Digital BW, The Print

The everyday dmax with my Z3100 Vivera MK on Photorag 308 is  1.80 . I consider that to be better than decent and so do my clients here.  I've tested it over and over again and it is certainly all I need for dmax and anything above that is heading into the realm of unnatural appearance. But it makes Ultrachrome MK look gray in comparison AND they are neutral and not brown like Ultrachrome. No composite color inks are used in this configuration.  The Vivera inks are also rated by Wilhelm at greater than 250 of his accelerated years for monochrome and greater than 240 W Years for color without any uv protection. Wilhelm's data for Ultrachrome is not taking into consideration color fade shift over time due to composite inks in the mix.

I have a print sitting here done on Photorag Baryta with this inkset and the PK  black which measures 2.38 in dmax and another on William Turner MK of the same file that measures 1.79. The William Turner looks darker .


john





--- In DigitalBlackandWhiteThePrint@yahoogroups.com, "Greg" <dfaprinting@...> wrote:
>
> --- In DigitalBlackandWhiteThePrint@yahoogroups.com, Bruce Watson <bwyg@> wrote:
> >
> > This level of performance on matte surfaces is what many of us really 
> > want. And have been asking for over many years now. Our desires for a 
> > high Dmax on matte surfaces is not a surprise to anyone in the ink biz.
> > 
> > I don't want a glossy surface. But with the inksets that are available 
> > on the market today, the *only* way to get decent Dmax performance is to 
> > use glossy surfaces. Sad but true.
> > --
> > Bruce Watson
> >
> 
> It is not all the fault of the inks, the coatings have a lot to do with it too. To really make it happen and do it reliably and to have it last will more than likely take an ink and paper combination.
> 
> Take one of the Epson matte papers and Epson inks for example (somerset velvet?) which has around a 1.8 dmax with Epson inks and around 1.7x with third party inks, then look at Photorag (and all the others like it) that only produce 1.6x with Epson inks and high 1.7x to 1.8 with (some) third party inks. Then look at most of the HawkMountain papers that maybe get a 1.5 to 1.7 with either ink.
> 
> What I'm saying is that one company can not provide the holy grail of matte dmax, they need to work with the paper and coating companies to make the entire system work. Epson could do this, but so far they have chosen not to make a better ink and paper and coating.
> 
> Also remember that most of the paper companies make their papers to perform with Epson inks since (until recently) Epson held a clear market advantage in the "fine art" market. Years ago when I asked someone at Hawk Mountain about making papers that would work better with one of the third party inks, the response was that most of the users were using Epson inks, so that was what there coatings were designed to work with to produce optimum results. With HP picking up major market share, we may see some new coatings hit the shelves, though the HP inks seem to be pretty close to the Epson in terms of coating function.
> 
> Also it may take new print head technologies to allow the new inks to work better. I read somewhere on the Epson/Seiko japan site several months ago that they are working on a mem style (as in memjet) of head and this may bring the advancements that we need. The Memjet corporation are developing partnerships with several companies to use the mem jets in printers, last time I checked their site someone had a prototype that they were bringing to some of the shows (again many months ago) and I think that article said they (whoever the company was) wanted to try and have something available by this fall.
> 
> I know you are going to simply fall back on "The nano-chromes were able to do it, so why can't others?" but look at what happened. The nano-chromes were apparently difficult to manufacture (among other issues), and they were somewhat short lived. I'm sure a lot of companies can produce an ink that will give a 2.x dmax on some matte papers, but that dmax is useless if it doesn't live.
> 
> My point in all of this is that I think the papers are the next thing that needs a radical change to make a stable print with a dmax of 2.x. And I'll also go out on a limb and say that these new papers may not perform as well with the current inks. Hopefully I will be proven wrong on the second point, but I think the paper, coating, and ink are absolutely linked to achieving stable prints with the really deep dmax and color saturation that we want. With this current economy, radical changes may happen sooner than when everyone was making money hand over fist and no one was really thinking too hard about innovation saving their bacon. The world economy and the number of paper companies has really split the market up so much that it would not surprise me to see several companies go away before this is all over. Hopefully I'll be proven wrong on this last point too, but times are indeed tough.
>