Alt print process digi-interneg printer options?

[Christopher Perez]

I spoke with Neal Poulsen last night about his Epson 4000 and K2 inks - he said the internegs he creates with it are excellent for Pt/Pd, Carbon, and other alt processes. His printer is a couple years old.

Do I understand the following Correctly?

New printers potentially quite good for Pt/Pd, Albumen, other processes include the HP B9180 ... any others?

If one has an Epson printer (2400, 3800, etc), are there inks available that will do the trick? I assume these would be non-Epson provided 3rd party materials.

Without getting too crazy, has someone posted a matrix of options for generating digital internegs for alt print work? Or is this passed by word of mouth and shared tribal knowledge?

 

[BillSchwab]

If one has an Epson printer (2400, 3800, etc), are there inks available that will do the trick? I assume these would be non-Epson provided 3rd party materials.

I use a 2200 and a 7600 with the standard Epson inks and it works very well. Third party inks have not worked as well for me. I also hear that the 3800 is excellent.

See this thread http://www.hybridphoto.com/forums/showthread.php?t=244

Bill

 

[Kerik]

Christopher, I thought you knew this, but I'm using the Epson 3800 with stock inks and getting fantastic results. I'm not really interested in fiddling with 3rd party inks because, in the Big Picture, the cost of the ink is nominal. Third party inks also make it harder to share findings and results with others who are using stock inks.

 

[Christopher Perez]

Kerik, thanks for kicking my old brain into gear. That's the link Bill pointed me to and some of the info I probably read 4 or 5 times. [info hopefully sinking in]

Thus far I understand the new HP B9810 and Epson 3800 will do well with alt negs.

I've also heard from folks who use Epson 2200 and a few Canon printers too.

I think I have enough info to me a good run at this. Thanks for everyone's help.

It's now time to be off for the far side of the globe. I'm taking a HUGE risk in not carrying my tried and true all traditional 4x5 outfit and going with a new (to me at least) hybrid approach. But there MUST be some room left in my small carry-on luggage for clothing. This will be a business trip, after all. :rolleyes:

Christopher, I thought you knew this, but I'm using the Epson 3800 with stock inks and getting fantastic results. I'm not really interested in fiddling with 3rd party inks because, in the Big Picture, the cost of the ink is nominal. Third party inks also make it harder to share findings and results with others who are using stock inks.

 

[sanking]

My take on this at this point is as follows.

For digital negatives up to 17" wide, the 3800 gives great results, and the current street price of around $1200 makes it a bargain.

If you can live with a 13" wide printer the HP B9180 is a great buy, with a current web price of as low as about $480. I would recommend it over all current Epson 13" printers using the Ultrachrome inks because of the higher UV blocking of the Vivera pigment inks of the HP, and the fact that pizza wheel marks is not an isssue as it is with Epson printers.

BTW, I agree with Kerik about 3rd party inks. With a printer used primarily for making digital negative ink cost, comparatively speaking, is very low.

Sandy

 

[sanking]

Just one more comment about the HP B9180. If you print a desaturated RGB file in color the resulting density range is about 2.2. The tones are very smooth, and the DR of 2.2 is about optimum for straight palladium with no contrast controls. A file printed this way is almost completely neutral in tone.

The HP B9180 also prints very neutal tone B&W prints right out of the box with the HP driver. But that is another story.


Sandy King

 

[MVNelson]

I'm experimenting with my canon image-prograf 5000 for making digital negatives and infact doing Chartrob routine as we speak....This printer seems quite capable and B&W prints with the 16 bit canon pscs2 plug rip are exceptional. Max UV blocking is in the red/green array with my set up.

Miles

 

[mkochsch]

Miles has posted prints of the RGB and HSB versions of the RNP-Arrays (used for calibrating density) in the technical gallery. The HSB clearly shows one and possibly two regions of colour choice which can be used. It's very interesting that this Canon line is quite capable of producing enough density for Pd printing.
Thanks Miles
~m

 

[sanking]

Miles has posted prints of the RGB and HSB versions of the RNP-Arrays (used for calibrating density) in the technical gallery. The HSB clearly shows one and possibly two regions of colour choice which can be used. It's very interesting that this Canon line is quite capable of producing enough density for Pd printing.
Thanks Miles
~m

Are we talking about the Canon iPF5000? If so I am not at all surprised that it is capable of making good digital negatives. It uses a twelve ink setup. Appears designed to compete with the Epson 4800, and if so, may be a better value.

However, that is one big printer. Unless I mis-read the specs it weighs at around 90 lbs.

Sandy King

 

[MVNelson]

Well, Sandy your right, my canon ipf5000 comes in just under 100 lbs and is big! As I noted to mkochsh the max uv block comes at a color that when printed as a Chart Throb tablet looks all the world like a pyrogallol stained negative (yellow-green). I let my paper hang dry for a couple hours so I'll post about the printed chart throb tablet this p.m... As an aside I choose this printer for 3 reasons 1 auto change of black inks without any signifigant waste of ink. 2 $800 immediate rebate 3 hugh thing was delivered to me on top of that with free shipping. It honestly has outperformed my expectations (for me that's rare)...its big though !

Miles

 

[donbga]

If one has an Epson printer (2400, 3800, etc), are there inks available that will do the trick? I assume these would be non-Epson provided 3rd party materials.

quote]

Chris,

My experience with third party inks is that eventually they will clog the shit out of the print heads. I know the Epson inks are expensive but considering that they don't clog and waste your time and materials I just don't bother with them anymore (3rd party inks that is).

Quadtone inks make great prints but you have to keep the ink flowing with regular printing to reduce the clogging.

My 2 cents,

Don Bryant

 

[Christopher Perez]

Has anyone used the HP B9180 long enough to be able to tell what (if any) reliability issues it might have? I see Amazon has these for $592.19USD.

I was talking with a colleague over lunch today and he brought up the ink in Epson challenge that Don Bryant just mentioned.

 

[Christopher Perez]

Thanks, Sandy. This was one of the things I was hoping to have confirmed (as you just did).

Just one more comment about the HP B9180. If you print a desaturated RGB file in color the resulting density range is about 2.2. The tones are very smooth, and the DR of 2.2 is about optimum for straight palladium with no contrast controls. A file printed this way is almost completely neutral in tone.

In the case of the HP, is it using it's colors to create B&W? Or is it using just the black(s)?

The HP B9180 also prints very neutral tone B&W prints right out of the box with the HP driver. But that is another story.

 

[sanking]

Thanks, Sandy. This was one of the things I was hoping to have confirmed (as you just did).



In the case of the HP, is it using it's colors to create B&W? Or is it using just the black(s)?

The HP B9180 has three carbon black pigment inks, and from reading the manual I believe it is possible, with the HP driver, to print using just these three pigment inks. Pehaps someone else can confirm this one way or the other.

Sandy

 

[sanking]

Has anyone used the HP B9180 long enough to be able to tell what (if any) reliability issues it might have? I see Amazon has these for $592.19USD.

I was talking with a colleague over lunch today and he brought up the ink in Epson challenge that Don Bryant just mentioned.

The HP B9180 is a a very robust professinally built printer. Reviews for both performance and reliability have been very good.

Did you check the price at buydig.com? They had the printer listed at $479 a couple of days ago.

Sandy King

 

[Ted Harris]

Chris, I have been putting a B9180 through its paces for a View Camera review and it is a sturdy, solid machine. Possibly the best built 'mid-priced' printer I have ever seen. I have run several hundred sheets through it of all sorts of media without a sigle hic cup or cough and good results all around. The only thing I have left to test is some sample coated metal media I have. I just can't find enough good things to say about this machine.

 

[sanking]

Thanks, Sandy. This was one of the things I was hoping to have confirmed (as you just did).



In the case of the HP, is it using it's colors to create B&W? Or is it using just the black(s)?

Having worked with the HP 9180 for a couple of weeks I can confirm that both methods of printing black are possible through Photoshop. One of the color Color Modes is called Grayscale, and this allows either Composite Black or Print with Gray Inks only.

However, so far I have not found a way to adjust the Ink setting with the HP driver when printing with Grayscale and the Gray Inks only box checked. Regardless of whether the ink density setting is at the lightest or heaviest setting the maximum density is very high, over log 3.0. So to this point I have not found a way to use the gray inks only and reduce the maximum density to acceptable levels. This may be because I am using application-based color managment rather than printer based management so I will need to explore this more.

However, what I can confirm is that the HP 9180 gives lots of options in terms of color or composite black using either Nelson's PDN or other array and tertiary systems.

Sandy

 

[Christopher Perez]

I did check with buydig and made the purchase. The printer arrived late last week.

Wow! What nice machine. Great price too. So many thanks for the tip!!!

Now, to get down to testing a few curves for Palladium digital interneg contact print work... which should work very nicely with the Nikon 8000 ED film scanner I picked up from a friend in similar time... that may help answer the question of whether either a new 10mpixel digit-snapper or my old 120 format cameras will adequately replace 4x5/5x7/whole plate/8x10...

... Did you check the price at buydig.com? They had the printer listed at $479 a couple of days ago.

Sandy King