Digital BW, The Print

At 08:23 AM Saturday 11/17/2007, you wrote:
>Just an update for anyone who may be interested...
>I ordered a set of Lyson Daylight Darkroom inks and loaded them into
>Epson 1270 refillable cartridges and ran out some tests, starting with
>the QTR calibration image.
>
>I compared Lyson inks, the Epson dye black (on the 1270) and MIS
>pigment inks (on my r1800). I test with both Epson Velvet Fine Art &
>Hahnemuhle Photo Rag.
>
>The blackest black was the Epson dye black on Hahnemuhle PR. VFA was
>pretty close in terms of density but looked less sharp -- so I
>declared HPR the winner.

A friend of mine ( http://www.alanmorton.co.nz/ ) used to print Black Only OEM prints from an Epson 1270 on Watman uncoated rag paper. (No longer made - and much less dmax, which you don't want.)

He found the lightfastness of the OEM dye Black Only to be good. But you have to not mind the dottier appearance - which his use of the heavily textured papers mitigated.

Maybe Hahnemuhle William Turner might work better with Black Only, due to its texture? (Clayton Jones might have some comments on this.) It might be image dependent, maybe, in terms of its acceptability.

Good luck,
Richard 
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