Anyone happy with their B&W prints on Epson 2100?

If so, I'd love to hear your success stories! Because, as far as I'm

concerned, if color prints are terrific, black and white prints are

not! Anyone with a good story please advise. Thanks !

Hi Joel,

 

I'm in the same boat: unbelievable color prints, but far less satisfactory B&W. I've tried Luminous landscape's recommendations for printing as well as their Photorealistic method, with little improvement. I've also tried the Grey Balancer software with Kodak targets, and didn't like the results at all ... a waste of time for me.

 

I've just received Profile Prism this past week, and have been madly profiling all my paper and ink combos. So far, it has given me even better color results than either the ICM or Epson PIM profiles (BTW: Bill Atkinson's 7600/9600 profiles were not useful to me at all: poor contrast and color accuracy with my 2200. Can't see how some people claim it gives them good results. George Lepp's were ok, but no better than the ICM method with my printer). B&W seem to be *much* more neutral, but not *totally* void of tints. I was previously seeing a strong green cast to all my B&W prints, which is mostly removed with my new profiles. I've only tested Luster paper, however, and would like to test the Matte ink on other papers as well, so this is a work in progress.

 

At this point, I'm pretty desperate to get good B&W from this printer, but don't want to invest in PowerRIP 5.0 @ $500US. I hope it doesn't come down to that. I'm excited by my preliminary results with Profile Prism, but have my doubts that any software can remove color casts and metamerism completely ... Hopefully I'm wrong.

 

I suspect Peter Nelson will chime in with his thoughts as well. It's been quite the quest to solve this problem, but I'm not selling my darkroom equipment any time soon ;)

 

BTW: if anyone is interested, I would be willing to email my profiles ... would be interesting to see if they work on other 2200's as well as mine.

 

Best,

I would invest in one good custom profile-pick the paper and ink you

want and go for it. www.chromix.com is one I believe a reliable

source-they have a guarantee policy and are responsive-I know the Gen

4 inks from Media Street are profilable-I don't see why the Ultrachome

ones wouldn't be also. I don't worry about an inkjet printing being

"perfect for B&W," you can create dutotones, tritones, quadtones with

a subtlety and quality that would ordinarily command the world's

finest and most expensive laser scanned lithographic printing. Make

the medium work to its intrinsic strengths and capabilities, including

monochrome images. Inkjet printing as being evolved by Epson and

Canon is one the greatest advances in the history of imagery and is

liberating creativity-from Grandpa or Grandma making an injet greeting

card to our most talented fine art practitioners. GO

Some folks on here getting good results:

 

http://groups.yahoo.com/group/DigitalBlackandWhiteThePrint

Dump the damn thing in Rapid Fix with hardner for 10 minutes and rinse for 30 minutes in fast flowing water at 70 degrees. That will fix most digital printing problems very well.

What does this question have to do with LF photography? Aren't there digital groups for these general questions?

come on dan ...HAve an open mind..YOu'll need it in a year or two..

<i>come on dan ...HAve an open mind..YOu'll need it in a year or two..</i><p>

 

pt and pd have been around much longer than any Epson printer to date or that will ever be made, so somehow I doubt it he will "need" it in a year or two.

 

I agree with Dan, what the heck has this to do with LF. I am sure Yahoo! has a group for this kind of questions, go bug them!

Thanks for your generous help Jorge. FYI, I'm a LF photographer who digitally prints his work, and so if my question is inappropriate here I hope you'd agree that the numerous darkroom questions posted on this same forum are then inappropriate too, right? Unless your point is that true LF photographers do not go digital, in which case I can only feel sorry for you... Let me add that a Forum assumes exchange of information between people sharing the same interest, and I precisely wanted to know what other LF photographers think about B&W prints on the 2100. Let me make a suggestion: maybe you'd prefer more granular forums like for example one for each camera or each lens/camera couple ? That way your time wouldn't wasted by guys using a different camera than yours ;-) Take care.

Many of us scan and print our LF digitally, very sucessfully. As well as in a wet darkroom.

Well Joel, one, you did not specify prints from LF negs, second even if they are from LF negatives I beleive a better response can be found in forums dealing with Epson printers. As to questions on enlargers, mostly they are for LF films and related to LF printing. Which in the case of B&W you cannot have one without the other one. Matters which are remotely associtated with LF are discussed in the forum, but when you ask "how do I use my Epson printer?" well...that is going beyond even the slightest relation to LF. But hey, I am just agreeing with Dan, and I am not the moderator in this forum so as far as I am ocncerned ask away! What is next, how to calibrate your monitor? <p>

 

Ah, and BTW dont feel sorry for me, I am very happy with <b>my</b> platinum prints...no need to ask how other people feel about their results in my case.

Jorge,

 

Cut the digital guys some slack.

 

I'm sure it's no fun for them to have to keep shoveling cash into the Digtial Money Pit, especially if they're not getting the results they were promised.

 

Rather than making fun of them, we should be satisfied with the knowledge that we will still be making beautiful prints, with the same equipment and materials we are using today, long after all of today's inkjet printers have been junked and the prints they produced have faded to gray.

Ok, ok, Alan mea culpa..I suppose I was being a little insensitive to the woes of the digital money pit. I agree with you, my newest piece of equipment is a 75 year old Korona....still working and making great negs and prints.

As a large format photographer who scans his negatives, and as one who just bought an Epson 2200 printer, I found Joel's question interesting and pertinent. And while I much prefer working in my darkroom than on my computer, I believe a beautiful print is a beautiful print and I choose to not limit the tools used to acheive that print. If I remember correctly, a poll of this large-format forum within the past year showed a majority of participants used some form of digital process in practice of their art.

 

Now to the question; Straight out of the box my printer is giving B&W prints that are very sharp, no visible dot or grain and have a quite pleasing tonality. But the tint issue continues. Using matte black ink on matte paper, under incandescent light there is a faint magenta tint. Under fluorescent light it looks perfectly neutral and in daylight, nearly so. The effect is subtle and not entirely displeasing. The option of easily acheiving desired tints (Duotones, etc.) is nice.

 

After submitting this comment I plan to spend the next several hours in the blissful solitude of my darkroom, printing in the way I love best. Tomorrow I plan to work on printing a negative that I feel can be printed better digitally.

 

It's all good.

Dan,

 

"Using matte black ink on matte paper,

under incandescent light there is a faint magenta tint. Under fluorescent light

it looks perfectly neutral and in daylight, nearly so. The effect is subtle and

not entirely displeasing. The option of easily acheiving desired tints

(Duotones, etc.) is nice."

 

have you tried the Grey Balancer software ("illegal" in N. America - rumour has it Epson thought it was too "complicated" for the US market...).

 

We just got the first of two 2200's for the Archives here. I have very good results from the first couple of tries using it for B&W. You do need a Kodak greyscale - the sort that comes with the colour scale for colour correction.

 

Not quite as good as my pigment quadtones yet, but close.

 

And for colour it's stunning. I did a test print from an 8x10 Astia scan printed on 13x19 paper - fantastic.

Thanks all for your feedback, actually well in line with my experience; which leads to the conclusion that, contrary to what Epson have been claiming, digital B&W prints, are still far from the quality we used to get out of our darkrooms. Best results are obtained on matte paper with black-matte inks, but are only satisfactory, and certainly not at the platinum print level. Some claim Jon Cone's Piezography is the only way to get closer but I'm not going to try it, as it requires a specific printer and a rather cumbersome technology. The truth is pigmented inks and the addition of the 7th ink cartridge on the 2100 make a heck of great color prints which is enough to justify purchasing it, but for B&W not quite there yet ! BTW, trying to understand new technologies and experiment them seem to me a normal thing, it's not about becoming a "digital guy" vs other technologies. To my opinion, the more options I have at my disposal, the better; and from alt-processes to digital that would be quite a range don't you think? If, only if.

Jorge, what does your being an ass have to do with large format? maybe you shouldn't have posted.

 

it doesn't matter what you use Jorge, simply because I've seen you images on the web and they are crap.

Hell, I'll put my bw prints from the 2000p with black ink only up against anything you have.

LOL...well Ken I consider the source of critisism and seeing that you have not uploaded any photos I see how confident you are of your work....so yep mine maybe crap, but I am sure yours are crappier, so yep buddy any time you want to compare prints just let me know who to send them to...maybe you will learn something.

once again, Jorge equates uploading images here with being legitimate or not, how sad. don't waste my time snapshooter.

I did not say that big mouth, I said any time you feel up to it. Apparently like the big mouth you are you throw down a challange and then you dont follow through. Anybody on this thread wants to volunteer to be the judge? C'mon Ken put your money where your big mouth is! I will send any of my prints to someone here and you do the same and we will see who is better. Of course since this is LF you also have to send the neg, none of that ejaculation....err..glicée print without a negative. For all I know you probably would try to steal it from some web site. So as a matter of fact I beleive you are not even a snap shooter, you dont have any images anywhere. what a looser....

ha ha ha how sad, sorry jorge, unless someone wants to pay for a print, I don't send one out. I don't really need to, I am content in knowing I am far superior to you without having to prove it to anyone. talk about losers...

just because you can't find my website doesn't mean I don't have one, and even if I didn't have one that doesn't mean I don't have any photographs to show. gallery walls are much better than a website anyday.

 

its just so easy to get the little boy worked up I can't resist!

<i>ha ha ha how sad, sorry jorge, unless someone wants to pay for a print, I don't send one out. I don't really need to, I am content in knowing I am far superior to you without having to prove it to anyone. talk about losers...</i><p>

 

Lol...uh huh....Some how I knew you were going to say that. That is ok Ken, I understand the bitterness. Must be hell flipping burgers all day and come back to see people doing real work. BTW do you own a camera or are you just an arm chair expert?

 

I would wosh you luck but you are too much of an a**hole. You deserve all you get.

<i>its just so easy to get the little boy worked up I can't resist!</i><p>

 

lol...tsk, tsk! such bitterness....what's the matter? the boss at McDonalds gave you a hard time?....

yes!