Re: Digital Negatives and new Epson printers
Sandy,
What transparenices did you use for printing? Did you see any evidence of ink smearing and puddling when printing high density with all colours? I would be more interested in hearing if it can handle both cheap and expensive transparencies. I use cheap transparencies for negatives for gum prinitng and pictorico for palladium and everything else. I currently use 2200 so it is a benchmark for me.
This seems like potantially a perfect printer replacement for me as density of 1.8 is exacty what I need for Pd and I have been using curves to adjust density lower for gum.
How is the quality of the color print on that 1400 printer. Are the dye inks producing really deep rich colour?
Marek
From: SusanV <susanvoss3@gmail.com>
Reply-To: alt-photo-process-l@usask.ca
To: alt-photo-process-l@usask.ca
Subject: Re: Digital Negatives and new Epson printers
Date: Wed, 21 Feb 2007 10:25:14 -0500
>Sandy, thanks for posting your reviews. Really helpful info. I'm
>still using my 1280, which seems to work well on OHP for polymer
>gravure process, but of course I wonder about the new printers...
>It's invaluable to have an alphoto person review them for our
>purposes.
>
>susan voss
>Polymer gravure process trials -
>http://sssusans-studio.blogspot.com/
>www.dalyvoss.com
>
>
>On 2/20/07, Sandy King <sanking@clemson.edu> wrote:
>>Over the past two weeks I
have had a chance to test two of the new
>>Epson printers with digital negatives, the 3800 and 1400. There is
>>good and not so good news.
>>
>>First, the 3800. The 3800 has a 17" carriage and comes in a
>>relatively small footprint, just a tad larger than the 2400 and
>>costs
>>just a tad more at $1300. It prints very smooth monochrome and
>>color
>>prints with great detail. The pigmented ink set also gives good UV
>>blocking, so at first glance it might seem ideal for Mark's PDN
>>system. However, what I found with the printer tested was that the
>>Green branch, where UV blocking is greatest, gave a fairly grainy
>>look with both pt/pd and carbon. Quite a bit more than my 2200, for
>>example. Choosing another color in the Red branch that gave a
>>maximum
>>density of about 1.7 gave very smooth prints. However, from what I
>>observed with this printer the options for alternative work are
>>somewhat limited. Perhaps the grainy look from this printer was an
>>anomaly, or if not, maybe there is a solution.
>>
>>OK, then there is the 1400, a 13" carriage printer that uses Claria
>>high definition dye inks. The dye inks have very low UV blocking,
>>for
>>example a density in green that reads in UV about 2.3 with the 3800
>>reads only 1.05 with the 1400. Same low values for all of the other
>>colors. However, printing a B&W negative in RGB with color chosen
>>on
>>the print menu gave a maximum density to UV light of about 1.8.
>>This
>>turns out to be almost exactly I have been using
for digital
>>negatives with various processes. However, the lack of UV blocking
>>in
>>the Green and Red branch makes impossible the use of many of PDNs
>>features. Still, the 1400 prints with a lot of definition, and when
>>I
>>printed a 100 Step Table (in Photoshop percentages) the mid-value
>>high tones, which look fairly grainy with my 2200, were smooth as a
>>baby's butt, and there is also good definition even in a 1 pixel
>>grid
>>on the scale. This is one of Mark's earlier step tables (prints
>>about
>>7" X 7") so he will know what I am talking about in terms of the
>>detail.
>>
>
>
>--
>Susan Daly Voss
>www.dalyvoss.com
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