Digital BW, The Print

I have been doing BO printing for the past 3 years using an Epson 
2200.

Most of my images have been captured with my Canon 20D.  While the 
quality of my images on the screen appear to be pretty descent, the 
prints that I obtain are not entirely smooth.  I always thought that 
the reason for this was due to the limitations BO printing.

Recently I downloadrd images from the U.S. Library of Congress. 

Dorothy Lang's "Migrant Mother"
http://lcweb2.loc.gov/cgi-bin/query/r?pp/fsaall:@filreq(@field
(NUMBER+@band(fsa+8b29516))+@field(COLLID+fsa))

and

Walker Evans "General Store interior"
http://lcweb2.loc.gov/cgi-bin/query/r?pp/fsaall:@filreq(@field
(NUMBER+@band(fsa+8c52415))+@field(COLLID+fsa))

The BO prints that I have obtaines from these files (1936 images 
captured on large format film and scanned) is absolutely amazing.  
This leads me to believe that my BO prints are NOT suffering on 
account of BO, but moreso because of the quality of the files.

Is anyone doing digital capture and obtaining BO prints that rival BO 
prints from scanned images which were originally caputured on large 
format cameras? 

I don't believe that the 8 meg CMOS sensor is lacking in resolution 
since I am only printing 5x7's and 8x10's.

Am I better off changing my image capture approach to medium format 
or large format film? Or should I simply move to a full ink system 
like Piezo or the 2400?  My guess is that using a full ink system can 
overcompensate for the less than ideal digital files.

I realize that I am mixing two distinct issues.  The bottom line is 
that I have proven that BO is very capable - it simply requires 
extremely high quality files.  Since digital image capture still has 
limitations, I figured I could probably achieve  really smooth prints 
by changing the printing approach, not necessarily my image capture 
approach (Canon 20D).

On a slightly different topic, what are the physical attributes of 
those large format files that are making my BO prints look so great?

Thanks,
David




Each of these images were taken on large format cameras so the images 
are very rich