I've used a Stylus Pro XL and a Stylus 3000 to print on ink jet film and
I'll give you my views on the potential of these printers to produce
digital negatives. I've done tests and am about to print a set of tritoned
negs as a gum print.
I haven't used the Stylus Photo but I don't think its six inks are much
help for direct printed digital negs, at least not for gum printing. I
tried a test of step scales printed in pure yellow, another in magenta,
cyan, and black on clear film. The four step scales were used to print a
gum print. The effect of the color scales was zero - at an exposure that
produced a good print for the black scale, the CMY scales were
indistinguishable from the clear portions. Worse some of the ink came off
on the print. I haven't seen black do this. The test was with a Stylus Pro
- 3000 inks are a different formulation - probably more likely to come off
(at least from non-Epson film). Of course you could avoid this by printing
emulsion up, but CMY does not seem to block enough of the spectrum which
exposes gum to be useful in direct printing. The Stylus Photo's light
magenta and light cyan improve the appearance of a color print but would be
utterly useless for direct printed negs for gum printing based on my tests.
The Photo should perform pretty much the same for black only, monochrome,
printing as the 600, 800, or 1520, or 3000.
There is an advantage to printing a positive on white film and contact
printing onto photographic film. Printing artifacts, including thin lines
on the Pro and random irregularities on both Pro and 3000, are minimized by
contact printing. The irregularities are often slightly less dense areas
which are invisible by reflected light but show up by transmitted light -
contact printing with the right exposure drops out most of the artifacts.
The Canon printer with light black sounds interesting - a Stylus printer
with light black would be even more interesting.
The artifacts are also minimized by printing a monochrome image in color.
I've tried contact printing my color step scales onto ortho film (litho
film developed in Selectol Soft.Yellow and cyan reduce the density just
faintly, but magenta works very well giving a mid-density. I see
interesting possibilities in printing a magenta/black duotone onto white
film and contact printing. I haven't pursued this because of the ink costs
- at the time I only had the Pro XL. You would wind up throwing away a lot
of cyan and yellow ink since the color cartridge combines CMY. The 3000 has
separate cartridges for all four colors but I haven't pursued this - I'd
much rather print the negs directly and skip the contact printing step.
Another interesting possibility is to contact print onto panchromatic film
- the Stylus Photo and the rumored wide carriage version of the Photo are
interesting in the regard.
The direction I've taken is to tritone darker colors and duotone the
lights. In other words, for a four-color print in CMYK I'd tritone the CMK
seps and print Y straight or duotoned - a set of 10-11 negs - printing each
in black only. Actually for multi-coat gum there's no reason to stop at
tritone or quadtone - print one for each layer or to order to adjust
contrast or color balance - caveat, I'm hypothesizing, but I've had a lot
of experience print multi-coat gums from continuous tone negs. The ink jet
film I'm using is not too expensive a 16.5 x 24 inch sheet (cut from a 24
in roll) costs about $2.00, and can be printed in 1440 dpi at either the
coated paper or glossy paper setting. I don't have the information on this
film handy but can post it later.
Wayne
Wayne Simpkins - hsimpkns@memphis.edu
The University of Memphis, Department of Art