Digital BW, The Print

I'm going crazy trying to choose the "right" quadtone inkset for my 
brand new Epson 1160 (connected to a Mac). Can anyone offer 
any clear guidance? Here's what I've gleaned so far:

If I use Piezo inks & driver:

- I'll get beautiful prints free of microdots, microbanding and 
other nasty digital-looking stuff , but
- it will set me back more than $300
- I'll need to calibrate my monitor, so add the cost of calibration 
tools on top of the $335+ for the software & inks,
- my prints will have a slightly greenish cast under certain 
lighting conditions, and 
- I run the risk that some point my printer will clog up and die a 
horrible death.


MIS inks such as the Full-Spectrum inkset:

- offer better color (less green or metamerism, especially the FS 
inkset) and
- carry less risk of clogging than the Cone/Piezo inks (or so I've 
been reading on this newsgroup). But
- because they rely on the Epson driver, they're still made up of 
little dithered dots or lines or whatever, which is one of the things 
I'm trying to get away from by switching to quadtone in the first 
place.
- Also these inks apparently work with fewer types of papers, or 
so I gather.


Is this all correct so far?

Now I know nothing about the Lyson inks, so I'd welcome any 
info on those, as well as links to websites or groups that 
discuss them.

I've seen some posts here and there suggesting that people 
could use the Cone driver with the MIS FS inks in order to get 
dither-free prints that are less likely to clog and kill one's printer. 
Does anyone reading this have any actual experience doing 
this? If so, what kind of results did you get? Are there published 
workflows for this? Cone recommends against it, of course.

Finally, is there anyone in the Seattle/Puget Sound area doing 
quadtone work who might be interested in showing me some of 
their print samples so I could get a better idea about all this?

Many thanks,
Peter

Peter,

I am also newbie to this whole thing, went through all posts on and 
off list and decided to go with MIS VM and Paul's curves since they 
seemed the most developed and the most used (ie. more available 
helpers)... since it was only $120 for the complete MIS CFS and 
inkset I just ordered the whole thing sight unseen... will let you 
know how happy I am with it.  I doubt you can make the "right" choice 
until you actually start printing your own work on your own system so 
there is going to be some risk associated with any choice you make.  
I am resistant to spending the $600 for a Cone CIS and inkset until I 
have exhausted the other alternates first.  Perhaps I am looking at 
this wrong, but I am insisting on a CIS/CFS right away so I don't 
feel inhibited in making many, many prints.  When working in a 
conventional darkroom I can never make up my mind so I just print a 
stack of slightly different prints, give it a week or two and then 
decide which one is "right."

mark

--- In DigitalBlackandWhiteThePrint@y..., "peter_in_seattle" 
<wander.lust@g...> wrote:
> I'm going crazy trying to choose the "right" quadtone inkset for my 
> brand new Epson 1160 (connected to a Mac). Can anyone offer 
> any clear guidance? Here's what I've gleaned so far:
> 
> If I use Piezo inks & driver:
> 
> - I'll get beautiful prints free of microdots, microbanding and 
> other nasty digital-looking stuff , but
> - it will set me back more than $300
> - I'll need to calibrate my monitor, so add the cost of calibration 
> tools on top of the $335+ for the software & inks,
> - my prints will have a slightly greenish cast under certain 
> lighting conditions, and 
> - I run the risk that some point my printer will clog up and die a 
> horrible death.
> 
> 
> MIS inks such as the Full-Spectrum inkset:
> 
> - offer better color (less green or metamerism, especially the FS 
> inkset) and
> - carry less risk of clogging than the Cone/Piezo inks (or so I've 
> been reading on this newsgroup). But
> - because they rely on the Epson driver, they're still made up of 
> little dithered dots or lines or whatever, which is one of the 
things 
> I'm trying to get away from by switching to quadtone in the first 
> place.
> - Also these inks apparently work with fewer types of papers, or 
> so I gather.
> 
> 
> Is this all correct so far?
> 
> Now I know nothing about the Lyson inks, so I'd welcome any 
> info on those, as well as links to websites or groups that 
> discuss them.
> 
> I've seen some posts here and there suggesting that people 
> could use the Cone driver with the MIS FS inks in order to get 
> dither-free prints that are less likely to clog and kill one's 
printer. 

> Does anyone reading this have any actual experience doing 
> this? If so, what kind of results did you get? Are there published 
> workflows for this? Cone recommends against it, of course.
> 
> Finally, is there anyone in the Seattle/Puget Sound area doing 
> quadtone work who might be interested in showing me some of 
> their print samples so I could get a better idea about all this?
> 
> Many thanks,
> Peter

on 12/21/2001 11:33 AM, DigitalBlackandWhiteThePrint@yahoogroups.com at
DigitalBlackandWhiteThePrint@yahoogroups.com wrote:

> Message: 23
> Date: Fri, 21 Dec 2001 19:14:41 -0000
> From: "peter_in_seattle" <wander.lust@...>
> Subject: Which inkset for Epson 1160?
> 
> I'm going crazy trying to choose the "right" quadtone inkset for my
> brand new Epson 1160 (connected to a Mac). Can anyone offer
> any clear guidance? Here's what I've gleaned so far:
> 
> If I use Piezo inks & driver:
> 
> - I'll get beautiful prints free of microdots, microbanding and
> other nasty digital-looking stuff , but
> - it will set me back more than $300
> - I'll need to calibrate my monitor, so add the cost of calibration
> tools on top of the $335+ for the software & inks,
> - my prints will have a slightly greenish cast under certain
> lighting conditions, and
> - I run the risk that some point my printer will clog up and die a
> horrible death.


Just to confuse you...

I'm using the 1160 with piezo inks and software.  I really like the color of
the prints.  Quite neutral to my eye.  I will note that I've seen some
variation of color in different ink batches but one might not notice if the
prints are not side by side.

So far no clogging problems, at least no worse than epson inks.

You don't need a monitor calibrator for B&W piezo.  In fact the piezo manual
tells you how to calibrate your monitor using photoshop by eye, and even
recommends this method.

My monitor is instrument calibrated but needs further correction to make the
piezo prints match the monitor if this helps.

My experience is based upon making about 50 prints so far, knock on wood.
 
-Bruce

Visit my website at:
http://home.earthlink.net/~smthopr