On Thursday, November 15, 2001, at 05:21 AM, Bob Rapp wrote:
> I'm particularly interested in the responses. I personally think that
> digital is a long way from replacing B&W. I doubt that there are many
> printers available at any cost that can do justice to the full grey
> scale of
> a B&W print.
I'm interested, too, but I'll tell you what the kicker is here: bigger
prints.
I am perfectly happy with the results I get on the Epson 7500 using
black ink only printing a 35mm Delta 3200 neg at 8x10. On the other
hand, an APX 25 neg printed 5x7 looks grainy and the tonal range seems
compressed. This is because rather than using different shades of gray,
as the quad tone inksets do, the printer just uses one ink: dark black.
This leads to patterning resembling grain in smooth mid-tones. However,
if the image is not smooth, and the scan reveals detail in the film's
grain, the resulting print can be quite excellent (though not equivalent
to a fibre based print). I would imagine that a 4000dpi scan from Tri-X
could make a nice 11x14.
The b&w hockey prints on the wall at the store were done this way.
I keep considering moving to quad tone on my old Epson 1200, but I still
haven't seen a result that I've been wowed by. And if I'm going to
spend $500 on a conversion kit, I want to be wowed.
I do find that quite often duotones printed with the full colour inkset
look fabulous.
-Aaron
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