Digital BW, The Print

Hello Nathan,

Welcome to the forum.

>I should add that ultimately my interest lies in 
>the potential of the digital negative for contact 
>printing processes -

>I need to be able to shift back and fourth from black and white 
>to color on the same machine...should I invest in the existing 
>lines (another 7600 or a 4000) or wait to invest in the new lines 
>pending? 

My observations over time have been twofold:
1) reality often fails to live up to pre-product hype 
2) one man's glory is another man's disappointment

Since mistakes in this realm can be expensive, as you have learned, I
suggest waiting a few months until reports come in from actual B&W
fine art practitioners - all we've had so far is Epson hype and
reports from folks who don't specialize in what we do.

More specifically to your question, doing color and BW eliminates use
of a dedicated BW ink set.  That means using either a RIP (none
available yet for the new printers) or using straight printer output.
 Reports re BW from the new K3 printers seem promising, but until I
see actual prints or hear reports from respected folks in this forum
I'm keeping my fingers crossed.

Re making digital negs, the reports from people doing it seem to
indicate that the biggest challenge is avoiding the microbanding,
which seems to vary from one printer to another and is devilishly hard
to eliminate completely.

Regards,
Clayton 


Info on black and white digital printing at    
http://www.cjcom.net/digiprnarts.htm