In Praise of The Darkroom

[Alpha]

Helen beat me to it...

Also, there is a extremely wide variety of papers available for the 2200 with pre-existing profiles as a start. It isn't as bad as people make it out to be.

You have obviously never worked much with this printer, or I should say profiling in general, if you believe that stock profiles are any good. A thousand other people with my experience will concur.

2200 ink cartridges DO NOT cost $60 a pop. Try $8-12.

I was referring to inks for the more expensive printers since I don't believe that the 2200 is any good.

2200 is more than capable of accommodating thick paper.... there is an option for rear-feeding.

There is indeed an option for rear feeding. It's really not that great. The printer even has difficulty on occasion with Epson's own water-color paper.

Metamerism was a problem on the 2200 mainly on glossy media. Not so bad on matte with the proper inkset. I do believe Epson addressed this issue in the R2400 (the 2200 replacement) and above.

This is just plain wrong. If you ever saw any matte prints using stock inks and stock profiles, they were green as hell. Magenta on occasion, too. Further, if the problems lay in the paper, which I pointed out is sometimes the case in my original post, then this needs to be corrected in the paper itself. There is nothing to subsequently address in printer upgrades when it's the paper causing part of your problem. Try using a stock profile for semi-gloss on a 7800. It's still green.

Your section "Why Would I Do All That When I Can Just Send My Prints To a Printer?" is not really an issue of wet darkroom versus digital. It is actually the difference between doing your own prints in a personal darkroom versus sending your prints out to a printer. The issues you bring up will impact either digital or film B&W shooters who send their prints out.

You misunderstood me. Re-read the paragraph where I talk about paper choice, toning, and "print it again."

 

[Helen B]

Max,

Thank you for taking the time to reply in detail.

...

I understand what a spectrophotometer and colorimeter are, I use both regularly in a variety of scientific settings. I used the term "spectrocolorimeter" in this case because that is how DataColor refers to their apparatus.

That makes sense. Thanks. The PrintFix Pro is not a proper spectrophotometer, and it is more than a colorimeter. That's probably why they used a hybrid word. I'd call it an abridged spectrophotometer. The i1 or Eye-One is a proper spectrophotometer. As an aside, I tried the PFP and sold it. I use an Eye-One. It integrates very well with IJC/OPM. My Macbeth TR924 does a good job as well, it just takes a little longer.

You are correct in noting that a densitometer will suffice. The hardware packaged with those two products I mentioned basically is a densitometer. You could go buy one on eBay, but you'd still be missing the profiling software. Of the RIP software I mentioned, only Bowhaus does an adequate job of color-managing greyscale printing with K3 inks. I believe that densitometry is something that needs to be addressed in the professional inkjet printing community. Normal reflection densitometers are not ideally suited to this application because they are incapable of distinguishing between magenta and light magenta, and cyan and light cyan. That said, they are certainly up to the job for the most part. But given that magenta ink is the single greatest contributing factor in metamerism, the fact that our printer is laying down two different kinds and our tools cannot tell the difference I believe is problematic.

I believe that the use of magenta and cyan should be avoided when making greyscale profiles. You are asking for trouble, and they are unneccessary with K3: light magenta and light cyan are all that you need.

As for how long it takes to really nail a profile, I beg to differ on the time frame and wasted paper. Perhaps my 100 sheet + 2 weeks figure is a slight exaggeration for something like your standard semi-gloss paper, but it isn't far off in my experience.
...

We'll have to differ on that.

As for what the 2200 is capable of. I don't believe it's capable of much of anything without a dedicated black ink set. For those on a budget, buying the ink set and a second printer to do color work can be problematic. I've spent much more time profiling the 2200 than the higher ups precisely because it is such an impossible machine to profile. I found that even the Bowhaus RIP had great difficulty getting metamerism, color cast, and density right simultaneously. The QuadTone RIP is positively useless without a dedicated black ink set. It's not even very good on the 4800+ models. Remember that QuadTone was originally developed specifically for black-only inks, and was later adapted for K3.

Here is one of my explanations of using K3 inks in a 2200 dedicated to B&W: link. I have since switched from that versatile ink set to an R2400 with a more restricted inkset that does exactly what I want - rather like my old habit of printing only on Record Rapid.

As for comparing the density range to silver gelatin prints, I do not wish to do so at all.

There is indeed little advantage in going beyond the density range that glossy silver gelatin is capable of. Your prints need to be displayed in very good lighting if you want to distinguish density differences above about 2.3 or 2.4. I think that the main conclusion is that neither medium has a significant advantage in respect to density range and tonality.

I think that there is a lot to be said for both approaches, and I would not like to give the impression that getting the highest quality inkjet print was easy or cheap. It's a personal choice, and the more information people have the better.

Best,
Helen

 

[JC1220]

Two words:

Archival Permanence

Even with the best inks and papers, and promises from the manufacturers - just place one in the sun for a few days or so next to a properly processed fiber print.

 

[Alpha]

Two words:

Archival Permanence

Even with the best inks and papers, and promises from the manufacturers - just place one in the sun for a few days or so next to a properly processed fiber print.

I don't have any reason in particular to doubt the archival abilities of pigment inks and inkjet media...at least not any more than I might doubt, say, the claim that a compact disk can last 100 years when stored properly. Of course, this is all within the context of archival storage...cool, dark, and dry. I believe that these prints are able to last a long time. I have not seen any noticeable fading even on my poorly made prigment prints from several years ago. One thing I am interested in, however, is the preservative ability of spray-fixers, which are promising but poorly documented. I'd like to see some advances in that arena, as I haven't come across anything that I fully believe with help preserve digital work quite like toning will preserve silver gelatin.

 

[JC1220]

Yes, I suppose if something is properly stored, etc. I think everything would be fine, but most people don't take that kind of care.

I have reason to doubt it, a friend and I did just what I said, he put one of his digital prints next to one my silver prints, each half covered in room where they got direct sun each day for a month, there was slight, but noticable fade and he is up to par on the best materials for his work.

I hope new advances with digital continue in this direction of getting more archival, if it could do what I wanted and could match the quality of what I have now I would dabble for sure.