Digital BW, The Print

On 10 Jan 2009, at 8:59 PM, Randy Rancier wrote:

> •	If you were buying one of the older 24" printers to dedicate to  
> the Eboni-6 or
> Carbon-6 inksets, what would you look at purchasing and why?

I have an Epson 7500 that I'm very pleased with.  I bought it as a  
lightly used unit, and have had a variety of monochrome inks in it  
(Piezo, MIS Ultratone?).  I now have EB-6, with most of my output on  
Hahnemuhle Bamboo, and it's reliable and lovely.  I print using QTR  
(measured/calibrated with an i1) on a Mac, usually from TIFFs exported  
from Adobe Lightroom.

As I understand it, the 7000 is a bit too old & grainier, and the 7600  
has the metered carts and so is a bit tougher to get a quadtone system  
working.  (Although the head system on the 7600 is a bit simpler --  
one head instead of two?  A moot point now, as it's unfortunately no  
longer possible to replace the heads yourself.)  The 7500 seems "just  
right."  And given that the EB6 inkset is so cheap (relative to, say,  
Piezography), I really enjoy printing these days.

--John