Digital BW, The Print

----- Original Message ----- 
From: "Truman Prevatt" <tprevatt@...>
To: <DigitalBlackandWhiteThePrint@yahoogroups.com>
Sent: Wednesday, May 14, 2003 7:58 PM
Subject: Re: [Digital BW] Re: Stupid newbie questions


>
> The tinkering done in inkjet printing is a drop in the bucket compared
> to the wet darkroom. There never has been, probably never will be, a
> turn key system to producing a good image on a piece of paper - be it
> light on silver or ink on cotton fibers.
>
> Truman

Martin,

I would have to agree with Truman on this. When I last cleaned out my
darkroom I had to toss a 18" high stack of boxes of different kinds of 11x14
silver fiber paper I had tried! On top of that the currently available
systems for dedicated B&W printing have really improved over the last couple
of years not to mention the last 4 or 5 years.

A great deal of the confusion comes from the variation in what people
consider easy to use and what they consider good quality. This is not helped
by discussing it on a text based user group!

At the moment I would point a new comer in the direction of a dedicated B&W
inkjet printer. I would recommend the Epson 1280 with a continuous inking
system (CIS) with Inkjetmall Piezotone inks and the R9 pluggin from
bwguys.com or Inkjetmall's plugin which is the same thing. It's not a
perfect system and not the cheapest but I think that it is the easiest way
to start as of today. Need to save some money substitute MIS FS inks. Need
to save more money go with MIS-VM or Ultratone inks and use the free RGB
separation curves but be prepared to do a bit more image tweaking. All are
equal in terms of mechanical type problems such as clogging and banding.
While still an issue it is generally minor compared to a couple of years
ago. In a few months my opinion may change as new products finally reach the
market.

If you are having trouble accessing the group homepage get in touch with me
off-list. There is not a lot I can do but sometimes I can help.

Martin Wesley