Digital BW, The Print

Amadou Diallo's book on B&W printing is still current and gives you a useful conceptual framework to understand the issues- it's worth a read.

I think what you want to do depends on a few things- your tolerance to learn specialized software (QTR), desire to tone B&W inks, desire to print on both gloss-type and matte papers, maximum print size, size of willingness to blend your own inks, and willingness to manually refill ink cartridges and maintain your printer.

Give us your answers to the above and we can maybe guide you to an appropriate solution.  

Personally I'm happy with an R220 with MIS UT-R2 refillable carts (the modern equivalent would be the basic MIS Epson 1400 inkset).  I can print on glossy or matte, don't have to use QTR, can do basic toning with the Epson driver, can print 8x12 and it's cheap to run.

Roger



--- In DigitalBlackandWhiteThePrint@yahoogroups.com, "Mike Acar" <mike-theprint@...> wrote:
>
> Hi,
> 
> I'd like to start doing digital B&W printing at home; my end goal is to 
> make prints which are like traditional fiber B&W prints (not that I was
> particularly good at it, but I really came to like the heft of Ilford 
> FB). So I've done a bit of reading over the last couple of days, trying
> to figure out the state-of-the-art - mostly on Paul Roark's site, but
> also a bit on Eric Chan's and Clayton Jones's.
> 
> Paul's information is very thorough, but it's also over my head - for 
> example I'm not sure what he means by "LK and PK density inks" in his
> discussion of the 1400-NC2 inkset. So the first thing I would like is a 
> to educate myself enough to ask intelligent questions, and so I'd like a
> pointer to a current introduction that will help bring all the concepts
> together. Is e.g.  http://www.cjcom.net/articles/digiprn2.htm still
> relevant? Are there any better sources?
> 
> Thanks!
> 
> -- Mike
>