Digital BW, The Print

You gets what you pays for.  How much did you pay for the C86?  $120?  Not a
lot in the grand scheme of things and I suspect your experience was worse
than average.  I think you'll likely get a lot of joy out of a 2400.  As for
the cost of consumables, let's not forget all the things you had to buy to
get a wet darkroom working and keep it running.

Digital is not the "be all and end all" for everyone but it is fantastic for
opening the medium up for many more people to enjoy.  It's not just about
the pros.  They've already, for the most part, gone digital for good
reasons.  But the so-called "fine art" community is but a tiny part of the
marketplace.  

What I can say about my own personal experience is that I love my digital
camera over 35mm film and, in fact, 645 film.  I have not used my Contax 645
system since collecting the 1DsII.  Now of course I am lucky in that I have
a very good digital camera.  But the price point for quality continues to
fall.  The output from the 5D is fantastic and arguably even meets the needs
of many professional shooters.  High quality medium format digital is still
an exceedingly expensive proposition.  But that's not the case for 35mm.  I
was recently looking at some old scans of 35mm film - done with an Imacon
848 scanner, quite an expensive piece of equipment and considerably more
than the cost of the 1DsII.  The noise in those scans (film grain plus
digital) is simply awful versus the 1DsII.



> From: Peter De Smidt <pdesmidt@...>

> For me the biggest drawback to digital photography has been
> unreliability.  My C86 just died.  I've had it, what, a couple of
> months?  During that time I made maybe two or three prints that I'm
> happy with.  I was using the MIS EZ system, and I had problems with
> nozzle clogs and ink blobs on the prints, as well as leaky cartridges.
> Given the time and money I spent, this experience wasn't a good one.
> Even when it did work properly, the C86 did a poor job on scan from
> medium format and large format negatives, because of the texture in the
> highlights. Moreover, spraying prints is unacceptable.  I don't have an
> indoor spray booth, nor am I likely to get one soon, and it's too cold
> to spray outside at the moment.  In any case I found that spraying left
> a nasty texture on the prints.
> 
> On the plus side, I did scan and print a large number of my parents's
> slides from the 50's and 60's on a different C86 with MIS PRO inks.
> These turned out very well.  Since many of the slides had faded
> considerably, or had other problems, printing them optically would have
> been much harder, and I probably wouldn't have gotten results as good as
> from digital printing.
> 
> So now that my monochrome inkjet is down, I'm stuck with a fair amount
> of ink that I can't use, and apparently I need a new printer.  Given my
> problems with the c86, I'm very hesitent to try the R220.  It's not the
> cost of the printer so much, but the cost of my time that bothers me,
> and the cost of the consumables is not inconsequential.  I like the idea
> of the r2400, but I'm concerned about the cost of consumables. Using MIS
> inks is a possibility, but I have serious concerns about their quality
> control. Maybe I should go back to the darkroom and check in on digital
> in another couple of years.