Digital BW, The Print

I recently received some Innova papers from Jim at Shadesofpaper. The 
service was very good, with fast shipping and good feedback. Until now, 
my favorite paper with MIS EZ inks in a C86 for black and white printing 
has been Epson Premium Semi-Matte, which I prefer slightly to Kirkland 
glossy, mainly because the latter is too glossy for my taste.

I used two test images. The first was a photograph taken with 35mm TMY  
scanned on a Coolscan V.  The second was from a photograph taken on 8x10 
HP5+ scanned on a Canonscan 9950F.  An 8x10 silver-gelatin print from 
the 35mm negative shows fine but noticeable grain. I haven't made a 
silver-gelatin print from the 8x10 negative yet, but I'm sure it 
wouldn't show any grain whatsoever ever at 8x10.  Before trying the new 
papers, I adjusted the images in photoshop to print at 8x10 as I'd like 
them on Semi-Matte using Paul's printing suggestions. Both images looked 
very good on the Semi-Matte. The grain on the print from the 35mm 
negative looked  very similar on both the digital and traditional 
print.  I've heard people say that the Coolscan isn't good for black and 
white because the LED light source exaggerates film grain. I haven't 
found this to be the case.

Moving on to the matte paper, I first replaced the Photo Black cartridge 
with Eboni and did a little printing on office paper to flush the Photo 
Black out of the printer. Next, I loaded up a sheet of Innova Fiba 
Print, using the convex side as the printing surface. I changed the 
Epson driver settings to those recommended by Paul, but I didn't use his 
photoshop curve.  The slider on the printer that keeps the print 
straight in the printer had to be loosened, and the printer did not take 
the paper on the first attempt. On the next attempt, I held the paper 
flat against the sheet loader tray and pushed the paper slightly into 
the printer. The paper went in ok, but here were some alarming noises, 
and there were some blobs of ink on the print. I next tried loading  a 
sheet with the concave side as the printing surface, which resulted in a 
very weak print with more ink globs.  After I confirmed with the list 
that the convex side was the proper printing surface, I tried again, and 
this time printing went without a hitch, and I've now made about 10 
prints without a problem.  I'm not sure what the initial problem was. 
The prints looked ok, but quite different from the prints on 
Semi-matte.  Setting aside surface differences, the matte prints looked 
dark, and the darker print values showed very poor print separation.

I then printed the images with the addition of Paul's Photoshop curves. 
These made a huge difference. The matte prints now look very, very good. 
Yes, the dmax is less on them than the semi-matte, but it's not enough 
of a difference to bother me. Once difference, though, is that the matte 
paper exacerbates the grain in the print from the 35mm negative. It's 
not a huge amount, but it's definitely noticeable.  I don't see this 
increased coarseness on the prints from the 8x10 negative. The 8x10 
negative is a studio head and shoulders portrait of my daughter Lauren. 
I used frontal lighting and her irises are very sharp. There's perhaps a 
tad less detail in the irises on the matte print.

While I certainly have more fine-tuning to do, I'm very happy with the 
results from both the Innova Fiba and Epson semi-matte.  The Innova has 
a nicer feel, of course, but I don't really care about that. I plan on 
using both papers. Some images look better on the matte paper, while 
others look better on the semi-matte.  I wish there had been a clear 
winner, though, as now I'll have to switch blacks regularly.

I like to thank Paul for all of his work with these printing systems, 
especially for his willingness to share the information.

Peter De Smidt