Digital BW, The Print

wwodets wrote:

> Bruce--
>
> My interest is not in mimicing anything, but in an excellent tonal
> scale (including unimpeachable dmax) on a paper that does feel like
> plastic wrap or a dental dam in the hand. Period. 
>
> All the discussion of paper on this forum (including the perpetual
> dmax 1.65 vs. 1.74, the spray coatings, the finger nail test. etc.
> etc.) suggests that many of us have "paper troubles."  Personally, I
> find all of the current papers a compromise, and a significant one,
> in one way or another.  Many of us have trouble acknowledging that. 
> Improvements in these papers is clearly the next step.
>
> Walt

I disagree. It's not just the papers. The papers are fine; what 
improvement we get is going to be incremental.

It's the inks that are failing us. I don't think we'll ever see the day 
when a matte paper, any matte paper, can give us a 2.0+ Dmax with the 
current crop of pigment inks. Not UltraChromes, not K3, not MIS, not 
PiezoTones.

I've got some prints sitting on my desk - matte substrates, with a 
reported 2.2+ Dmax. They are at least as dark as the blacks on my old 
selenium toned air-dried F-surface fiber prints from yesteryear viewed 
side-by-side under Solux lights. Unimpeachable Dmax, if you will.

The problem is that they are experimental inks. Not nearly as fragile a 
surface as current pigments give, no metamerism from 3000K halogens to 
crappy fluorescents, to 4700K Solux, to direct sunlight. It's clearly 
doable. The questions are retail cost, longevity, time to market, and 
the desire to bring a new ink to a market that clings to OEM inks and 
papers like there's no tomorrow. I'm not sure it's worth the hassle 
myself. But I encourage as I can.
--
Bruce Watson