Digital BW, The Print

Jordan,
While I'm just getting ready to order my inks from MIS for a C86 I 
just got on eBay, all of the reading I've done takes me to a couple 
of conclusions that I hope bear out. First, the archival quality of 
Eboni far exceeds that of the stock Epson ink for the c84/86 printer. 
And when used in combination with a quality cotton rag paper yields a 
print of high archival quality.  Second, the Eboni ink in volume, 
even in the 4oz size, yields a double cost savings over the stock 
ink.  The single cartridge price is less than the standard price for 
the C84/86 black ink cartridge and the cartridge is refillable.

So, even if the visual results are the same, I would still plan to 
stick with the MIS system because of the cost system. And, if I can 
produce an archival cotton rag print for less than a non-archival 
one, then I would expect to sell more at a show when priced the same 
and, ideally, sell more at a higher price for less cost. 
Mike Brouphy
Imagination Studio
New Orleans, LA

--- In DigitalBlackandWhiteThePrint@yahoogroups.com, Jordan Wosnick 
<jwosnick@f...> wrote:
> 
> Hi all,
> 
> I'm a relative newbie to B&W inkjet printing. I had been toying 
> with the idea of getting into this area for a while, and then 
> decided to take the plunge after reading Mike Johnston's article on 
> the MIS EZ inks.
> 
> I bought a second-hand Epson C86 and some Epson Enhanced Matte and 
> tried printing with the Epson stock inks while waiting for my EZ 
> cartridges to arrive. My first experiments with "toned" monochrome 
> prints (coloured through duotones in Photoshop) were surprisingly 
> good with the Epson inks and I got very nice prints pretty much 
> right out of the box. I then tried "black-only" (BO?) printing and 
> was totally blown away with the quality of these prints. I made a 
> whole bunch of BO prints (6x9") on the EEM paper (8.5x11") and I 
> have to say that they compare very favourably with darkroom prints 
> in terms of tonality and "feel" while exceeding the darkroom prints 
> in sharpness and ease of local tonal control. My workflow involves 
> image capture on 35mm film (sometimes colour, usually B&W) 
> developed at home and scanned on a Minolta Scan Dual II, with
> "digital darkroom" manipulations in PS.
> 
> When my MIS EZ inks arrived I had really high hopes. I installed 
> them, plugged in Paul Roark's recommended settings for the C86 on 
> EEM (linked on the MIS web site) and then made some prints of 
> images that I had previously made BO prints from. To be honest, I 
> was a little disappointed -- while the EZ prints are excellent, I 
> couldn't see any significant difference in tonality or "smoothness" 
> between them and the BO prints (of the same image) at normal 
> viewing distances.
> 
> One thing I can say is that the Epson OEM black ink is a little 
> "warmer" than the tone the MIS EZ (I have the Neutral set) 
> provides. The differences are a little more evident when I look at 
> the prints through a loupe, but even then I'm surprised at how 
> close the EZ and BO prints are to one another. Keep in mind that 
> this is pretty much "right out of the box".
> 
> Has anyone else made similar observations with this setup? Should I 
> really be seeing such a small difference between these types of 
> print? Should I try another type of image (i.e. portraits -- most 
> of my images are abstracts or urban scenes)? Is BO as good as it 
> gets, or how do I go about getting the biggest advantage out of my 
> EZ inks?
> 
> Finally, does anyone know of a good Canadian source for the 
> higher-end inkjet papers (Hahnemuhle, etc.?) Even Epson Enhanced 
> Matte seems to be scarce here.
> 
> Many thanks
> 
> Jordan
> www.photosensitive.ca
> 
> -- 
> 
> 
> Jordan Wosnick
> jwosnick@f...