Digital BW, The Print

Just a comment: yep, with IP5 it's dead on neutral, and yes dots in
highlights, which my MIS 1280/VM prints don't have, but come on now,
we are talking teeny teeny weeny here. If you are scanning in film,
worry about the film grain more (my opinion, others disagree).

I think Paul Roark's work with the MIS UC version has great promise
though I haven't myself seen any output yet. One thing that concerns
me is that AFAIK it is for 1160 and 1280 printers. And I've been
finding that there HAS to be a difference in the head design of the
2200- it just simply doesn't ever get clogs. Heck I've only had to do
about four  or five cleanings max in 3 months to get a clear nozzle
check. Otherwise the checks are perfect without having to clean.
Voodoo. And no windex-parking pad tricks up my sleeve, ladies and
gentlemen..<g>

I do have a theory that if you don't use the 2200 Epson driver to
print a purge pattern now and then, the printer will not do an
automatic cleaning- you know, when it makes cleaning noises when you
didn't tell it to, like when you first turn it on or hit print? IOW,
IP5 may not have a built in command to "run a cycle after ten prints
or so", and so I got banding in the middle of four prints on IP5.
Solved easily by just running the Epson driver on a purge pattern or
maybe the rare cleaning cycle.

So I wonder if Paul will come up with an all grey UC something to fit
the 2200.
Jim H.




--- In DigitalBlackandWhiteThePrint@yahoogroups.com, "Peter Nelson"
<peter@s...> wrote:
> --- In DigitalBlackandWhiteThePrint@yahoogroups.com, "rvsatzuma" 
> <rvsatzuma@y...> wrote:
> > I recently acquired an epson 2200 to print Black and White images 
> from high 
> > end drum scans. The 2200 is advertised to be Epson's best non 
> commercial 
> > product: BUT I did not know of metamerism.
> 
> You would if you had visited either this forum or the
> Photo.net Digital Darkroom group first!    Don't feel bad  -
> I got conned, too.   I read several reviews on places
> like Luminous Landscape talking about how Epson had
> solved the metamerism problem.   I didn't know then how
> much L.L. gets carried away by their own highly irrational
> exuberance.
> 
> 
> > Epson technical does not have an answer other than 
> > metamerism is in the nature of the ultrachrome inks.
> 
> Then how do they explain how the IP RIP can print
> black and white on the 2200 using the stock inks 
> and exhibits no metamerism?    Allegedly so can Epson's
> OWN RIP, although I'd really appreciate it if someone 
> would mail me a sample to evaluate!
> 
> >  The sales staff at Samy's suggested the advanced 
> > version of ImagePrint 5.0 RIP at $1,000.00,  but did
> > not provide a convincing demonstration 
> 
> One of the members here, Tom Fors, sent me an IP RIP
> B+W sample and it looks very nice indeed - perfectly
> neutral, excellent shadow detail, no metamerism.  The
> dither patern is a bit coarser than the stock Epson one
> but I didn't think that was a big problem for large prints.
> 
> But the IP RIP price is too rich for my blood.   Epson
> released a driver for the 2000 (which had such bad
> metamerism that there are reliable reports of ex-hippies
> from the 1960's who checked themselves into treatment 
> centers after seeing the metamerism because they thought
> they were having acid-trip flashbacks) that is designed
> to reduce the metamerism, also by using a coarser dither
> that apparently omits the most offending inks.  So one
> might HOPE they would issue a fixed driver for the 2200.
> I.e., we can dream on.