EPSON 2200 or quadtone for B&W?

Hi !

I just received a sample print on 'hahnemuehle fine art paper',

printed with an EPSON Photo printer and Piezotone warm neutral ink.

The result is just amazing: a full range of tonality, contrast and

structure I've never seen before in the DARK areas of the photo and no

visible grain.

Did anybody have the chance to directly compare EPSON STylus Photo

2200-b&w-prints with 'continous tone'-inks like piezography ?

I would appreciate all comments ....

Peter

Hi Peter:

I have done that comparison. I compared B&W out of my 2200 to Cone Pizo out of an Epson 3000.

Simply stated, the Cone images looked like professionally-printed selenium-toned prints. They were also very sharp and had great tonal range, with superb shadow detail and good strong blacks. BUT the 2200's B&W's are quite good too. Not quite as sharp, and not quite the tonal range nor the shadow detail of the Cone, but very good blacks and the ability to fine tune the tone from warm to cool with the one inkset. And you don't have to dedicate a separate printer to B&W.

So, if you want to only print the highest quality B&W, get a dedicated quad-tone printer set-up. If very good is otherwise good enough, and you want to print color too, try the 2200 before making your final decision. (PS: You will definately need good profiles to get good B&W results in the 2200.)

Cheers,

... Jack for your report; I guess I will start with the EPSON 2200 but keeping my EPSON PHOTO 1200 for the moment. If I feel like doing it, I can change to quad-inks on that machine later ...

bye

Peter

Jack. I agree, excellent summation. Not that I've had any experience of anything other than the 2200 (and that only for a few days) but I have done a lot of research and question asking. Now that I've finally taken the plunge and brought the 2100, the glarring fact is that I am getting far better prints (especially in terms of tonality, sharpness, and detail) than I was in the darkroom (I am nothing more than an average printer) and that's why all this started (all this being the desire to get better prints, having had enough frustrating darkroom sessions and wanting to just get on with the process of taking photographs) Sorry, overly heavy use of brackets there. You said that "You will definately need good profiles to get good B&W results in the 2200". I was just wandering if there was a good source of profiles or are they homemade?

Thanks�� Tim.

I just got those same (I'm assuming) samples from piezotone and I was impressed. I'm currently in photography school and have access to a darkroom. I'm trying to decide weather I want to invest in darkroom equipment for when I'm done with school. I mostly shoot B&W on a hasselblad, so I want the ability to make prints that are equal to or better than a darkroom print. I am far from a master darkroom printer though.

I emailed piezotone sales to see when the 2200 would be supported. They said it would be but it would be a while... I couldn't get him to tell me what "a while" was though.

I shoot 90% B&W, but also would like to print color. Since I'll be on a budget I don't exactly want to have one printer for B&W and one for Color. I think the general consensus right now is that the 2200 is the best desktop printer available right now so that is the only printer I would want at this time. I'm planning on getting that and using the epson inks for B&W until the piezotone system is available for the 2200.

There is an epson advertizement that shows Greg Gorman using the larger format version of the 2200 for his B&W prints... I'm guessing he uses the standard epson inks... which are the same inks the 2200 uses... and I would imagine if they are good enough for him they should be good for my uses.

Jeff

Dear All,

I'm using an Epson 1200 with the MIS Hextone inkset from MIS Ink.

It's a 6 grays kit using 15%, 25%, 45%, 50%, 75% and 100% gray,

instead of colours. In addition to that I'm using the CFS version (Continuous Flow System), allowing me to buy bulk inks and saving

really a lot of money. Consider that 1 Pint bottle of ink costs $36.00!! (see: www.inksupply.com).

It's similar to Piezography, but costs much less

and in my opinion it gives wonderful results, comparable with

silver prints.

Obviously you must dedicate the printer to B&W, but considering

the money saving due to the CFS, it's more than convenient.

Good printing

Elio