Digital BW, The Print

--- In DigitalBlackandWhiteThePrint@yahoogroups.com, "Martin Wesley" 
> "Tinkering" is optional in digital printing as well.
> You can take any quality computer printer and use the 
> "Black Only" setting to get a nice B&W print. 

There are very few people who would agree with you that black-only 
produces a "nice" print.   Those who do like black-only fall into 
one of two camps:

1.  Poor eyesight so they can't see the dots or midtone texturing.

2.  They LIKE the dots and texturing - it either reminds them of 
film grain (which suggests they have no idea what film grain looks 
like) or they are of the school that says that we shouldn't be 
judging inkjet prints by the same 'outdated' standards as we judge 
darkroom prints, i.e., dots and texturing are a "feature" not a bug.

People say that black-only is acceptable if you stand far enough 
away, but even that's not entirely true, because using only one ink 
forces the driver to employ a dither pattern that simply cannot 
represent 256 distinct shades of gray for any reasonable PPI in the 
output image.   Do the math: even with the printer set at 2880 DPI, 
a 300 PPI in the image nets you maybe 90 distinct values.  That's 
why black-only looks too contrasty for many images.
    
> As for "little bands of adherents", name me any area
> of interest where people don't have loyalty or fanaticism
> towards a particular brand or method. Try having a discussion
> of Leica vs. Nikon vs. Canon! 

EXACTLY:  - Canon and Nikon aren't "little bands"; between them they 
have the vast lion's share of the 35mm market.   So if a newbie 
enters the field he can be pretty sure that if he picks one or the 
other he won't go far wrong.   The problem with digital black and 
white printing is that NO solution has more than a tiny % of 
adherents.   In other words, whatever you pick you're picking 
something that the vast majority chose against.     The fact that no 
method of black and white printing seems to achieve a dominant 
position suggests to me that they all have serious problems.  

Also, I've heard people complain about Nikon or Canon, but I've 
never heard anyone say, "I tried and tried but I just couldn't get 
this brand of cameras to work."    Whereas I've heard plenty of 
people say that, "I've tried for a year messing around with <fill-in-
the-blank> black and white printing system and I had one problem 
after another so I gave up".   

At least two different posters in this thread yesterday talked about 
how newbies in this field need to have some "luck" to get good 
results or select a good printer.   No one says that you need "luck" 
to get good results with a Nikon or Canon.
  
 
> I have a collection of well over 100 prints from 
> different photographers that are a monument to how
> good this medium is.

This is from someone who thinks that black-only printing is good.