Let's debate - Who has the ideal digi-B&W printer set-up

[nelsonfoto]

Add to that what I meant to as reply to your post - the MIS cartridges are affordable enough. I'm still interested in the HP units as well.

[nelsonfoto]

This is good reading:
http://home1.gte.net/res09aij/C86-EZ-UT-Readme.htm

[Jordan]

Paul Roark is the undisputed expert on low-cost B&W inkjet options. If he doesn't know the answer to your questions, no-one will!

Craig, if the C86 with EZ inks sounds good to you, you should also look into the Epson R220. I think the specs are similar, and AFAIK the C86 is no longer being made, having been replaced by the C88 or something. Paul seems to recommend the R220 to a lot of newbies on the B&W Digital Print list.

Thanks again for this great forum. The level of discussion si quite high, and it has quickly become a favourite for me.

[nelsonfoto]

Best Buy has the R220 in stock, but Epson is selling refurbed C86 units for $79 and free shipping. I just want to keep it simple as possible. All I am looking for is a way to make affordable neutral B&W prints for resale to see if I can bring some more money into the house.

Isnt the R220 limited for papers? I think I read something on that Yahoo list about it not feeding paper well. I want to use Ilford Fine Art or similar for sturdy, archival prints. If all I can manage with the Epson is crappy smooth matte, I won't be happy.

Frustrating.

[nelsonfoto]

Also, Jordon, your thanks did not go unnoticed. I appreciate every one of you guys and gals for making this place what it is. My hat is tipped to one and all.

[Graham Serretta]

Craig - I don't see how anything can beat a C86 for $79 including shipping.  Epsom ink works out too costly IMHO, and is not archival enough, so feed it CIS ink and you're away!

[nelsonfoto]

Well, Clayton Jones posted a response to my message on the Yahoo list, stating that the R220 is the better route if I haven't already bought a C86. The R220 is only $20 more and Best Buy stocks them. Will think it over some more today.

[Graham Serretta]

Craig - I don't see how anything can beat a C86 for $79 including shipping.  Epsom ink works out too costly IMHO, and is not archival enough, so feed it CIS ink and you're away!  I don't know anything about it's paper handling abilities, so can't comment there.

[nelsonfoto]

The R220 is an Epson 6-color, and seems to do a better job of it than the C86. This is Cjones' recommendation. Would use the same EZ inkset for archival B&W prints. As far as CIS goes, I can also install that in the R220, though I don't think I will have that sort of workload for some time, if ever, to need constant flow gear. I could be wrong though, hope to be wrong.

[Jordan]

I'd think that refillable cartridges from http://www.inksupply.com with the EZ inkset would be pretty hard to beat, price-wise -- and you won't have the hassle of a continuous flow system.

[jake]

I think that with the less expensive printers, using the MIS inksets are key. I have not, however, been impressed by Roark's curves that you can download from the MIS website and plug into your Photoshop. Print quality is highly subjective, so what looks great to Mr. Roark, may not even register as a final product to you or me. I find that shadow detail disappears when using Roark's curves. I have, however, found that the MIS inks work fine working with grayscale images in Photoshop & using Epson's printer driver.

I have an Epson 2100 (American version is the 2200) and I think that printer is okay. I like the size and durability, the archival inks and overall, the cost of operation. I paid a lot of money for it though, so it should be better at black & white. But printers are all about color. No printers out there are being made with black and white as their primary goal, so unavoidably you are looking at aftermarket fixes to get them to do so, either inksets or RIPs or both.

Metamerism is what causes the purple/sepia/blue cast to the typical inkjet print. That is the visual dynamic produced by having several inkjets of different color creating half-tones of black. Often metamerism is reduced or increased depending on the overall color of your light source, type of paper used or the direction at which you look at the print. Very few printers produce anything of quality on glossy paper. Most produce their best results on matte. This can be frustrating.

The newest printers from Epson (R1800 and R2400) seem to be nice improvements however. Really rich blacks, nice performance on glossy paper, and Epson is even advertizing them as B&W printers. But they are also very expensive. So I think that getting one of the earlier Epson printers - the C88 or whatever - and using it with MIS inks is just about as good as you are going to get, especially if you just want 8x10 prints. And especially if you are going to also print color, because then you can take the money you saved and buy a Canon or Hp that does color like a champ (those Pixmas from Canon are pretty nifty - got one for my sister and the prints are equal to any KMart processor.) Spending more money is probably not going to get you a winning performance to dollars spent ratio if you are working within a tight budget.

That being said, my dream set up would be:

Imacon Flextight scanner
Epson 9800
Colorbyte Imageprint RIP
Mac Quad
Gretag MacBeth Color Profiling System

I am not even going to tally up the costs here. Would make me retch.

But then in the end, it is probably more cost effective to just go use these things at a local photo service. By that equation, your money is best spent on a great scanner, a lot of memory for your Photoshop-laden computer, and a nice proofing printer. Nikon makes the best scanners, Mac the best computers and a proofing printer still comes down to those lovel C88/86 printers with the MIS inks I think (especially for B&W.)

J Ake :twisted:

[bruce]

Epson has refurbed c-86 printers for $59. Might be a good way to set up for B&W?

http://www.epson.com/cgi-bin/Store/BuyEpson/ccProductCategory.jsp?BV_UseBVCookie=yes&oid=-13267

[Josh]

I use the Epson R220 with MIS inks UT-R2.  Canon 350d (digital rebel xt).  I have used Epson's Enhanced Matte Paper for proofing a print, getting it close to where I want it, the final print on Ultra Premium Glossy Photo from Epson and/or Ilford Galerie Smooth Gloss Paper.  With Photoshop CS2 and Paul Roark's curves ( http://home1.gte.net/res09aij/ ) I have been getting nice b&w prints for the first time.  Now, if I could just get those pizza wheel marks off...where did I put those little spacing washers?

Josh

[StephenW]

Hi Folks,

I am new to this forum an thought I would make my first post here, I have recently become more of a 120 folding camera fan but have also a lot of 35mm as well. all of my printing these days is from an inkjet printer and find that I can get better results than by traditional darkroom mainly , I suppose, because it had to be setup and taken down each time.

My system is as follows,
Epson 4990 PHOTO for 120 and most other things.
Plustek OpticFilm 7200 for 35mm.
Photoshop Elements 3 (dont see any point in going for the professional version as this has everything one could want)
Epson 1160 (obsolete) A3 printer.
Conetech plugin for photoshop (Piezography)
Conetech pigment inks (black and three gray shades).

All I can say is that the results are fantastic, superb A3 prints from 35mm, and just unbelivable from 120!

Stephen.