Eggleston and Penn go inkjet

[tim_atherton9]

It's interesting to see that two photographers - William Eggleston and Irving

Penn - who I always associated with their work depending in part on the

lusciousness of the dye-transfer process are now apparently producing work in

inkjet instead.

 

In part I would imagine because of the near impossibility of obtaining dye-

transfer prints these days. But also, it must be said, because they can get

results at least as good from inkjet prints. (indeed, Penn also seems to be

doing Black and White inkjet in place of some of his Platinum prints)

 

interesting times

 

http://photo-muse.blogspot.com/2007/08/addendum-william-eggleston-dye-

transfer.html

 

http://photo-muse.blogspot.com/2007/06/irving-penn-in-inkjet.html

 

http://photo-muse.blogspot.com/2007/08/william-egglestons-5x7-and-new-

american.html

[ellis_vener_photography]

I'm wondering if Penn is having his prints made by Richard Benson with his heavily modified Epson printers or by someone who has modified there Epson's in a similar manner. What Benson does and the basics of how he makes essentiually pin registered digital prints is covered in George Jardine's "The Adobe Photoshop Lightroom" podcasts #22 & 23 . The podcasts are free and you can find them on Apple's iTunes service.

 

 

Basically Benson had to do this becasue he was deeply dissatisfied with standard Epson color rendition, especially with the well known magenta contamination in the blues (Canon's iPF printers do a far better job and with a slightly larger color gamut too boot) so he modified his Epson printers to lay down very precisely controlled washes of ink in much the same way dye transfer pritns used to be made.

 

 

Benson has printed in the past for Penn, thinks Penn is nearly insanely critical as to what he'll accept in a print, and also thinks that standard darkroom and platinum /palladium printing never came near to exploiting the possibilities of what a a monochrome (black & White ) print can be.

[tim_atherton9]

interesting

 

I did some hunting around about the Penn stuff previously, but couldn't find much info

[jtk]

I don't think dye transfer has ever rivaled today's better inkjet. Routine top quality Epson prints can be exquisite...I don't think anybody's demonstrated a Canon advantage in real practice, but we can always hope. Canon does seem to be a bit predatory with ink pricing and we know even less about its permanence than we do about Epson's, not to mention HP's.

 

As well, it appears to me that dye transfer's stability has been over-rated...the coating yellows, though not as quickly as Enhanced Matte's does. As to Penn's "insanely critical" eye, I figure he deserves to be picky, considering his massive contribution to photography. And of course, he can afford to be picky :-)

[ellis_vener_photography]

"I don't think anybody's demonstrated a Canon advantage in real practice, but we can always hope. "

 

John, I've seen a qualitative difference in my prints made on made on Hahnamuhle Fine Art Pearl paper (Epson 4800 vs. Canon iPF5000, both very carefully custom profiled) . The blues are definitely cleaner and you can see this especially in landscape work with skies.

[jtk]

Ellis, you're experiencing that advantage, so you've made your point.

 

Still, I wonder if many others share your experience.

 

I hope Canon will stay in the game and give Epson a serious run, but they do evidently want to screw the customer ink-wise, maybe even more than Epson, with some models.

 

As to "pin registration," inkjet printers are by design astoundingly well-registered as-is, adjacent microdot-for-dot in one pass. I don't see the advantage (or think better registration is mechanically possible with pins), since the individual color layers are each readily controlled in Photoshop. Could you expand on that idea?

 

Printing each color as a separated pass in registration (which I've attempted without pins) is an amusing-but-bizarre approach to something already done miraculously well by original design in one pass. Pins are more crude than microdot registration. The crudeness of pins is easily seen in dye transfer prints.

 

Why not shoot the image tricolor to begin with (three B&W films through separation filters)? LOTS of pins that way :-) Used to be standard studio color technique: Colliers magazine advertisements etc.

[walter_dufresne]

CVI Dye Transfer Laboratory moved from NYC's Little Italy a couple of years ago and is now

on Vashon Island in Puget Sound, out in Washington State. The owners, Guy Stricherz and

Irene Malli, still print, and they produced a marvelous show and book, Americans In

Kodachrome, a segment of which the Getty exhibited last year.