Digital BW, The Print

hi. i'm pretty new to digital phtotgraphy and printing. i've recently 
set up a digital darkroom (nikon sc 4000, epson 1160, MIS FS quadtone 
inks). I'm printing portraits from tibet and the true black just does 
not blend in. the prints have a great tonal spectrum in the 
highlights and midtones, but when it comes to the shadows, the black 
blotches up and pixelates - looking very digital. am i doing 
something wrong? or is this just what i should expect with digital 
prints?
thanks so much,
dafna.

Hi Dafna-
Have you printed a step wedge?  What does it show?

Bill

on 10/26/01 9:21 PM, nem2nem@... wrote:

hi. i'm pretty new to digital phtotgraphy and printing. i've recently
set up a digital darkroom (nikon sc 4000, epson 1160, MIS FS quadtone
inks). I'm printing portraits from tibet and the true black just does
not blend in. the prints have a great tonal spectrum in the
highlights and midtones, but when it comes to the shadows, the black
blotches up and pixelates - looking very digital. am i doing
something wrong? or is this just what i should expect with digital
prints?
thanks so much,
dafna.   




[Non-text portions of this message have been removed]

Dafna,

You should not be getting that result. Can you give us some more 
information on the workflow and printer settings you are using?

Martin


--- In DigitalBlackandWhiteThePrint@y..., nem2nem@y... wrote:
> hi. i'm pretty new to digital phtotgraphy and printing. i've 
recently 
> set up a digital darkroom (nikon sc 4000, epson 1160, MIS FS 
quadtone 
> inks). I'm printing portraits from tibet and the true black just 
does 
> not blend in. the prints have a great tonal spectrum in the 
> highlights and midtones, but when it comes to the shadows, the 
black 

> blotches up and pixelates - looking very digital. am i doing 
> something wrong? or is this just what i should expect with digital 
> prints?
> thanks so much,
> dafna.

Hi, 
Want to share my own limited experience with MIS Quad Variable inks. 
Printing on Epson Matte. 
 
A bit of background. I am no novice to B&W photography and printing. 
Been doing my own processing for about 45 years.
I've been doing my own color processing for about 35 years. 
Everything in a wet darkroom until the last 3 years. I've been doing 
digital prints for about 2.5 years. I still shoot Tri-X and then scan 
the negs in a Nikon 8000.

I believe the Quad inks for the 1270 have a serious problem.

In order to get the MIS Quad prints to even BEGIN to approach the 
quality of the plain old Epson black ink prints I had to turn the 
contrast in the printer driver up to +25(!) and the mode to 'photo 
realistic'. This gave me 'decent' prints rather than the very soft 
prints I originally got but the prints have nowhere near the deep 
blacks of the prints made with the standard Epson black cartridge! 

I looked at the more subtle areas of the print with a 
magnifier...areas of transition from skin tone to highlight. These 
area have no discreet dots!! In the prints made with the Epson black 
inks there ARE many discreet dots. None in the MIS prints. More of a 
smeared gray effect. Diffuse. No dots. 

No wonder the prints are not good. 

Perhaps a problem with pigment ink viscosity? 

Very disappointing. The inks have a problem, for sure!

Made me wonder why I was investing all this time and effort. 
(Ron Harris seems to get gorgeous prints with just the Epson black 
cartridge.) 
http://home.att.net/~rwharris/ 

I used curves as per Paul Roark from the MIS site. 

http://www.inksupply.com/index.cfm?
source=html/workflow_roark1280pc.html 

By the way, when I returned to the Epson Ink, I got gorgeous prints 
again!  

Best, 
Howard 

 

--- In DigitalBlackandWhiteThePrint@y..., nem2nem@y... wrote:
> hi. i'm pretty new to digital phtotgraphy and printing. i've 
recently 
> set up a digital darkroom (nikon sc 4000, epson 1160, MIS FS 
quadtone 
> inks). I'm printing portraits from tibet and the true black just 
does 
> not blend in. the prints have a great tonal spectrum in the 
> highlights and midtones, but when it comes to the shadows, the 
black 

> blotches up and pixelates - looking very digital. am i doing 
> something wrong? or is this just what i should expect with digital 
> prints?
> thanks so much,
> dafna.

<snip>

> set up a digital darkroom (nikon sc 4000, epson 1160, MIS FS 
quadtone inks). I'm printing portraits from tibet and the true black 
just does not blend in. the prints have a great tonal spectrum in the 
highlights and midtones, but when it comes to the shadows, 

>the black blotches up and pixelates - looking very digital. am i 
doing something wrong? or is this just what i should expect with 
digital prints? > > thanks so much, dafna.

Dafna,

I had similiar experience this morning and had set the _sharpness on 
the scanner_ to high...when I turned it off & rescanned the problem 
went away.
I'm going to play with selective unsharp mask in Photoshop for this 
particular image.  Just something to consider while trying to figure 
it out.

Cleavis

on 10/27/01 6:01 AM, hposner1@... wrote:

> Made me wonder why I was investing all this time and effort.
> (Ron Harris seems to get gorgeous prints with just the Epson black
> cartridge.) 
> http://home.att.net/~rwharris/


Forgive me but I think you may have read Ron Harris wrong. Below I excerpted
a snippet from this page:

http://home.att.net/~rwharris/page2.html

He seems to be saying to use all 6 colors, NOT black only:

"You may be surprised to learn that superior black-and-white prints result
from printing black-and-white as "color" images.  If "monochrome" is chosen
in the printer driver, only the black ink cartridge gets used.  Shades of
gray are achieved by spacing the black dots printed on the paper, resulting
in much empty space in the printed image.  If "color" is chosen, all six
inks are used, essentially filling the print with colored dots.  These
overlapping does generate the subtle shades of gray necessary for a fine
print, and generate more detail in the image".

Also, I would never expect that images on a website are scans of prints. I'd
assume the images you see on Ron's site are from digital files, but of
course I could very well be wrong.

Good luck, I hope you get your system working well.

Todd