Digital BW, The Print

Having been a lurker on this group now for the past few months I 
think I have finally decided to go for the Septone system for my 2100.

Having been coned into buying this printer for its B/W out of the box 
feature! After a great deal of frustration I have decided I need a 
dedicated black and white solution.  The Septone system is 
excellently priced so I am very tempted to give it a go. It would 
also appear to be a easy-to-set-up solution for a digital B/W newbie.

I would appreciate any feed back from users, and any suggestions for 
alternatives.

Does anyone know if the system is available in the UK or should I 
just order from InkjetGoodies.com?

Thannks

Martin

> 
> Having been coned into buying this printer for its
> B/W out of the box feature! 

After reading this post this morning, I could not stop
laughing - I think a new word has been introduced...

I too have been coned.  In retrospect, I should have
been roarked.

thanks for the joyful morning, Martin.  


__________________________________
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--- In DigitalBlackandWhiteThePrint@yahoogroups.com, "D. Hill" 
<hill14701@y...> wrote:
> 
> > 
> > Having been coned into buying this printer for its
> > B/W out of the box feature! 
> 
> After reading this post this morning, I could not stop
> laughing - I think a new word has been introduced...

LOL.

I was Reichmanned.

Dan

OK I missed a 'n' from the word (if you check the original post there 
was an extra 'n' in the thanks........It was 2:30 in the morning!  I 
would still like an answer to the question:

Having been a lurker on this group now for the past few months I 
think I have finally decided to go for the Septone system for my 2100.

Having been conned into buying this printer for its B/W out of the 
box feature! After a great deal of frustration I have decided I need 
a dedicated black and white solution.  The Septone system is 
excellently priced so I am very tempted to give it a go. It would 
also appear to be a easy-to-set-up solution for a digital B/W newbie.

I would appreciate any feed back from users, and any suggestions for 
alternatives.

Does anyone know if the system is available in the UK or should I 
just order from InkjetGoodies.com?

Thanks

Martin




--- In DigitalBlackandWhiteThePrint@yahoogroups.com, "Dan Honemann" 
<dan_honemann@y...> wrote:

> --- In DigitalBlackandWhiteThePrint@yahoogroups.com, "D. Hill" 
> <hill14701@y...> wrote:
> > 
> > > 
> > > Having been coned into buying this printer for its
> > > B/W out of the box feature! 
> > 
> > After reading this post this morning, I could not stop
> > laughing - I think a new word has been introduced...
> 
> LOL.
> 
> I was Reichmanned.
> 
> Dan

Hello Martin,

>I would appreciate any feed back from users, and any suggestions for 
>alternatives.

I am also considering investing in this system.  I haven't used it but
do have a set of prints used for the Technical Print Review article. 
Here are my observations:

1) Besides being truly dotless, with no metamerism and the highest
resolution of all the samples in the review, I like the colors - they
seem more "convincing" than some of the other systems.

2) I currently have a Septone print on PhotoRag on my window sill (14
days now) where it gets a tiny bit of direct sunlight early in the
morning and bright reflected daylight all day, for about 9-10 hrs per
day.  I have parts of the images covered, and so far cannot see any
trace of shifting/fading.  The earlier generation of inks I've used
would have shown some by now.  So the inks appear to be more stable
than previous inks.

3) If the software works as advertised it should be a flexible and
easy to use system with reasonable cost.  The incrementally adjustable
color tone is a very attractive feature for me.  The inks are
available in bottles and Daniel Staver reports being able to refill
the 2100 carts.

4) In my dealings with R9 during the print review I found them to be
very open and responsive to user input.  Others have reported similar
good stories.  

I hope this helps.


Regards,
Clayton


Info on black and white digital printing at    
http://www.cjcom.net/digiprnarts.htm

--- In DigitalBlackandWhiteThePrint@yahoogroups.com, "Clayton Jones" 
<cj@c...> wrote:
> 
> 3) If the software works as advertised it should be a flexible 
> and easy to use system with reasonable cost....  The inks are
> available in bottles and Daniel Staver reports being able to refill
> the 2100 carts.

For what it's worth, I spoke with someone at InkjetGoodies yesterday
about the Septone system, which they resell, and they reported
poor results trying to refill the carts that ship with the
Septone system. I didn't ask them to elaborate, unfortunately. 
I got the impression that print quality suffered in some respect.

Of course, that's second hand. If R9 or others are reporting that
refilling is a reliable option, I'd be interested to know it. One
of the downsides of the system seems to be that, without refilling 
carts or using the CFS, you're spending $18/cart. Based on that
conversation, I had decided that if I purchased the Septone system,
it would only make economic sense with the CFS.

david

Hello David,

> For what it's worth, I spoke with someone at InkjetGoodies yesterday
> about the Septone system, which they resell, and they reported
> poor results trying to refill the carts that ship with the
> Septone system. I didn't ask them to elaborate, unfortunately. 
> I got the impression that print quality suffered in some respect.
> 
> Of course, that's second hand. If R9 or others are reporting that
> refilling is a reliable option, I'd be interested to know it. One
> of the downsides of the system seems to be that, without refilling 
> carts or using the CFS, you're spending $18/cart. Based on that
> conversation, I had decided that if I purchased the Septone system,
> it would only make economic sense with the CFS.

I should clarify my statement.  Daniel reported successfully refilling
the Epson carts with MIS UT inks.  I was infering that perhaps they
can also be refilled with Septone inks.  Sorry for the confusion, it
was poorly worded.


Regards,
Clayton


Info on black and white digital printing at    
http://www.cjcom.net/digiprnarts.htm

My experiences are only with refilling original Epson 2100 carts and
that has worked well for many months now. I'm still using the same carts
I used five months ago. From what I understand the Epson carts are quite
well built, and have the self-sealing exit hole which the Septone carts
are missing. I wonder if you could just buy the 4oz bottles and the
plugin from Inkjetgoodies and fill the inks into Epson carts?

I think $18 per cart is too much, and I don't want to lock my printer
into one inkset with CFS, so if I ever tried the Septone system it would
have to be refills.

--
Daniel Staver
http://daniel.staver.no 

> > 3) If the software works as advertised it should be a flexible
> > and easy to use system with reasonable cost....  The inks are
> > available in bottles and Daniel Staver reports being able to refill
> > the 2100 carts.
> 
> For what it's worth, I spoke with someone at InkjetGoodies 
> yesterday about the Septone system, which they resell, and 
> they reported poor results trying to refill the carts that 
> ship with the Septone system. I didn't ask them to elaborate, 
> unfortunately. 
> I got the impression that print quality suffered in some respect.
> 
> Of course, that's second hand. If R9 or others are reporting 
> that refilling is a reliable option, I'd be interested to 
> know it. One of the downsides of the system seems to be that, 
> without refilling 
> carts or using the CFS, you're spending $18/cart. Based on 
> that conversation, I had decided that if I purchased the 
> Septone system, it would only make economic sense with the CFS.

> I had decided that if I purchased the Septone system,
> it would only make economic sense with the CFS.

The start up cost of the Septone system is largely the
software required.  Is there anything to prevent QTR or
OPM/IJC users from creating their own profiles for the
Septone inks, and/or sharing them here ?

Does this make sense ?  In other words, is the value of the
Septones primarily in the inks themselves or in the software ?

John

> The start up cost of the Septone system is largely the
> software required.  Is there anything to prevent QTR or
> OPM/IJC users from creating their own profiles for the
> Septone inks, and/or sharing them here ?
> 
> Does this make sense ?  In other words, is the value of the 
> Septones primarily in the inks themselves or in the software ?

I would say it's the software and the profiles. There aren't yet any low
cost rips or printer drivers for Windows that can easily control a
quadtone setup for the 2200, so this would be the first. I've yet to see
any reports of the actual quality of the software though...

If all you need is the inks you can get the MIS Ultratones for half the
price.

--
Daniel Staver
http://daniel.staver.no

> > Does this make sense ?  In other words, is the value of the 
> > Septones primarily in the inks themselves or in the software ?
> 
> I would say it's the software and the profiles. There aren't yet any
low
> cost rips or printer drivers for Windows that can easily control a
> quadtone setup for the 2200, so this would be the first. I've yet to
see
> any reports of the actual quality of the software though...

Oh, I see. The great thing about Septones is that it's a good
Windows solution.  

> If all you need is the inks you can get the MIS Ultratones for half
the
> price.

And your opinion is that a Mac user is better off with UTs and
QTR or IJC ?

John

* -----Original Message-----
* From: johngeyles [mailto:jge@...] 
* Sent: Tuesday, September 16, 2003 11:23 AM
* To: DigitalBlackandWhiteThePrint@yahoogroups.com
* Subject: Re: [Digital BW] Its time to jump? Septones for 2100?
* 
* 
* > I had decided that if I purchased the Septone system,
* > it would only make economic sense with the CFS.
* 
* The start up cost of the Septone system is largely the
* software required.  Is there anything to prevent QTR or
* OPM/IJC users from creating their own profiles for the
* Septone inks, and/or sharing them here ?
* 
* Does this make sense ?  In other words, is the value of the 
* Septones primarily in the inks themselves or in the software ?
* 
John,

The inks look similar to the warm and cool Piezotones and the MIS-FS and
FSN. What is unique is the software which allows you to vary the hue of the
print separately in the shadows, middle grays and high lights. I don't know
of anyone else who has offered this capability. I think this is a great
concept but not everyone sees this as a benefit. A lot of people struggle to
eliminate any variation in hue. A matter of personal taste.

The other way to get this kind of hue control would be with the MIS-VM inks
and apply different RGB separation curves to different tonal ranges of the
image. In practice the results I have seen were too strongly split and
overall tonal smoothness suffered. 

In theory I would think you could do this with QuadTone and OPM/IJC but you
might need pairs of curves for each zone. This implies combining 6 curves
which may be overly complicated in regular use. While the Septone plug-in is
not free, $195 doesn't seem too bad. If you have a wide format printer it is
another story where you would have to buy the PixelPixasso RIP at $1,495.

Perhaps either MIS-FS or PiezoTone inks could be used with the Septone
software since they have the same ink densities as the Sundance inks. From
what we saw with the Piezo/R9/Image Export plug-in there can be problems in
using inks other than what the software was designed for. While the
alternate inks are very close in density they may not be exact resulting in
a loss of linearity in the tone ramp. We saw some problems with this when
people switched from the original Piezo inks to the PiezoTone inks. Some
people were able to change over without a problem or even an improvement and
others encountered a drop in the quality of their step wedges. The different
experiences seem to be due to printer-to-printer variations within the same
model as well as a less than perfect match in ink densities.

The big thing I see lacking with PixelPixasso and the Septone plug-in is the
linearization feature that are available in QuadTone, OPM/IJC and
StudioPrint. Given the fact of printer-to-printer variations as well as
lot-to-lot variations within the same brand of ink and paper, some sort of
calibration function seems very desirable. While you can eyeball these
changes and create your own compensating curves in PS, I like the idea of
automating this and using information gathered with a densitometer or even a
scan of a step wedge.

At this point if I had a 2100/2200 I would be giving the Septone plug-in a
try. If I was on a Mac I would also be checking out QuadTone RIP. As to
which grayscale inks I would use I guess I would start with the Septones but
also plan on trying the Piezotone gray inks as well. A lot of possible
combinations. Assuming you can eventually buy ink in bulk, I would not let
ink cost be a deciding factor. Your paper costs are so much greater than the
cost of the ink you should use the ink that looks the best to your eye.

Martin Wesley
http://www.carolyn.cc/Guests/MartinWesley/pages/MW_01.html
http://www.borderless-photos.de/guests.html