Digital BW, The Print

Hello Martin,

I have seen the responses to your question and none of them seem to 
mention maybe a change of inks. I haven't had an Epson printer but 
one week and am very impressed with it. I don't have the 2200, but 
rather the old 1280. I had a Canon s750 for my black and white 
printing and almost went bananas trying to get a neutral black and 
white print from it. I discovered, via Clayton Jones website and 
messages to this newsgroup, a method called "Black Only" printing 
that uses only the black ink cartridge. With the Canon printer the 
only way to use black only was to choose plain paper for printing. 
The Epson will let me choose black only for any paper type. Even 
this method does not yield a neutral black and white, but the 
slightly brown tone due to the carbon color itself. Now back to 
neutral color black and white printing, I use MIS Variable Mix ink 
cartridges and a printing curve by Paul Roark; which is also 
available from the MIS website www.inksupply.com. I use either 
Office Depot Presentation Paper (Matte) or Epson Enhanced Matte 
Paper. Both papers give neutral prints with the inkset mentioned 
above. Bulk ink is available for refilling the cartrdges. Look 
around on different newsgroups and I think you will find MIS 
mentioned often. Another avenue to take is Jon Cone's PiezographyBW 
software and ink combination coming on sale about the first week of 
April. It will support Epson and Canon printers . The releases will 
be staggered for different printers and not all will be supported at 
the first release. Check on that website also www.piezography.com. 
The software appears to let you do everything from within Photoshop 
itself and export it to the printer via the Piezography software 
and/or plugin. 

Your friend in Photography

Johnny Eades



--- In 
DigitalBlackandWhiteThePrint@yahoogroups.com, "martinshakeshaft" 
<martin.shakeshaft@v...> wrote:
> I know from the archive that this subject has been covered before 
but 
> I have still to see a definitive answer.
> 
> Is it possible to get neutral black and white prints with the Epson
> 2100/2200?
> 
> Well here I am one box of paper down and I have still to see a 
black 
> and white print that I like!
> 
> Straight out of the box I find the black and white prints I am 
> getting are too magenta, especially with the Semi gloss paper 
samples 
> included with the printer. So I tried Ilford Smooth Gloss. These 
were 
> a bit better but still not what I wanted. I have surfed around the 
> net for advice, including Redriver and luminous-landscape and 
whilst 
> the quality improves when I hold my prints next to a traditional 
> darkroom print the differences are all too depressingly obvious. 
> There are colour casts in some tonal ranges.....
> 
> So I turned to the Grey Balancer. Several prints later and a lot 
less 
> ink and I still don't appear to be any further on towards a 
totally 
> neutral, Ilford Multigrade looking print.
> 
> Even prints printed with black ink only are not neutral, they look 
> slightly cyan in the darker tonal ranges.
> 
> I phoned Lyson Inks who say a Black and white set of inks will be 
> available in the next couple of weeks for the 2100/2200, so is 
this 
> my only answer? I am disappointed if this is the route I have to 
take 
> as I did want to be able to print colour and black and white, but 
> black and white is my bread and butter work at the moment.
> 
> Any help would be appreciated.
> 
> Martin