Digital BW, The Print

Hi,

Nicholas Hartmann was kind enough to send me a print that he made 
using only black ink by setting the Epson driver to "Black Only". He 
printed with the black from the MIS VM ink set.

In all honesty I am amazed. Stunned. Everything I think I know tells 
me this should not work but it does. The print, on top of being a 
wonderful shot, is great. I think I had visions of something like my 
first efforts to print a photo using my 300 dpi laser printer. It may 
be that this method works because of the excellent dither pattern in 
the Epson driver.

As an exercise I took a 4000 dpi scan from a Tmax 400 35mm negative 
and printed it out using the Mono-Ink method and as a MIS VM quad-
tone. Are they different? Yes, but the differences are purely 
aesthetic. The Mono-Ink print has a very nice crisp feel to it. The 
quad-tone has smoother tonal transitions but looks less sharp in 
comparison. Two equally valid interpretations of the image.

Can you see the dot pattern in the Mono-Ink print? With my print and 
Nick's under normal viewing distances you would take it to be image 
grain in the low to mid tones. In the highlights it is there but is 
not visible without magnification.

As far as I am concerned Mono-Ink printing is a fully legitimate 
medium for producing B&W prints. Might be a good place for beginners 
to start with their color inkjet printers.

Please give this a try. Pick an image with some grain. In your 
histogram make sure that you are not bunched up on either end. This 
method will be more impacted by this than others.

I hope that Nick is out there and will post his full workflow from 
film to scan to Photoshop to print. I hope he joins the print 
exchange and sends out a Mono-Ink print.

Thanks,

Martin Wesley