Digital BW, The Print

hi,

I've been printing with HP DJ 9800 b&w prints, and overall been quite 
happy with the prints. Then for curiosity I tried the black cartridge 
only option in the driver, and got really good print. At first I didn't 
believe my eyes, but then I tried several pictures I've earlier printed 
with gray inks and the BO print IS quite ok. The black cart uses 
pigmented ink, has max resolution of 1200x1200 dpi and drop size is 15 
pl, which means that the dot is bigger than in Epson. I printed one 
image with my Epson C64 and while the dots are less visible in Epson, 
there's some banding, while in HP there's no banding at all.

As the HP ink is pigment, there are alternatives to papers, no need to 
use the Premium Plus any longer. I tried different papers I had at home: 
Fabriano watercolour paper (true watercolour paper, not originally for 
inkjet printing), Somerset Velvet, Epson Heavyweight Matte and different 
HP papers.  The Fabriano quite nice result. The Somerset Velvet looks 
bad, it's like having a semi-opaque film over the print. Don't know much 
  about dmax, but the blacks are not deep. The deepest blacks I got with 
HWM.

I didn't find many papers available here, Hahnemuhle Photo Rag (which is 
way too overpriced: 50 sheet 279 \ufffd ) Ilford Smooth Fine Art paper ( as 
expensive as HPR), Somerset Photo Enhanced and Epson Radiant White 
Watercolour paper. Before I buy one of these, I'd like to ask you gurus 
some opinions about these papers, like dmax, texture etc. I think the 
Epson BO prints may well be comparable with my findings with HP.

One good point with printing BO on HP is the ink consumption which is of 
course much smaller than with gray inks. I've been able to print 5-6 A3 
sized prints with one HP no. 100 cart, now watching the ink levels with 
black cart gives something like 20 prints! And the large volume HP no. 
339 is only a bit more expensive than no. 100.


TIA

-matti