Digital BW, The Print

Hi,
I'm new to this group.  I have an interest in printing black and white
photos (taken with my digital camera), and I would like to ask for
suggestions about what printer/ink/paper to get, given my particular
circumstances.

I make short "photo essays" of children at my preschool; each is
composed of a series of pictures and text (spanning one to several
pages of standard-size paper) in which, for example, I try to capture
a child's involvement in an episode of play, or engagement in
problem-solving, or just experiencing daily life at school.  Each page
usually contains three or more photos, often of varying sizes; and a
line or two -- sometimes a paragraph or two -- of text.  

I arrange the photos and text using the page layout program, Ragtime.
 With Ragtime, I crop, and enlarge/shrink the photos to make the best
arrangement (Since Ragtime isn't a graphics program there's not much
besides this that I can do to the photos.  While I could do some
adjustments on the photos beforehand in a photo-editing program, I
really couldn't afford the time it would take to do this on each
individual photo)

While I'm not a professional photographer I do put a lot of care into
capturing the pictures (when the children are _not_ paying attention
to me and the camera), and into selecting and composing each series to
best tell the story and evoke the mood of the situation. I'm choosing
to print in black and white because I like it better.  

  To describe the quality I would like to acheive:  I definitely want
to get significantly better printouts than what I'm getting now from
my 600 dpi B&W laser printer; and I'd like to avoid the color cast I
remember getting when I printed grayscale on the HP photosmart printer
I had a couple years ago.  I'd like to acheive the quality you might
see in a photography book of black and white photos.  I also like the
idea of printing on paper like the photography books would use --
thin, smooth, somewhat shiny paper (somewhere in between plain,
everyday copy paper and thick heavy photo paper).

Does such a printer exist, that:

-prints B&W without ugly color casts (and without time-consuming
adjustments and having to experiment with printing and fine-tuning
each photo)

-approaches the quality of book-printed B&W photographs

-doesn't require the most expensive, photo-quality paper to get these
results

-does a decent job printing the text along with the photos

-costs maybe $100 to $300 (possibly more if it were a printer whose
supplies were especially cheap)

-is not extremely expensive to use.  "Extremely expensive," to me,
would be using the special Quad grayscale inks, in prefilled
cartridges, and printing on photo-quality paper.  (Bulk Quad ink that
I'd fill myself, and a mid-range paper, might be acceptable), 

           -------------------------
I realize I might have to compromise on some of the above . . .

There are a bunch of things that _don't_ matter much to me:  the speed
of the printing, what type of printer it is (laser or inkjet or
something else), whether or not it's capable of printing in color, how
fade-resistant the printouts are in the long run.

I'd greatly appreciate any suggestions of printer/ink/paper
combinations that are worth my considering.

-Susanna

> From: sus123452000 [mailto:sus@...]
>
>   To describe the quality I would like to acheive:  I definitely want
> to get significantly better printouts than what I'm getting now from
> my 600 dpi B&W laser printer; and I'd like to avoid the color cast I
> remember getting when I printed grayscale on the HP photosmart printer
> I had a couple years ago.  I'd like to acheive the quality you might
> see in a photography book of black and white photos.  I also like the
> idea of printing on paper like the photography books would use --
> thin, smooth, somewhat shiny paper (somewhere in between plain,
> everyday copy paper and thick heavy photo paper).
>
> Does such a printer exist, that:
>
> -prints B&W without ugly color casts (and without time-consuming
> adjustments and having to experiment with printing and fine-tuning
> each photo)
>
> -approaches the quality of book-printed B&W photographs
>
> -doesn't require the most expensive, photo-quality paper to get these
> results
>
> -does a decent job printing the text along with the photos
>
> -costs maybe $100 to $300 (possibly more if it were a printer whose
> supplies were especially cheap)
>
> -is not extremely expensive to use.  "Extremely expensive," to me,
> would be using the special Quad grayscale inks, in prefilled
> cartridges, and printing on photo-quality paper.  (Bulk Quad ink that
> I'd fill myself, and a mid-range paper, might be acceptable),

The easiest way to get good B&W without color casts is to buy a color
printer, and then only use the black ink. The problem is that in lighter
areas, the dots are further apart than if you mixed color inks, so the
result is more grain. But it doesn't sound like your prints need to be
absolutely razor-sharp, so this might be a good way to go.

Also, in my experience, the main visual difference between the expensive
paper (e.g., Epson Premium Luster or Enhanced Matte) and the cheaper stuff
(e.g., Epson Photo Quality Inkjet Paper) is that you don't get such dark
blacks on the latter. If you don't need real knock-you-on-your-butt blacks,
then you can get away with the cheaper stuff. It'll still be as good as a
magazine image.

The Epson C84 may be sufficient for your needs. It's only a four-color
printer, but if you print black-only, you don't care. Alternatively, any day
now the Epson R800 will be out. It's much more expensive, but has an
exremely small dot size, lessening the grain. You can probably get a good
idea of how they'll perform by carefully examining a sample print.

--

Ciao,               Paul D. DeRocco
Paul                mailto:pderocco@...

Susanna,

You're already using the "best solution" for your needs...although, 
you may want to upgrade your laser to 1200dpi, if you find one in 
your price range.  (I'm leaving out the "I think..." portion of this 
sentence since it is implied.)

I'm sure there are many people in this group and elsewhere that would 
disagree, but you sound like you would rather not deal with the 
inkjet issues and what's wrong with a good laser printer - besides 
the [just as expensive] toner cartridges?

A really good b/w laser printer that takes all types of paper, 
including card stock sounds like it would be perfect for your 
situation and doesn't require you to worry about switching over to 
the quadtone inksets.  IMHO, printing with a color inkjet printer 
with only the black ink, is not the best use of the printer, and may 
end up costing a pretty penny if the ink colors are not stored in 
independent cartridges.  If all the ink colors are in the same 
cartridges, you'll end up paying for a brand new cartridge everytime 
you run out of black...while the other colors are near 100% full.  
I'm sure this would make the Epsons and HPs of the world very happy 
to have you as an inkjet customer!

Just my two cents!

Patrick @ Digital Eyes Custom Photo
Pacheco, CA


--- In DigitalBlackandWhiteThePrint@yahoogroups.com, "sus123452000" 
<sus@m...> wrote:
> Does such a printer exist, that:
> 
> -prints B&W without ugly color casts (and without time-consuming
> adjustments and having to experiment with printing and fine-tuning
> each photo)
> 
> -approaches the quality of book-printed B&W photographs
> 
> -doesn't require the most expensive, photo-quality paper to get 
these
> results
> 
> -does a decent job printing the text along with the photos
> 
> -costs maybe $100 to $300 (possibly more if it were a printer whose
> supplies were especially cheap)
> 
> -is not extremely expensive to use.  "Extremely expensive," to me,
> would be using the special Quad grayscale inks, in prefilled
> cartridges, and printing on photo-quality paper.  (Bulk Quad ink 
that
> I'd fill myself, and a mid-range paper, might be acceptable), 
> 
>            -------------------------
> I realize I might have to compromise on some of the above . . .
> 
> There are a bunch of things that _don't_ matter much to me:  the 
speed
> of the printing, what type of printer it is (laser or inkjet or
> something else), whether or not it's capable of printing in color, 
how

> fade-resistant the printouts are in the long run.
> 
> I'd greatly appreciate any suggestions of printer/ink/paper
> combinations that are worth my considering.
> 
> -Susanna

Susanna,

Try looking at the PagePro 1350W from Konica/Minolta to see if it 
fits your needs.  I'm sure there are other printers out there, 
produced by the likes of HP, XEROX, Brother, IBM, Lexmark, Okidata, 
and Panasonic...to name a few.

Take a look at www.pricescan.com, to get a cursory glance at your 
other options and some market prices for them.

Disclaimer:  I do not sell, and I am in no way associated with 
Minolta (or the other companies mentioned - all TMs are their own) 
other than owning a Dimage Scan Multi Pro (TM) scanner for scanning 
35mm to 120mm format film.

Patrick @ Digital Eyes

> From: Patrick Donegan [mailto:pdonegan@...]
>
> IMHO, printing with a color inkjet printer
> with only the black ink, is not the best use of the printer, and may
> end up costing a pretty penny if the ink colors are not stored in
> independent cartridges.  If all the ink colors are in the same
> cartridges, you'll end up paying for a brand new cartridge everytime
> you run out of black...while the other colors are near 100% full.
> I'm sure this would make the Epsons and HPs of the world very happy
> to have you as an inkjet customer!

Every inkjet printer I've seen has at least a separate black cart. The only
color ink used would be the small quantity that's wasted whenever the
printer has to run a cleaning cycle.

--

Ciao,               Paul D. DeRocco
Paul                mailto:pderocco@...

[Oops -- sorry -- I sent this message a moment ago then realized I
forgot to add the subject.  I decided it might be best to send it
again under the subject line]
 -----------

Thank you for the replies and the printer suggestions!

Paul D. DeRocco wrote:

>Every inkjet printer I've seen has at least a separate black cart.
>The only color ink used would be the small quantity that's wasted
>whenever the printer has to run a cleaning cycle.

I wonder whether there's any inkjet (not an Epson, I bet) that would
be willing to print in black-only ink with _empty_ color cartridges --
just empty, dummy cartridges to fill the space -- or whether every
injet printer will refuse to go on if its color cartridges are empty.
Anyone ever tried this?

Another question: Does anyone happen to know whether the Canon i960
gives one the option of printng in Black-only ink? (I seem to
remember reading that the i950 does not.). I use a Mac, if that makes
any difference.

Patrick Donegan (suggesting a higher resolution laser printer) wrote:

>Try looking at the PagePro 1350W from Konica/Minolta to see
>if it fits your needs. I'm sure there are other printers out
>there,produced by the likes of HP, XEROX, Brother, IBM,
>Lexmark, Okidata,and Panasonic...to name a few.

I looked at the PagePro site (at a different model that is mac
compatible), and one thing that's nice is you can do a "test drive" by
sending in a file of your own and they will send you back a print of
your file from any of their printers -- so I might just try this.

I also did a little bit of searching on other 1200 dpi laser printers,
looking for reviews of how they did for printing photos. So far I
found only very cursory information of graphics capability of the
various printers. Does anyone here happen to have any experience or
knowlege about any particular brands and models of 1200 dpi black and
white laser printers? If so, are there any you'd recommend to
consider or to avoid? ($300 or so, but I could go higher if it makes
much difference) Again, I'm not expecting to get real photo quality,
but nice-looking, well-defined prints nonetheless.

Susanna

I found out the hard way that you could do this with
an epson printer (I have an 875)

This is what you will need - Printer with the black
cartridge you are going to use, and an empty color MIS
cartridge with the always reads full chip (part of the
CIS system) installed.  If the printer thinks there is
ink in the cartridge, it will run.  However, you will
want to do this with a printer with a blown color head
- because after you start doing this you will kill the
color head.

The tine in my cyan position broke - so no ink would
feed into the head.  But it produced beautiful Black
Only prints.

Anyone who wants it can have it for shipping - I've
replaced it.

Don

> I wonder whether there's any inkjet (not an Epson, I
> bet) that would
> be willing to print in black-only ink with _empty_
> color cartridges --
> just empty, dummy cartridges to fill the space -- or
> whether every
> injet printer will refuse to go on if its color
> cartridges are empty.
> Anyone ever tried this?



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Paul D. DeRocco wrote:

>The easiest way to get good B&W without color casts is to buy a color
>printer, and then only use the black ink. The problem is that in lighter
>areas, the dots are further apart than if you mixed color inks, so the
>result is more grain. But it doesn't sound like your prints need to be
>absolutely razor-sharp, so this might be a good way to go.
>  
>

Of course, some printers: the EPSON dye-based printers and the Canons 
have notorious color casts and/or metatmerism when printing in BO mode..




 
Keith Krebs

"Just some guy," caretaker of the Multiverse's largest EPSON printer 
User Community (highly recommended by Vogon Poets and MegaDodo 
Publications), at:
http://groups.yahoo.com/group/EPSON_Printers/
and  the Multiverse's largest Canon printer User  Community at:
http://groups.yahoo.com/group/Canon-printers
"For the rest of you out there, the secret is to bang the rocks together 
guys"

> From: Editor P.O.V. Image Service [mailto:editor@...]
>
> Of course, some printers: the EPSON dye-based printers and the Canons
> have notorious color casts and/or metatmerism when printing in BO mode..

I know that some black ink is on the warm side, but I thought black-only was
the _solution_ to metamerism. I know the later 2000P driver reduced
metamerism by relying more heavily on black ink.

--

Ciao,               Paul D. DeRocco
Paul                mailto:pderocco@...

Paul D. DeRocco wrote:

>>From: Editor P.O.V. Image Service [mailto:editor@...]
>>
>>Of course, some printers: the EPSON dye-based printers and the Canons
>>have notorious color casts and/or metatmerism when printing in BO mode..
>>    
>>
>
>I know that some black ink is on the warm side, but I thought black-only was
>the _solution_ to metamerism. I know the later 2000P driver reduced
>metamerism by relying more heavily on black ink.
>
>  
>
The OEM K inks in the EPSON 1280/1270/1290/960 and the Canon 
S9000/900/i960/i9100 will exhibit both metamerism and a greenish cast..

Of course, they'll also fade to brown as the cyan component is 
oxidized.. I'd stay away from those specific printers with OEM inks if 
doing BO.. The C84 you mentioned, might be the best choice, and 
relatively inexpensive..  Although, I might go with a C84 and MIS K 
instead.. It would depend on cost, but with the ink markup EPSON 
probably needs to underwrite the C84, I'd guess the MIS inks would be 
comparable or cheaper ..

 
Keith Krebs

"Just some guy," caretaker of the Multiverse's largest EPSON printer 
User Community (highly recommended by Vogon Poets and MegaDodo 
Publications), at:
http://groups.yahoo.com/group/EPSON_Printers/
and  the Multiverse's largest Canon printer User  Community at:
http://groups.yahoo.com/group/Canon-printers
"For the rest of you out there, the secret is to bang the rocks together 
guys"