Digital BW, The Print

Dear All;

I have been trying for about a year to get acceptable results making black
and white prints using Epson printers and easily available paper.

At first I bought and tried Jon Cones Piezography system, but found that
there were two problems that I could not get around:

1) the inks continually clogged the print heads terribly. there are all
kinds of fixes for this, revolving around soaking the pads with Fantastik,
and doing all kinds of other stuff, but it's an incredible waste of time and
money.


2) Even more significantly, the Cone Inks do not work well with anything
besides a really flat paper.
I've found that the ink does not take to Epson's premium luster, a paper
that most closely emulates Ilford Pearl surface paper, a paper I've used and
loved for 20 years.

I had bought an 1160 printer, and dedicated it to black and white, but since
the Cone system has pretty much flamed out, I have been printing off an
Epson 1270 using color inks to make black and white prints, and the results
are OK, but not great..the blacks are really purple-y, and overall the tone
is cold. Even with various adjustments to the Epson Drivers, I have not come
up with a 
tone that is consistently good ie, either too cold or too green...
I have been trying to tweak these color adjustments, but with no great luck,
tho I still trying other settings and hoping for the best...

I have been in touch with MIS, and they tell me that their inks do not work
well with
either luster, semi-gloss or glossy papers.

So, the Epson printer,inks and papers work very well as an integrated
system, 
but the tones are not quite right, or at least I have not been able to hit
the
proper settings/profiles...

Look forward to hearing from anyone with similar experiences, especially if
you've
worked your way through this...

Best;
Stu Rosner
sturos@...
sturos@... 



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