Digital BW, The Print

Steve,

Did you see the new Hahnemuhle gloss/FB paper that was mentioned on the LLS site?
http://www.luminous-landscape.com/essays/pma2006.shtml

Carl

--- In DigitalBlackandWhiteThePrint@yahoogroups.com, "Steven Karafyllakis" 
<stevekphoto@...> wrote:
>
> 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
>