography, that is if the color gamut of the 2200 really turns out to be as goood as that of the 1280.

Another possible complication: the new 2100 is supposed to have a facility for making neutral B&W prints that are not possible with the 1280 with the original color inks. You could wait to see how the 2100 performs on B&W, but I am sceptical whether it will have the smoothness of the Piezography driver, particulalrly in the mid-tones. But if you want good information on how the 21000 really performs on B&W, you may have too wait until you can see prints with your owjn eyes, or until some people like Martin Wesley write a review. You can't trust just any review, on the Luminous Landscape forum, for example, when the 1280 first came out, there were several people raving about how it produced "perfectly neutral" B&W right out of the box.

--Mitch/Bangkok