paul freeman

The Kodak creates a 4500x3000 pixel image. (I have the SLR/c)

 

So 66"x44" print would be printable at 68dpi.

 

In photoshop, the raw converter does a pretty good job of upsampling, and this would give an image of 66x44 at about 96dpi

 

Prints this size won't look good from 6" away, but from a few feet back would be pretty impressive.

For me the whole point of the Epson 2100/2200 is the Ultrachrome inks which are

absolutely fantastic. Using non epson inks in a continuous inking system (CIS) would

invalidate the whole purpose of spending all that money on the printer.

 

I run lyson inks on my 7000 and the look is utterly, completely, different, and the archival

properties pretty dubious (dont trust Lyson's fade testing data which is not kept up to

date). I have made the look of the Ultrachromes a "signature" in my commercial work, I

consider it to be that good.

 

A solution might be to buy Epsons large cartridges for the 7600/9600 and use the ink

from them them to fill a CIS. I have printed about 60M of 24" wide paper on the 7000 and

have yet to use up a set of full size epson cartridges. Admittedly it costs about $500 to ink

up a printer this way, but then you can forget about it for a long long while. I suppose that

these large ink cartridges contain enough ink to fill the CIS cartridges at least twice over,

so it might be possible to share costs with someone. Alternatively buy a couple of sets of

CIS bottles, fill and seal them and then store the ink until you need it.

 

By the way, I have used a CIS for Cone Tech Piezography for a year now. Apart from the

fact that I can't close the lid of the printer I have had no problems with this system. Really

the continuous inking systems seem pretty fool proof.

Watch out for import tax as well as VAT.

 

I had import tax charged on a vintage camera from the US. And you get charged a

"handling charge" in addition which in my case was about the same as the import tax.

 

I was told that HMCE is getting tough at the moment due to the weak dollar (ie: protecting

UK manufacturers by properly implementing import levies).

Hmm... where do the people come from? Do they come with the software or do you buy extra "people libraries"?

<p/>

 

Cheers

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Paul Freeman <p/>

 

http://www.architecturalimages.co.uk

I use the Ebony 45S for both landscape and architectural work, its one of the cheaper Ebony cameras but very flexible and relatively light at a tad over a couple of kilos (thats a bit more than four pounds in the old money)

 

I backpack it in a small lowe pro town and country rucksack.

 

Certainly less flexible than a monorail but the portability makes it faster to use.

 

you can look at www.architecturalimages.co.uk for some of the architectural stuff, about 1/2 of the shots were taken with the camera, check out the B&W stuff, that was all done on the 45S.

 

The landscape on photo.paulfreeman.net was all shot with the 45S as well. The images don't translate terribly well to the web though.

 

Now... I'm lusting after one of the 5x7 or 8x10 cameras.

 

Cheers

 

Paul R. W. Freeman

I use the Ebony 45S for both landscape and architectural work, its one of the cheaper Ebony cameras but very flexible and relatively light at a tad over a couple of pounds.

 

I backpack it in a small lowe pro town and country rucksack.

 

Certainly less flexible than a monorail but the portability makes it faster to use.

 

you can look at www.architecturalimages.co.uk for some of the architectural stuff, about 1/2 of the shots were taken with the camera, check out the B&W stuff, that was all done on the 45S.

 

The landscape on photo.paulfreeman.net was all shot with the 45S as well. The images don't translate terribly well to the web though.

 

Now... I'm lusting after one of the 5x7 or 8x10 cameras.

 

Cheers

 

Paul R. W. Freeman

Green tint. Very weird. All I do with my printer is select the standard neutral, cool or warm tones from the grey balancer first screen. Then I print with the matt cartridge onto either the epson archival matte paper, or the ilford galerie smooth fine art paper and voila! Black and white prints that are competitive with many I've produced in the darkroom.

 

I tried using the special grey targets and tortoiseshell calibration but I ended up with less neutral results than just using the provided profiles that came with the grey balancer. Maybe I was just lucky that things seem to work perfectly out of the box.

 

However... when I have tried printing on the Premium Semigloss I have not been impressed with the results. There is some slight metamerism, though subtle its slightly magenta rather than green.

 

Baffling.

I've used both VueScan and Silverfast, two versions one of which I paid good $ for.

 

VueScan wins hands down on usability, quality of results and stability. I have used it on Win2000 and Win XP.

 

I like the frequent upgrades.

 

Silverscans interface looks cool at first but is less productive than VueScan. As for the "herky jerky" refresh of VueScan, its a quirk but no more than that.

 

The recent addition of clipping colours to VueScan (pixel colours for regions which are out of gamut, clipped black or clipped white) is incredibly useful.

 

I paid for VueScan three years ago and I'm still receiving support.

 

In fact the best other thing I use is the upgraded Epson scan which comes with the 3200 Perfection. That can deal with almost all the cases where VueScan has a problem.

Don't forget the Diffuse Glow filter... can give some very nice effects if used subtly.

 

Although it is found under the "Distort" submenu of filters its not necessarily that distorting.

 

In conjunction with B&W channel operations this can produce a fairly convincing "infra-red" soft focus effect.

I read somewhere that Ilford makes some of the Epson fine art papers... so I wonder is Ilford Galerie Smooth Fine Art the same as the Epson Velvet? You can't buy the Epson Velvet in the UK, but I have tried the Galerie and it is amazing... The Ilford Galerie paper is quite new and I have only so far been able to find it in an A4 size. Its beautiful for B&W.

By the way the new "smooth fine art paper" is absolutely fantastic with the 2100/2200 inks. I have made some great B&W "toned" prints with it.

I have an Epson 2100 (same as 2200) and I love it! I also have a 1290. I tried using Lyson quad black inks on art paper. There was loads of metamerism (pinky look) when the prints were viewed in tungsten light.

 

With the 2100 I get nice neutral prints with little metamerism. I have also tried Martin Evening's split toning technique with Photoshop which worked fantastically on some Ilford Galerie Art paper (brown dark tones to cyan highlights, nice).

 

If you get the 2200, try to blag the Grey Balancer software. With this switched on you can choose different tones of print or make up your own tone curves. Also works well.

 

The main rule I would say is make sure you see some prints before you make your choice. Its a subjective decision. I based my purchase on prints I saw made by a specialist dealer (Silverprint) in London (I bought from them as well). The Lyson Small Gamut inks are often mentioned. The sample prints I have seen from them seem far from subtle in tonality.

 

I just produced a color project (On Epson Premium Semigloss) with this printer as part of my MA in Photography. The results were excellent. Other students who used inkjets were fairly obviously using inkjets. My images looked more like conventional silver images. I also used the facility that the printer has to print on 1.3mm thick art board to make my titles. Really useful and professional looking.

 

I am still a B&W amateur with this machine, so my comments are based on about half a dozen really nice prints. Paper seems to affect metamerism quite a bit. The worst results so far were on Epson Premium Semigloss paper which showed significant metamerism. On papers such as Ilford Galerie Smooth Fine Art Paper, or on Archival Matt Paper the problem is hard to discern.

 

My impression is that the 2200/2100 is as good if not better than anything apart from Piezography... but that's a different ball game in terms of cost and convenience.

Some time to finish a portfolio of images I've been working on for the last four months!

I'm very happy with the output of my 2450 for 5x4 scans printed up to about 16x20. Its pretty good for 6x9cm as well. For 30x20 and up I rent time on a Imacon Flextight III (mind boggling quality and more affordable than drum scans).

 

Also watch out for the new Epson 3200 available at the end of December... that looks pretty damn good and should up the ante a bit at the cheap end of the scanner spectrum.

 

For info on that check out norman korens links on www.normankoren.com under the section on the Epson 2450 scanner.

Epson distribute a handy program called "PhotoQuicker" with the Epson 2100 printer, I don't know if it comes with other printers in the range. I've used it with my 1290 as well.

 

Thought quite consumer oriented, I've sucessfully used it for contact printing, it can print filenames and if the pix come from a digital camera the camera data as well.

 

Don't know if its available separately.

Thanks, everybody for the useful feedback. I've tried using Polaroid and find them useful for establishing composition and gross errors in exposure. However there have been lots of times that dust or processing problems have messed up the 2nd tranny... so I think I'll be buying a few more film holders and shooting some more film, particularly as I'm trying to build a portfolio and stock.

I've been learning 5x4 photography for the last year and its been

hard work. I'm focussing on transparency film so the exposure is

critical. I'm also focussing on landscape/architecture rather than

studio type stuff so there is a lot of environmental variation to

consider.

 

Typically I take two sheets of each shot using the same

shutter/aperture combination. When processing, I process one sheet to

determine whether I need to push/pull the second shot.

The only problem with this approach is that it doesn't provide much

room for error, and I commit many! I'm wondering if I should be

doubling the number of film carriers I carry around.

 

The other day I saw a pro turn up and take a photograph. He appeared

to take about 12 sheets on a single shot, making few if any

variations of shutter/aperture. This made me wonder if I haven't been

burning enough sheets to guarantee success.

 

Supposing one has taken the trouble to line up a great shot how many

sheets do people expose to guarantee success? What do the pro's do.

Now that Kodak have out pixelled Canon with the new 13MP camera for approx $4000.00 Canon I guess would need to price the D1s under that.

 

Looks like its only a year or two until affordable digital SLR's with equal resolution to film will be with us! Maybe its the right time to start selling off those medium format outfits?

1) I thought there was something wrong with my Polaroid holder. Every time I pulled out the tab on the film, the film came right out, causing chemical gunge to flow out all over the rollers.

 

This only happened intermittently, finally I discovered the large lettering on the film envelope which indicated which side needed to be pointed at the lens.

 

2) Used a Sekonic light meter for nearly 10 months before realising that my exposures were all f**ked because the light meter was mis calibrated by 1.3 stops. Luckily my expertise with Polaroid film ;-) see above meant that at least some of my exposures were still rather nice.

Having had a lot of exposure problems I have thoroughly tested my Sekonic L508 and discover that it is 1.3 stops incorrect on incident and reflected readings (havent tested flash). I have checked this against two other cameras (Mamiya 645 and a Fuji 6900z) and also have run polaroids, Velvia and Provia tests. It all checks out to a 1.3 stop underexposure.

 

... I expected my second hand LF lenses to be a little dicey at times, mostly they are spot on. But... I didn't think a brand new light meter could be so inaccurate.

 

I have learnt to test, test, test the hard way, even if my girlfriend thinks I'm weird standing in the back garden taking dozens of polaroids of a piece of grey cardboard!

 

And I am NOT impressed with Sekonics quality control. In twenty five odd years of photography this is the only product which has ever performed this inaccurately, and it is not a cheap product either.

I'm looking forward to seeing this. I wonder how much of his work we have seen outside of the greatest hits?

 

Many moons ago, when I worked for HP, I was wandering in the murky depths of the corporate HQ and discovered a shadowy connecting passage between rarely used meeting rooms. An Ansel Adams portfolio was hanging there with zero security. This was a portfolio of pictures of the "Santa Clara Valley" before the silicon rush. There were some lovely shots of apple orchards below the Santa Cruz mountains.

 

I hope that pictures like these get some exposure, some time.