Epson 1400 and Digital Negatives for Alt

bdecker said:

Sandy-
Thanks for your explanation. Did you test all the media settings and combinations on the 1400? If so, you could save me a ton of time and material. I feel a little foolish after hearing about the HP printer. It sounds pretty good with the multiple blacks. The one thing I still like about the 1400 is the fine/smooth way the ink is put down. It's the way it creates a grayscale that is most disturbing.
I'm only printing Silver, so UV qualities aren't of concern. I will keep trying. How long did you give it before returning? Was there any backlash upon return? I hope I don't get there.
Thanks very much,
Bruce

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Bruce,

If you are making digital negatives on Pictorico the glossy paper media setting will generally give you results that are as good if not better than any other setting. This alllows you to also select the highest resolution of the printer.

In terms of image quality I got very smooth results printing from regular Pictorio on graded silver papers with an RGB spectral density negatives usingR=32, G=32, B=0.

Epson has a very good return policy, if you purchased the machine directly from them. You pay return shipping of course.


Sandy

Sandy-
Thanks, again. I am waiting to receive the HiGloss White base I ordered. I did output the RGB & HSB Array on some clear film, so I got a good idea of which color to use. Thanks for your suggestion. What I picked is pretty close. I will give it a try with the new film and if I don't like what I see, I am looking at returning the 1400 as well.

The one thing that was surprising about the 1400 was that the color gamut is much smaller than the output from my friend's 4000. I thought Dye sets were supposed to have more punch and color than the pigmented sets.

I also tried outputting a grayscale image on paper and it looked greenish and yucky. I would need to profile to bring this into alignment.

I'll let you know how my tests turn out.
Regards,
Bruce

bdecker said:

Sandy-
Thanks, again. I am waiting to receive the HiGloss White base I ordered. I did output the RGB & HSB Array on some clear film, so I got a good idea of which color to use. Thanks for your suggestion. What I picked is pretty close. I will give it a try with the new film and if I don't like what I see, I am looking at returning the 1400 as well.

The one thing that was surprising about the 1400 was that the color gamut is much smaller than the output from my friend's 4000. I thought Dye sets were supposed to have more punch and color than the pigmented sets.

I also tried outputting a grayscale image on paper and it looked greenish and yucky. I would need to profile to bring this into alignment.

I'll let you know how my tests turn out.
Regards,
Bruce

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Bruce,

While there is no doubt in my mind but that the HP 9180 is a better printer for my needs than the 1400 I think you might be better off with the 1400 for silver printing because the tones are smoother. Another option for you would be to dedicate the R1800 to B&W printing by changing over all of the inks to carbon pigment inks as has been discussed on this forum. I thought about doing that myself but am a bit leery of 3rd party inks.

Sandy King

Sandy-
You may be right. I just got my Hi-Gloss White Pictorico and have new outputs. I like the structure of the droplets on this material. I went back and reevaluated the HSB-Array and chose R130-G105-B24 as my color fill for the negs. The ink combination is actually pretty nice, not chunky. Ultra Premium Photo Paper Glossy and Photo RPM for resolution/quality. I made contact exposure tests on Ilford Galerie Grade #2 paper and now just need to create compensation curve. I am getting closer and looks good so far. I am still reserving judgement until I have a real finished image in hand. The white film made the difference. I am not very happy about the potential of this printer for printing B&W on paper. Will need to create a profile to ensure good gray balance. I bought the 1400 to primarily make Negs first.
I'm still keeping this printer for the time being.
Maybe QTR will become available for this sometime.

I have completed testing on the Epson 1400 and I've decided to keep this machine. The prints I'm making are looking beautiful. After reevaluating my methods, I am now getting negatives that are very smooth and are free of artifacts that transfer over to the Silver print. I do not have anything output that I can compare to from any other printer, but I think this printer is an excellent candidate for the creation of Negatives for Silver printing. The drawbacks are the obvious ones of ink cost/usage and Pictorico PGHG Film. Ouch.

I am very excited to begin making prints.
-Bruce

bdecker said:

I have completed testing on the Epson 1400 and I've decided to keep this machine. The prints I'm making are looking beautiful. After reevaluating my methods, I am now getting negatives that are very smooth and are free of artifacts that transfer over to the Silver print. I do not have anything output that I can compare to from any other printer, but I think this printer is an excellent candidate for the creation of Negatives for Silver printing. The drawbacks are the obvious ones of ink cost/usage and Pictorico PGHG Film. Ouch.

I am very excited to begin making prints.
-Bruce

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Bruce,

Can you post any sample prints made from the Epson 1400 negatives.

Thanks,

Don Bryant

Setup

bdecker said:

I have completed testing on the Epson 1400 and I've decided to keep this machine. The prints I'm making are looking beautiful. After reevaluating my methods, I am now getting negatives that are very smooth and are free of artifacts that transfer over to the Silver print. I do not have anything output that I can compare to from any other printer, but I think this printer is an excellent candidate for the creation of Negatives for Silver printing. The drawbacks are the obvious ones of ink cost/usage and Pictorico PGHG Film. Ouch.

I am very excited to begin making prints.
-Bruce

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What's your workflow lookin' like? What neg colour did you decide on?
~m

mkochsch said:

What's your workflow lookin' like? What neg colour did you decide on?
~m

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Michael-
RGB color is 130R-105G-24B (see my post from 4/18). Just enough ink/color to stop the light. I'm printing on PGHG White film. I expose under a 150W light bulb in a reflector-can with diffusion. Open face vacuum frame to eliminate any Newton rings and dust/dirt. Print on to Grade #2 paper. Getting curve and testing for Media settings took many trials. I'm ready to print.
-Bruce

Don Bryant said:

Bruce,

Can you post any sample prints made from the Epson 1400 negatives.

Thanks,

Don Bryant

Click to expand...

Don-
I made a scan for mkochsch of my print of his HSB-Array. I posted to him off line. perhaps I could send the same way to you. I'm also challenged by not having a scanner at home. I'll see what I can do. Patience. How do you post images to this forum? I'd think they'd need to be Hi-Res for you to see any detail.
-Bruce

Post

bdecker said:

Don-
I made a scan for mkochsch of my print of his HSB-Array. I posted to him off line. perhaps I could send the same way to you. I'm also challenged by not having a scanner at home. I'll see what I can do. Patience. How do you post images to this forum? I'd think they'd need to be Hi-Res for you to see any detail.
-Bruce

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Bruce, with your permission I'll post it and link to it here.
~m
p.s. Looking at the scan again...I'd predict you could also use 255-64-64 or there abouts to also obtain the correctly coloured neg. If you shot that #2 paper with the HSL-Array (which shows the upper range) instead of the HSB you would see the density arc up into the red zone. There may be an advantage in doing this because the ink weight would be the lightest...I'm going to try this idea out today....cheers.

bdecker said:

Don-
I made a scan for mkochsch of my print of his HSB-Array. I posted to him off line. perhaps I could send the same way to you. I'm also challenged by not having a scanner at home. I'll see what I can do. Patience. How do you post images to this forum? I'd think they'd need to be Hi-Res for you to see any detail.
-Bruce

Click to expand...

Why not put it in the technical gallery?

Don

mkochsch said:

Bruce, with your permission I'll post it and link to it here.
~m
p.s. Looking at the scan again...I'd predict you could also use 255-64-64 or there abouts to also obtain the correctly coloured neg. If you shot that #2 paper with the HSL-Array (which shows the upper range) instead of the HSB you would see the density arc up into the red zone. There may be an advantage in doing this because the ink weight would be the lightest...I'm going to try this idea out today....cheers.

Click to expand...

Michael-
There are many colors that could be used that dance around the area being exposed. I am only in this as an infant and there is much more testing that can be done. Obviously Burkholder, PDN, Reeder-Hinkel and many others have thankfully done much homework, but there is still more to know. Thanks for the suggestions. I'll output the HSL-Array and give it a whirl, too. You can post HSB-Array if you like.
Thanks,
-Bruce

Upper Values

The area I was talking about, for the benefit of others, is in the red area between 340-35 degrees @ 100 percent saturation in the HSB Array scale. There's a hump there that goes off the HSB scale, but would be clearly revealed by the HSL scale, almost a pinky-red colour I think, around the RGB colour of 255-64-64. This makes sense to me know because it's Silver paper you're working with and we use red filters to protect silver paper from the tungsten bulb.

Dead Link Removed

~m

Hi Michael

Just visited your site, looks like you have done a lot a research, well done . I am trying out your method at the moment to see if i can get it to work. Is this method similar to that used by the PDN system?

thanks

David

Open Source Digital Negatives

Davec said:

Hi Michael

Just visited your site, looks like you have done a lot a research, well done . I am trying out your method at the moment to see if i can get it to work. Is this method similar to that used by the PDN system?

thanks

David

Click to expand...

Thanks David. Let me know if you need some pointers. RNP-Array is what it is. I mean, what is PDN other than a colour palette, some good advice and an Excel spread sheet -- really? The RNP-Arrays give you a larger selection of colours to choose from than PDN. In the end the RNP-Arrays are just another colour palette or more accurately three examples of colour palettes based on the three common colour models RGB, HSB and HSL. I intended the RNP-Arrays to be used as the front-end to Kevin Bjorke's ChartThrob script or any other method that lets you create a curve (graph paper, spreadsheet, transfer function et al). ChartThrob lets you do in seconds what would normally take 10s of minutes or hours though. Still you have to be careful it can be tricked, or you can fool yourself sometimes.
People want you to believe making digital negatives is rocket science, or like scientology you have to pay for "the knowledge". It isn't or shouldn't be either. You know, it really comes down to two basic issues making digital negatives. The first is setting the right density for the process (using a colour or appropriate shade of grey) and once that's done making a curve to pretty-up and distribute the tones a little more evenly. That's it! If you do step one reasonably right, it makes doing step two a little easier. Until apug/hybridphoto there'd been very little posted to the internet regarding the latest methods and practices. In fact the one place there should have been information (the alt-process-photo mailing list) was chilled to discuss the topic. I can only speculated why this was. What I want my site to be is a place where people can learn and apply the knowledge to their own workflows. I think of hybridphoto as "the commons" in the old English and Welsh sense of the word -- a place we can all come and chew the cud or fat, pitch ideas and see which ones stick or don't. Welcome aboard!!

~m

Mkochsch,

I for one am truly greatful for your endeavors. The RNP-arrays and ChartThrob allowed me to litterally hit the nail on the head in one mighty strike! Once I got the application sequence (application of the curve then flatten...) correct , that's all she wrote! The I made 2 enlarged High Resolution digital negatives of portraits of my wife (i posted one of the smaller/lower resolution shots) using the same ChartThrob curve and RPN array colour and the everyone who has seen the Pt/PD mounted and framed prints are quite moved (unfortunately most don't believe I did them either . I am quite impressed with that I could produce my best portrait ever with the simplicity of the ingenious CHartThrob/color arrays system. If downloading and installing the free software and properly following the walk through instructions is the worse of it I feel quite fortunate. I was fully prepared to dive into the PDN or Q-rip when I stumbled over ChatThrob on HYBRIDphoto.com. Those other systems would be like learning the Zone system again (or even BTZS which I use). Granted I did read the other systems but wow the time and expense of getting where I have gotten would have been quite high. I estimated it cost me about $30.00 to make my first very nice 6"X6" pt/pd print using ChartThrob and colour arrays. Cheap with rather eloquent results. Also since the system is simple the tweaks are simple. The problem is that since you quys didn't put a price on it many will feel its less sorta how some people feel about Linux....its free...it must be less. I really can't tell you how much I appreciate your sharing knowledge means to me and others.... Thanks


Miles

Guilty

Miles if you really feel that strongly about it you can just keep stuffing money into an envelope until it feels right and then send it to me in Canada

~m

U.S. or Canadian ??? How bout I help you sell your soon to be written and published book(cd) entitled " The Secret to Producing Masterful Digital Negatives..in five easy steps" ..get busy writting... . Thanks again..


Miles