Digital BW, The Print

Hi, 
Want to share my own limited experience with MIS Quad Variable inks. 
Printing on Epson Matte. 
 
A bit of background. I am no novice to B&W photography and printing. 
Been doing my own processing for about 45 years.
I've been doing my own color processing for about 35 years. 
Everything in a wet darkroom until the last 3 years. I've been doing 
digital prints for about 2.5 years. I still shoot Tri-X and then scan 
the negs in a Nikon 8000.

I believe the Quad inks for the 1270 have a serious problem.

In order to get the MIS Quad prints to even BEGIN to approach the 
quality of the plain old Epson black ink prints I had to turn the 
contrast in the printer driver up to +25(!) and the mode to 'photo 
realistic'. This gave me 'decent' prints rather than the very soft 
prints I originally got but the prints have nowhere near the deep 
blacks of the prints made with the standard Epson black cartridge! 

I looked at the more subtle areas of the print with a 
magnifier...areas of transition from skin tone to highlight. These 
area have no discreet dots!! In the prints made with the Epson black 
inks there ARE many discreet dots. None in the MIS prints. More of a 
smeared gray effect. Diffuse. No dots. 

No wonder the prints are not good. 

Perhaps a problem with pigment ink viscosity? 

Very disappointing. The inks have a problem, for sure!

Made me wonder why I was investing all this time and effort. 
(Ron Harris seems to get gorgeous prints with just the Epson black 
cartridge.) 
http://home.att.net/~rwharris/ 

I used curves as per Paul Roark from the MIS site. 

http://www.inksupply.com/index.cfm?
source=html/workflow_roark1280pc.html 

By the way, when I returned to the Epson Ink, I got gorgeous prints 
again!  

Best, 
Howard 

 

--- In DigitalBlackandWhiteThePrint@y..., nem2nem@y... wrote:
> hi. i'm pretty new to digital phtotgraphy and printing. i've 
recently 
> set up a digital darkroom (nikon sc 4000, epson 1160, MIS FS 
quadtone 
> inks). I'm printing portraits from tibet and the true black just 
does 
> not blend in. the prints have a great tonal spectrum in the 
> highlights and midtones, but when it comes to the shadows, the 
black 
> blotches up and pixelates - looking very digital. am i doing 
> something wrong? or is this just what i should expect with digital 
> prints?
> thanks so much,
> dafna.