Digital BW, The Print

Definitely not for the faint of heart, or weak of limb-a day of that 
left me quite exhausted.
 
I did get a cursory look at Canon's new printers, and lots of large 
sample prints on display. I also had a brief exchange with one of 
the reps, and picked up a brochure. To recap the general specs:

the Pro 9500 is a 13' printer with 10 inks. It has MK PK and LK, but 
no LLK, so you're looking at a 2K black setup, not 3K. Price is 
about $800.00

The iPF5000 is 17" with 12 inks, has full-time MK, PK, LK, and LLK 
as well as the cyans, magentas, and green, red, and blue. Lots of 
possibilities if you have a rip, and/or Roy supports it with QTR. 
the price for this one will be 1995.00 USD.

The color gamut with pigments on their best RC papers is excellent-
IMO no-one will find cause for complaint there.

I saw no bronzing at all on glossy or satin papers. There was a tiny 
bit of gloss diff. on the glossy, but a fair amount on the satin. 
The satin showed as a much reduced glossiness in the blacks that was 
quite obvious at a steep angle, but not at any normal viewing angle.

They also had some examples of B&W on cotton papers. Nowhere in the 
brochure is there mention of anything like Epson's ABW, so I don't 
know how these where printed. They looked fairly neutral, but had 
that hint of color that suggests they where primarily full color 
ripped to be neutral. Unfortunately none of them had particularly 
outstanding Dmax, but without knowing more and having direct 
comparisons or hard numbers, I'm going to withold judgment. Suffice 
to say that my first impression was a bit underwhelming.

I was told by the rep that on their best papers, the inks are 
getting around 105 test-years by standards  Wilhelm admitted where 
more stringent than his own. We'll see where the dust settles on 
that one.

Aside from these printers, not much else got my interest up. At the 
time I was unaware that HP had anounced a new pigment printer, so I 
didn't stop by the HP pavilion.

Of the cameras that where actually there and available to fondle, 
(the new Panasonic was not) the most interesting one was the Olypmus 
E-volt 330. If the noise level is acceptable they have a real 
winner, it looks to be a great design & feature set.

Steve Karafyllakis