Digital BW, The Print

Firstly, thanks to the people who responded about my lack-of-neutral 
tone problem with my r2400 ABW prints -- it did turn out to be a flaky 
light magenta cartridge. Swapping it out helped a fair bit, but wasn't 
perfect. Then, I moved house, which involved packing everything up, 
putting it in a truck and driving about 40 miles. On trying again, the 
prints were perfectly neutral, so I therefore recommend moving house as 
often as possible as a means of maintaining consistent print quality. ;-)

Actually, what I really wanted to write about is some experiments I've 
done recently. I read a few articles online about problems with the 
default interpolation algorithms used by both Photoshop and the Epson 
drivers when rescaling images to the driver's internal 720ppi 
resolution. I was thinking about doing some experiments with various 
interpolation algorithms, then it occured to me, why not just print the 
actual *image* at 720dpi? This means that no interpolation will occur 
other than that which is purely part of the driver's dithering 
algorithm. I realise that for many people this would result in prints 
that are too small, but I am lucky enough that my two cameras have 
4000x4000 and 8000x6000 resolution (a Megavision E4 monochrome 
medium-format back and a Better Light large format scan back 
respectively). Anyway, I tried it with a few images and was blown away 
with the results -- the prints (made with the Epson driver in ABW mode, 
Photo RPM, Epson Premium Glossy) are astonishingly sharp, if anything 
more so than a large-format contact print (hence the title of the post), 
with a level of three-dimensionality that I've never really seen before. 
A (medium-format) photo taken a few months ago in Yosemite Valley from a 
bridge over one of the streams shows incredibly fine detail in the 
foliage. I also printed a couple of Better Light images shot in the 
Mojave desert in Joshua Tree National Monument (roughly letter-size) 
where every grain in the sandstone of a large boulder was clearly visible.

I think these days there is a real push toward ever-larger prints, but 
some of the best images I've ever seen were actually really quite small 
by modern standards (I'm thinking here of some original prints by Edward 
Weston, who was very much into the contact printing approach).

Anyway, just thinking out loud, and wondering if anyone else had tried 
the same approach.

[s]