Digital BW, The Print

I recall when I had a very active wet dark room, several different types 
of paper, several different chemicals, different toners, etc. Then there 
were all the tools for dodging and burning. To get a good print from a 
virigin negative it took at least 10 sheets of paper and sometimes two 
or 3 sessons.

I'm not sure there was anything "simple-off-the-shelf" about it.

I settled on a 1280 vs. 2200 since a) I don't do much color and if I 
want to it will be for snapshots so I'll just get a lowcost letter size 
printer for that. It also seems that printing B&W with color inks is a 
mindfield of potential problems and I selected a good printer with good 
B&W support with black and white inks.

I started out with the VM since I do like the ability to be able to 
"tone" my prints to whatever warmth or coolness that goes best with the 
image. There was a bit of a learning curve but I must say, using 
software tools on scanned 4x5 images to produce a final print is much 
easier and effective than all the wet darkroom techniques.

Where I see the biggest area for progress is in the papers and I think 
there will be progress in the future on that front. I would like to see 
a good quality semigloss finish that didn't look different for every 
viewing angle.  But all in all I'm satisified enough that all I use my 
darkroom for is developing negatives.

Truman

peter nelson wrote:

>I recently bought a 2200 because some reviews said it did
>good black and white printing.  But it has so much metamerism
>that the black and white prints it makes are unacceptable.
>
>My darkroom is just a dark corner of the basement and it needs
>major upgrades in plumbing, electricity, and ventilation.
>I was hoping to go all-digital and skip the upgrade but It
>seems I'm still waiting for a simple-off-the-shelf solution
>to digital black and white printing.
>
>I like the 2200 because of its pigment-based inks, wide
>format, 48-mil thick media spec, and flat feed tray.
>
>Reading this forum and Photo.Net I can see people are desperate
>and try a zillion different approaches to black and white ranging
>from black-only to expensive RIPs to profilers to hextone printing.
>Everyone has their special approach and no one method seems
>to be endorsed by more than a few percent of users.
>
>I'm reluctant to go to a hextone system because of all the hassles
>I've heard about with it; the need to maintain TWO big, wide format
>printers, the risk of voiding my extended warranties with third-party
>inks, questions that have been raised here about color stability,
>blackness, and metamerism, and the chip wars between ink
>makers and Epson (Epson makes its money on INKS not printers).
>
>My question is should I upgrade my darkroom and stick with darkroom
>prints for B+W or will we SOON see a straightforward, off
>the shelf solution to digital black-and-white printing?
>
>---peter
>
>
>
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