Digital BW, The Print

Hello to everyone here. Only in the last few days have I been able 
to emabark into the brave new world (well, it's new to me, 
anyway) of quadtone b/w printing. I've been wanting to try this 
ever since reading an odd piece several years back in Camera 
Arts magazine about this new wrinkle on digital printing.

At the time, I had just purchased an Epson Stylus Photo 1200, 
along with a CD burner and Minolta film scanner (replacing a 
good but slow Nikon LS-10). I was just getting serious about 
desktop digital printing and sharpening my somewhat meager 
Photoshop chops, but figured that my plate would be quite full 
dealing with the pratfalls of color output and management. Black 
and white? *Fine art* black-and-white, like I used to pretend I 
was doing when I had regular darkroom access many moons 
ago? Uh-uh, especially as it seemed the best way to go was with 
a two-printer setup, and I was breaking the bank to put together 
this setup.

Quick cut to the present: color from the desktop, oddly, turned out 
not to be the nail-biting ordeal I had feared - in fact, the first 
13x19 print out of the 1200 (while I slept...had a rather slow Mac 
at the time) was so good I was calling several colleagues in 
rapid succession, as if I'd struck oil in my apartment. In the 
meantime, I had (re)discovered chromogenic black-and-white 
film, namely Ilford XP-2 Super, and had been shooting a lot of it, 
and scanning it, and printing it out on the 1200. Well, trying, 
anyway: straight black printing, predictably, was dead-on neutral 
but awfully rough-looking, and printing in color took a while to get 
the hang of in terms of eliminating color casts over several 
varieties. (Ironically, in the last month before making big 
changes in my system, I managed a Colorsync workflow that 
eliminated the casts).

I was ready to take on "real" b/w printing from the desktop, but 
needed that second printer. The bad news was that the printer I'd 
had my eye on - the Epson Stylus Color 1160 - had been 
discontinued for a while, seemed about as rare a find as 
Sasquatch, and when I found one or two on e-Bay, were going 
for near-extortionate bids (the winning bid for a NIB model was 
over $600). Since I've been between jobs the past few months, I 
couldn't possibly go for this.

Two good things happened, in rapid succession: by way of my 
participation in a photo.net thread on the subject of quadtone 
printing, I was contacted by a photographer who happened to 
have an extra 1160 that he wasn't using much, who was willing 
to make a straight-up trade of his 1160 for my 1200.  While I was 
musing this offer, I wandered over to Epson's online store where 
I found a refurbished Stylus Photo 1270 for a price I could just 
swing, even in my present situation. I e-mailed the photographer 
back immediately, accepting his offer, after which I immediately 
placed an order with Epson for the 1270.

The 1270 arrived last week. The first test prints were quite a bit 
off, but a day or two of tweaking got things well under control (the 
early Epson inks for this printer had a bad rep for premature light 
magenta fading...my problem was magenta all over the place!). 
The 1160 arrived several days ago; the following day (yesterday) 
I ran out to get a set of Lumijet Monochrome inks as well as a 
pack of Heavyweight Matte paper to make test prints.  I was 
nervous - My early experience with the Epson 1200 I sort of 
chalked up to dumb luck.  I wasn't expecting history to repeat 
itself. I followed Luminos' workflow instructions (CMYK? Yikes...) 
and made my first print, a 4x6" of a hastily taken indoor 
snapshot.  Result: not bad, definitely better than on the 1200 with 
the standard ink set, but somhow falling short on the "wow 
factor" scale. Since I'd been somewhat under the weather for a 
few days, I'd call it a night and try again.

Today, I picked a scan of a favorite neg I'd shot last year (a few 
weeks before That Day in September, in fact) and set up for an 
8x10 print on Heavyweight Matte. First try: amazing! given the fact 
that I'd never actually *seen* a quadtone b/w print up until this 
point, I wasn't prepared for this. Everything, as it were, was just 
*there*. Real tonality, rich, non-mottled blacks, highlights holding 
very well, sharp, the works.  I e-mailed the photographer I made 
the printer trade with to give him the good news, and find out if he 
got the 1200. He replied almost immediately, saying he got it 
had been too busy to even open the box. He also advised trying 
Legion Photo Matte paper on the printer; interestingly enough, I 
had one or two sheets of the paper from a sampler pack I was 
given by a camera shop owner I've done a fair deal of business 
with.

I make another print. Even better this time, not unbelievably 
different but with a bit more subtlety in contrast and the deepest 
blacks.  This is almost too much fun.

And, also today, I discovered this group, and decided to join.  
Looking forward to more participation, though I'll make an effort 
to be less long-winded.

-Barrett