jack paradise

Jon

If IP 5.6 is too pricey, try the Clayton Jones BO printing method. It's cheap. You need to change only one cartridge, the black one. And you can still do color with this method.

As for doing b&w with color inks, good luck. Lots of people have tried it with no success: the color cast is always present and print suffer from metamerism. Some inks supplier even tried a reduced gamut color inkset for b&w. Although reduced, the color cast is still there. No amount of Photoshop or printer setting changes will cure these problem. The only people who say that it works are those who are not affected by the color cast or metamerism.

Good luck on your quest to successfull b&w printing.

Jon,

Printing b&w with color inks will produce that color cast you have noticed. It is not printer specific. Also, if you look at your b&w prints under different lighting source (daylight, neon, tungsten) you will see that that tone of the print changes. This is called metamerism.

On the Epson 2200, to get rid of this problem, use can use ImagePrint 5.6 which will reduce the amount of yellow ink, therefore producing a more neutral b&w print. IP 5.6 is not cheap but it works.

On some printers like the Epson 1160, 1280, etc some people use a grayscale insket for b&w print. This inkset consist of one black and several shades of gray. The downside of this is that the printer is no longer able to do color.

Another solution you can try is the black only printing method developped by Clayton Jones.

http://www.cjcom.net/digiprnarts.htm

ImagePrint Software

http://www.colorbytesoftware.com/imageprint.htm

Hope this helps

If Minolta were to come out with a glass negative holder for the Minolta 5400, it would put this scanner ahead of any other scanner in its class.

Without this holder, the film is not perfectly flat and the edges (corners) of the negative are not as sharp as they should be. Unsharp marking can help to resolve this problem, but it can be tedious if a custom has to be made to preserve the center of the image which tends to stay sharp.

I started with the PiezographyBW system and later switched to MIS inkset because of the high cost of the Piezography inkset.

The PiezoBW-ICC 1280 Starter Cartridge Kits cost $299.95 while you can start for $54.84 with the MIS UT-2 inkset and the free adjusment printing curves by Paul Roark.

If you were to start with the PiezoBW-ICC 1280 Starter CIS (continous ink system) Kits it would cost you $$724.95 while the MIS CFS (continuous flow system) would be about half price.

As for print longevity, they are about the same, both using carbon pigment. As for print quality, it would be hard to distinguish which is which if several prints from both were mixed and shown.

A very good paper to start with is Epson's Enhanced Matt.

PiezoBW-ICC -- http://www.inkjetmall.com/store/bw/1280-order-icc.html

MIS UT2 -- http://www.inksupply.com/index.cfm?source=html/ut2-1280.html

"I meant to say fullspectrum, not quadtones."

The MIS-FS and MIS FSN may be phased out and replaced the the MIS-UT7 inkset. I erronnously called this inkset UT-MIS.

"I have been far more impressed than I expected by the 1160 with Permajet VTBlax pigment inks."

If I'm not mistaken, Paul Roark may have had a hand in designing this inkset. He has designed the MIS-VM, MIS-FS and MIS-UT, MIS-UT2 and MIS-UT7 inkset.

I've been using the Epson 1160 printer as a dedicated b&w printer since about 3.5 years. I started with PiezographyBW. Now using another inkset.

First of all, you can't do b&w printing with the color inks on this printer. There will be a heavy maganta cast and your print will have metamerism. (Color or the print will change iwht the source of lighting).

It's a fast printer and will make great b&w prints. But you will need a grayscale inkset available either in pre-filled cartridges or in 4 on. bottled ink.

I'm using the Ultra-Tone inkset from www.inksupply.com with Paul Roark's free printing adjustment curves. I get four tones: Sepia, Warm, Selenium and Cool. Printing is limited to matted papers as these inks do not adhere well to glossy paper.

There is another inkset called UT-FSN which the Epson 1160 will be able to use available in either as warm or cool. This inkset will permit printing on glossy paper.

Newer printers (Epson 1280 and 2200) seem to have a little better tonality but noticeable only if prints are compared side by side.

www.inksupply.com

Check this group for digital b&w printing

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

Martin,

Nikon Coolscan V can be had in Montreal for $879 cnd minus 2% if paid cash. Maybe a store near your can match this price ?

I do not think that your warps slide problem can be helped by software alone. If Minolta were to come out with a glass negative holder that would solve the negative curling issue common with this scanner: the center is in focus while the corners are not.

Grainy pictures are also a common occurence with the Nikon Scanner. But I'm starting to think that there's more here than just the scanner. Film development may have something to do with it. XP2's scanned on my Coolscan recently showed grain while others did not. I was wondering why until I reaziled that XP2's I had developped by a professional lab were absolutly grainless while the drugstore developped negatives are all full of grain.

My own developed FP4+ in plain ID11 are absolutely grainless while some of my Tmx100 +Xtol do show grain when it should be absolutly grainless. So I can't fault my scanner for all the grain.

Are all of your negatives showing grain or just some of them ?

"I tried every gamma and brightness setting"

What gamma setting did you use and how did you do it ?

In Photoshop you can go to: Image -- Mode -- Duotone, then choose Tritone, select Load and you'll see some Sepia presets.

They may not be to your liking, but you can modify them. Click on the colors or the curves next to them.

Good luck.

I want to say thanks to all who contributed an answer. Thanks Craig for sharing your b&w pics. Ah, being in China doing b&w with a Leica...there's a little HCB in all of us.

And William, nice pic done in Rodinal. And don't pay any attention to the pixelpeepers!

Hi,

I would like to hear from users of Nikon Coolscan 5000 / V who scan

b&w negatives (not the C-41 variety) and print to at least 13"x19"

with success. What scanning workflow are you using ?

Seems the Minolta 5400 scanner has a negative holder which allows curvature of the film, resulting in less than adequate sharpness off-center of the image. This would be adequatly taken care of if Minolta offered a negative glass holder.

This was reported in the dec. 2003 issue of Chasseur d'Images magazine and they said this could be remedied with sharpness filtering (unsharp masking). Today I received an email from a friend in Europe who says he has noted the same problem with his Minolta 5400 scanner and it's apparent even on 8x10" prints. He also says that making a custom mask for the unsharp masking is time consuming and he's hoping that Minolta will come out with a glass negative holder.

Have you tried Image -- Adjustement -- Autocolor ?

There are better ways, but this quick fix usually works.

Well, there is Photoshop 7 and CS, which are not priced within everyone's budget.

And then there is Picture Window Pro 3.5 for $89. About the best software this side of Photoshop, bar none! It's the only software that will keep in 16 bits per channel from beginning to the end, something that even Photoshop CS cannot do!

http://www.dl-c.com/Temp/

When you tried BO printing was it with Epson original ink ?

Maybe this might help you. It's about BO printing but using carbon pigment ink.

http://www.cjcom.net/digiprnarts.htm

You can certainly use Archival/Enhanced Matt paper with color dye inks. It has a little more punch (better dmax) than Heavyweight Matt.

With dye ink, Heavyweight Matt has twice the longevity : 20 years instead of 10 years for Enhanced Matt.

Have you tried the Ilford papers. Get a sample pack. There may be a paper in there that you may like.

And if you want to see something done in Agfa Scala b&w positive film

see Tom Millea's site. Tom works mostly with 35mm and Scala.

http://www.tommillea.com/

So, as you see, the choice is almost endless.

That's like asking what's the best food to eat! Studio, so that's probably means portraits.

There are some many film/developper combination that can work. Ultimatly, you'll have to find your own combination and test for your own E.I. number.

Here's a combo I used with a lot of success. I was able to print from grade 0 to grade 5 and see a continual gradation with no block ups.

TMAX-100 at EI 200 with TMAX developper, 1:7, 13 minutes @ 70F

Works only with studio lighting. EI is too high for outdoors.

See this guy's studio portraits. He has tech. details for every shots.

http://www.heylloyd.com/toc.htm

You are using Vuescan, right ? Vuescan allows for 16 bits scans per channel scans so that's better then any 8 bits scan.

TCN is a b&w chromogenic film. If it has an orange mask, you should scan it as a color negative, as Vuewscan will apply settings in the individual RGB channels to get rid of this orange mask.

Since there are no Kodak TCN settings in Vuescan, you can use the advanced workflow suggestion in the Vuescan helpfile, which is film independant.

If TCN has no orange mask, scan it both as a b&w negative and again as a color negative and see which one you like better.

Or you could scan at full resolution of 3200 dpi and size your image to 400PPI for an 8"x12" print. That would make for a nice image.

In other words, that scanner has all the rez you need for quality prints at the size you want to print them.

Have you thought of using XTOL, 1+1, 9 min at 20C with the following provisio:

Hoya R72 +6 stops, with B+W 092 +3 or +4 stops

What scanning software are you using ?

Have you looking into the control panel (Scanners and camera) then under properties ?