Digital BW, The Print

On 3/26/03 6:55 PM, "Antonis Ricos" <antonisphoto@...> wrote:

> The good news is you don't need anything more than an old-fashioned bw
> densitometer, no color, no colorimeter or even transmission model needed. I
> have an X-Rite 810 (from eBay), and hear that these go for under $500  these
> days. It is of course a color instrument, but I use it on "visual", meaning
> grayscale.  The only thing to watch out for is that the instrument  you buy
> can 
> read well into the higher dmax numbers and that it comes with its own
> calibration plaque. Some of the little  colorimeters (like X-Rite's Swatchbook
> and the like) may not have a robust enough lighting system to read shadows
> reliably. 

Yeah...don't buy a spectrophotometer like the spectrocam, either for this
application.  I have one and it doesn't read reliably above 1.7.  I also
have a X-Rite 810 which I bought on ebay for $300.

You can use the profiles with the free driver...and I suppose you could
eball things like people frequently do with the RGB workflows...but a
densitometer will be necessary to get you into professional output land.

Robert