DanPhoto@aol.com
Tue, 19 Jan 1999 15:07:46 -0500 (EST)
>> Finally, I never heard much about what printer to buy for making negatives
>> suitable for gum - Judy, what are you using now, and do you like it? The
>> Photo Dan and Dave's you two are the experts - any real info on the
>> situation?
>>
The way desktop printing is evolving at such an incredible pace makes me
reluctant to put too much research into the area, at least until printers
get just a tad bit better. Still, there are some guidelines that might
help.
The new breed of laser printer I hear about sound interesting. When they
incorporate Level 3 Postscript, there may be even more hope for
additional shades of gray (though I caution you not to get hung up on the
256 thing since most images can look great with far fewer than 256
different tones). It'll be interesting to see what results people get
form that HP 5000 laser.
About dry toner printers like the Alps: My personal feeling is that the
manufacturing precision that accompanies a $500 printer cannot provide
perfect smoothness UNLESS there is some kind of ink/toner/dye overlap
provision, as the Epson inkjet printers accomplish with what they call
Microweaving. The Alps use some really neat engineering; I'll be in line
to see the NEXT generation of these printers. But for now, they just
don't seem able to make a good negative.
Inkjets are the neatest because 1) they are less expensive than lasers,
2) they have higher resolution than laser, 3) the new breed of Epsons
(Feb or March) will have variable dot sizes, 4) they achieve greater
detail with lower resolution images because they use stochastic dot
placement.
There are a couple of important things to keep in mind when it comes to
the paper/film on which you make your negatives:
You don't want any material with a Water Mark that will show up in your
print. This one seems obvious but it pays to ask ahead of time.
The more homogeneous the base material the better. Various
waxing/oiling/K-Y ing methods have been discussed here to make the paper
bases more transparent.. The Epson Photo Quality paper works well if you
don't mind waxing or oiling to make the fibers in the base less
intrusive. Of course, who's to say the fibrous "paper negative look"
isn't nice in its own way!
Be alert to light transmission. The Epson Glossy Film (a white plastic
base) is great (no paper fibers and no water mark), but it blocks UV
light. Bummer! That's not a problem for processes using other parts of
the light spectrum, like silver gelatin.
The Back Light Film is the most interesting. Good clay ink surface and a
mylar base that passes UV and has no fiber quality. You might have to
modify the little paper guide "pie cutter" wheels in your Epson; the clay
on the Back Light Film is so sensitive they perforate the clay!
Most attempts to use desktop printers have focused on developing a
PHYSICAL density sufficient to make negatives that will print on alt.
process materials. Something I've been experimenting with for a while
involves using INK COLORS to build a density that doesn't rely on heavy
ink deposits. Remember that with a COLOR inkjet printer you can exploit a
"SPECTRAL DENSITY" by making a negative with colors that block the part
of the spectrum to which your sensitizer/emulsion is sensitive. Think of
it as printing with ink that has the color of a safelight filter! A
colorized negative that reads with a lousy Density of .27 (on my 20 year
old analog densitometer) will print on silver with full tonal scale! A
contrast adjustment curve must still be applied of course in Photoshop.
The curve will vary according to the negative material, whether it's
waxed or not, and your printing medium. Still, it's a pretty neat way to
achieve a spectral density that needn't rely on massive amounts of ink on
the negative material.
The one drawback is that, when you colorize the image, your printer will
be putting down primarily magenta and yellow inks. On a printer like the
Epson Photo, 700 or EX, this means you are only using three of the six
ink cartridges (magenta, light magenta and yellow). Were you to designate
a color that also includes Black, they you move up to four of the six
cartridges. The point is, your image "smoothness" is not as great as if
you were using all six inks. I haven't seen this as a real problem; it's
still many more dots on the negative than a laser printer can make with a
single pass of toner.
And our quest continues!
Dan Burkholder
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