Digital BW, The Print

It's hard to argue with the concept that only the best is good enough.
Unfortunately that also leads to the conclusion that yesterdays prints
are always going to be trash, or just not good enough. It wouldn't be
too far in error to suggest that many folks operate on just that
basis-( Lucky for Epson and others who sell to the printing market).
When it comes to print houses who are trying to separate themselves
from others in what is rapidly becoming a commodity market there is
very little choice but to try to stay ahead of the curve or else end
up at a competitive disadvantage. That is inescapeable in my view.
Others have pointed out the need to differentiate by offering added
value in services, also a time tested strategy.

On the other hand, there are people still using technology, techniques
and methods that can't be called anything but antiquated. And doing so
quite successfully. As witness consider large format users, some with
nearly a century old gear and, in some cases, even lenses from close
to the same era. Others specialise in the worst examples of gear (eg:
the Holga folks) and also have an audience and venues.

IMO there is definitely more than one track to the "good digital
print" discussion. One of these is not so much how new is the gear but
rather how well is the gear used and the end technical result. Another
is whether or not the print content is deserving of the treatment.
That one is much more subjective and most likely just so much flame bait.

I personaly believe the range of available printers from about the
3000 and on in Epsons case can be perfectly viable technology for
"good digital" prints. I think the image content and the aim of the
photographer is likely to dictate the actual printer requirements. In
my case, I have 35mm and medium and large format images in b&w, neg
color and transparencys stretching back over nearly 50 years to deal
with. It would, with many of these, be overkill to require use of only
the latest technology and printer model.

As an example of what I'm trying to say( probably not very well), I
recently sent a batch of prints off to the print exchange. The image
was from a 35mm 400 ASA color neg converted to B&W in Pshop, taken
with an old beater Nikormat kept in the car, and printed with VM quad
inks and an old 3000.( You can see it on the exchange's web site) That
image resulted from technique that breaks virtualy every rule I know
of for generating quality work eg: wrong film,wrong speed,wrong
storage,wrong camera,an old third party lens, no tripod, an old inkset
and a soon to be 4 generation old printer. Never the less, in my own
estimation, it works and I am reasonably pleased with it. Or at any
rate as pleased as I can ever allow. I think it holds up in the
exchange from what I recieved back (some very nice prints by the way).
Others will have to vouch or not to the truth of the above as I am
obviously biased.
Any way the point is that given the film size and grain(dye cloud), I
don't think the dotsize of the 3000 was in any way detrimental and at
this point quads are still more than adequate for good work.

Sorry for the length of this.

Regards
Duane




--- In DigitalBlackandWhiteThePrint@yahoogroups.com, "joemulligan_68"
<joemulligan_68@...> wrote:
>
> Thanks to everyone who has commented on this thread.  I hope there
are more responses.  
> Hint:  Tyler Boley, Paul Roark, Clayton Jones, Ernst Dinkla.  I have
learned heaps from this 
> forum and when I see my work from just three years ago to today,
there is a tremendous 
> difference.  But the idea now is going from good to great.  Not that
I'll ever get there, but I 
> hope to hear what separates the good printers from the great ones.
>