Digital BW, The Print

Hello everyone,

I've read so many things on this group (also on the ones about 
piezography, ImagePrint)... 

And still believing that one day I would obtain what I want from the 
begining : an easy solution to print on various papers (including 
semi gloss and glossy) decades of B&W TriX and later TMax negs with 
the prodigious enhancements obtained through Photoshop.

So, based on your experience and advice, I bought an 1160, Piezo 
driver, piezo inks then MIS FS Neutral with CIS, Spyder calibrating 
tool, densitometer (to deal with the dot gain procedure)... 

And for which results : few beautiful pics, a lot of mess with the 
tubes, the cloggs, the banding issues, and how many hours to 
understand why the printer decides one day to print it with micro 
banding, the second day to fix it with a huge clogg ... 

Compared to my past prints made in the darkroom a couple years ago 
(on pearl paper, in French "barrytés" something between gloss and 
matte which needs a lot of washing and drying), I still prefer the 
first ones (but at which price! and without the hudge remodeling and 
enhancing capacities of PS.

I've seen during the last months a lot of new things on the B&W print 
market (ImagePrint, Epson 2200, Epson 4000, a HP printer with 3 
different kinds of grey,...).

What I would like : to print fine arts B&W photos (as an amateur 
photographer with a reasonable budget and not as a postgraduate in 
calibrating or in colors printing processes) with a printer with no 
banding, no clogging, no shifting, only a great 100% B&W picture 
which looks like a B&W photo. I prefer to spend more time on 
retouching a picture with Photoshop rather than in sucking ink from a 
clogged tube!

Is that still a dream and then shall I subscribe to Mike Johnston's 
theory about B&W printers' future (see http://www.luminous-
landscape.com/columns/sm-03-07-27.shtml ), or is there now something 
which could allow me to reach what I've been looking for many years 
(and after so many disapointments and expenses).

Please help me to find THE solution!

Thanks

JM Humbert
Paris, France