Choosing the printer for digital negatives: Epson or Canon?

You can try using PrintTool which is free to try for a month. I can get denser negs when I need to with it.

You aren't stating what settings you are using with the transparency film. The "paper type" affects the amount of ink laid down.

koraks said:

I don't understand; you said you get 3.0logD but at the same time you don't get beyond 1.4logD....under which conditions did you get the high density? Why not print the calibration table ("step wedge") with the same approach?

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I wrote "The step-wedge reaches D=3.06.". That is, step #31 reads 3.06.

Patrick Robert James said:

You can try using PrintTool which is free to try for a month. I can get denser negs when I need to with it.

You aren't stating what settings you are using with the transparency film. The "paper type" affects the amount of ink laid down.

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The PrintTool part of the QTR package? Do you use it with a Canon printer?

The next step will be to set different paper types before printing the OHP. Indeed, with the Canon 1100 this is the only way to control the quantity of ink being deposited. I will have to thread carefully though, the problem is pooling. Last thing I need is to flood the head.

Finding information on the 1100 on what "ink limit" goes with which paper type isn't particularly straightforward though.

MarcoA said:

I wrote "The step-wedge reaches D=3.06.". That is, step #31 reads 3.06.

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I see, sorry about that.
1.4logD is pretty poor for the inkjet print.

MarcoA said:

Finding information on the 1100 on what "ink limit" goes with which paper type isn't particularly straightforward though.

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That's unfortunate. Did you already try a matte paper setting? At least on the Epson printers, the matte black seems to be a better UV blocker than photo black. Yellow works quite well, too.

Thanks Koraks, I will try a matte paper setting. I am not interested in UV blocking, my digital negatives are meant for silver gelatin paper contact printing only. For me it's only a density issue. Anyway, without flooding your mailbox I will keep you all posted.

Oh I see; well, in that case I would expect that logD1.4 would already bring at least the higher paper grades within reach (grade 4 ca.) so you should be able to get something already. But it'd be nice to have some more density for sure. For variable contrast silver halide printing it's definitely worthwhile experimenting with the various ink channels/colors; esp. magenta and red are relevant if you want to optimize blocking, on the logic that the paper only responds to light in the blue-green part of the spectrum. So everything that absorbs these (e.g. red pigment) should be contribute significantly to blocking power.

I do not think it matters what machine you use, your goal is to match input LAB numbers to output Lab numbers- both printers are capable of this

Carnie Bob said:

I do not think it matters what machine you use

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As long as it creates sufficient density; this seems to be the hurdle he's trying to get past now. From there on I agree it's a matter of linearization.

I own an ipf5100 canon printer, and I print on transparency with no problem. There is an option transparency in the select list of papers in the printer driver.
I use a film made by a french manufacturer (pictorico is hard to find here) . Just choose the top quality version, it seems for me it's like pictorico.
Exemple here is an héliogravure result print.