Digital BW, The Print

I was browsing the Inkjet Goodies site today and noticed that the Lyson 
Darkroom glossy paper was one they offered.  I've used the Lyson Quad 
Black inks for several years in a Canon S9000 printer with so-so results 
on Ilford Galerie Smooth Gloss and Smooth Pearl papers (results were 
better on the Lyson brand papers, but they're considerably more 
expensive than Ilford so I didn't use them much.)  I wondered if the new 
Lyson papers might work better than the old with my inks, and wrote 
Inkjet Goodies to see if they had any info.  Here is the essence of 
their reply (which arrived about 20 minutes after I sent my inquiry - I 
was very impressed.)

I have spoken with Lyson about this to get a second opinion.  The 
daylight darkroom paper is again designed to work specifically with the 
darkroom inks on the Epson 1280, 2000p, 2200, 4000 and 7600/9600 only.
You are correct they are not going to expand that inkset to include 
Canon printers so it may not give you the quality you are looking for by 
using that paper with the Quad Black inks.  Our Lyson distributor has no 
idea if the Daylight Darkroom paper will work well without the 
corresponding inks, so it would be an experiment on your part to try them.
He did let me know that the formulation of the Quad Black inks and 
Daylight Darkroom are very different, and we would all like to know your 
results if you decided to try.

So according to Lyson this is not just the same old ink.  I don't have 
one of the specified Epson printers and don't plan to get one (I use 
mostly a C84/EZ setup now and am very pleased with the results on matte 
paper) and decided not to see if the new papers worked with the Quad 
Black inks.  If I had more time and were still as interested in glossy 
prints as I used to be I might have taken on the experiment, but as it 
is I'll leave it to others.  I did see a post (maybe it was earlier in 
this thread) that someone had seen a sample print done by Lyson with the 
full Daylight Darkroom process and thought it was outstanding.

Cheers,
Kip

Tyler Boley wrote:

>--- In DigitalBlackandWhiteThePrint@yahoogroups.com, hogarth@s... wrote:
>...
>  
>
>>The Lysons are dye inks. But the metamerism you are seeing isn't due to 
>>the dye inks. It's due, I think, to Lyson using a mixture of color inks 
>>to make gray, instead of using a gray ink.
>>    
>>
>
>That's been the word all along. Few people now hearing about this
>"new" darkroom series realize that it's the same darn ink I and many
>tried years ago before there was even a Piezography product. We all
>gave up on it back then because of metamerism despite great Wilhelm
>ratings.
>It's not at all the same 
>...
>  
>
>>It's a shame really. The Dmax performance of the Lyson dyes is 
>>outstanding. The Darkroom line of papers is also outstanding and it 
>>really only works well with dye inks...
>>    
>>
>
>It's a shame this stuff wasn't reformulated from the ground up years
>ago, we could use this alternative to the art papers and pigment.
>They've updated Fotonics, developed Cave Paints, but keep pushing this
>stuff. Their only market will be the naive.
>
>Tyler
>  
>