Digital BW, The Print

I know what you mean. I recently ran across some prints that we made 
with dye inks on H. German etching and photo rag papers that are 
stunning in comparison to anything we've been able to produce using 
Epson or Canon pigments. But you have to realize that dyes can be fickle 
and they're subject to many perils that pigments are much more resistant 
to. It's not reasonable to think that you're trading hundreds of years 
for decades, because in a bad environmental situation you could lose a 
dye print in months.

On the plus side, there are some new formulations coming out of the labs 
soon that may change all of this. I know of a few first hand, and I 
predict that within six months to a year, we'll all be using inks that 
offer more than the best of both worlds.


----- Original Message ----- 
From: "i_3d_c"
My first inkjet printer was the Epson 1270.
I scanned some of my old 4x5 negs and printed them on Archival Matte
paper. I fell completely in love with the results, which was a little
puzzling because I had read that the 1270 wasn't really that great for
B&W. I thought I'd like to get more serious about this B&W printing
thing so I bought an Epson r1800 and dedicated greyscale inks. And was
disappointed. After hours & hours of testing with different papers and
settings (and QTR) I just couldn't achieve the look I had fallen in
love with with the 1270. Long story short, pigment inks just can't
achieve the same d-max as dyes.

Assuming that I'm not interested in my prints lasting hundreds of
years  -- a couple of decades would be nice -- are there any printers
or 3rd party inksets that have greyscale dye inks?