Digital BW, The Print

Hi Chris,

I recently set myself up with a dedicated b&w printer to print images
captured on my Canon 20D.

I too am on a budget, so I went for an Epson 1290 printer with a MIS (
http://www.inksupply.com/) continuous flow system loaded up with their UT2
inkset. I got the whole setup for much less than the price of an Epson R2400
(which is way more than I can afford at the moment).

The UT2 inkset allows you to print a range of tones from cool to warm (and
sepia). This suits me well as I'm still experimenting and didn't want to
commit to a fixed-tone inkset.

My only critisism with this setup is that there is a bit of a learning curve
(partly due to the differences between colour and b&w workflows) and it took
me about a week of tweaking and printing 21-step wedges until I finally
produced a print that I was happy with. That said, now I'm consistently
getting results I consider to be of displayable quality.

I was also considering Lyson (http://www.lyson.com/) quadtone inksets before
I decided on MIS, however I decided against them for a number of reasons.
Lyson inks have been reported to suffer from metamerism (appears different
colours under different lighting conditions) which I didn't want to gamble
with. Also Lyson inks have a different pH to Epson inks, so you need to use
a special cleaning ink cartridge if you want to switch between Lyson/Epson
inks. MIS inks on the other hand are matched with Epson, so you can switch
between them freely should you ever need to.

Goodluck, I hope this helps.

Josh.


On 7/27/06, chriskjezp <chriskresser@...> wrote:
>
>   Hello everyone,
>
> I have a show coming up at a local coffee shop and I would like to produce
> some nice B&W
> prints. I currently have a Canon MP800 printer which produces fair color
> output but when
> it comes to B&W, particularly with a lot of detail in the shadows - forget
> it. So I'd like to
> buy an inkjet printer that is capable of making high quality B&W prints.
>
> I capture with a Canon 20D (and occasionaly a Holga for fun), and I use a
> color-managed
> (Adobe RGB) workflow. I import the RAW files into Photoshop and then
> convert to B&W
> using a variety of methods (channel mixer, gradient map, LAB, combining
> channels, etc.)
> depending upon the image. More often than not I finish with a sepia,
> silver, palladium or
> other tone using again a variety of methods (color balance, curves,
> hue/saturation, color
> fill/overlay, etc).
>
> I've done a lot of research here and over at the Photo.net forums, and
> many folks suggest
> the Epson r2400, 2200, 1280 or r220. However, the r2400 might be overkill
> since I do
> not print all that often (and it is a bit of a stretch on my budget). The
> Epson r220 (or
> 1280/2200) with MIS inks sounds like a very affordable and high quality
> solution, but if I
> understand correctly (and I'm not at all sure I do) I would lose the
> ability to print toned
> photos. Or at least I would have to learn a different method than I am
> using now (working
> in RGB color space).
>
> If there is a better option (than RGB printing) for printing toned B&W
> prints digitally, I'm
> open to learning about it. If someone could direct me to a helpful website
> or book, I'd
> appreciate it. Otherwise, can you recommend a printer that would be a good
> fit for my
> needs?
>
> Thank you for your help - it is much appreciated.
>
> Chris
>
>  
>


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