RE: Source for 1160 Printers for inkjet negatives

[Keith Gerling <kgerling@ameritech.net>]

Hmmmm... That is a crucial bit of information that I should have mentioned
earlier.  Yes, I AM doing color separations, and so there may be a critical
amount of "offsetting" that goes on, where any grain, paper pattern, and
general anomalies of any one negative are cancelled out by the other.  I'm
not sure if your 1,080 dpi is valid, but I should point out that my limited
experience in printing single and double coat gums from ONE negative
demonstrates that very detailed gum prints can be had from negatives printed
just around 300 dpi.  I can't locate the details, but I seem to recall that
Epson printers/drivers increment the dpi in such a fashion that large jumps
are made in the ACTUAL dpi that vary from the user settings, i.e.,
everything set at 240-340 might actually be at 280.  Don't quote me on those
numbers, they are just examples.  The folks on the Epson printer list can
help with the exact figures.  The gist is: don't sweat trying to increase
that dpi count: you may not experience any gain.  When printing gum, I fail
to see any improvement in detail when the printer is used at greater than
300 dpi.  Of course, the cheap paper I use might not even be able to resolve
greater than 300, so who knows?



-----Original Message-----
From: Judy Seigel [mailto:jseigel@panix.com]
Sent: Friday, August 03, 2001 2:08 AM
To: alt-photo-process-l@sask.usask.ca
Subject: RE: Source for 1160 Printers for inkjet negatives



On Thu, 2 Aug 2001, Keith Gerling wrote:
> 3) Gum is another story.  I am very pleased with the desktop negatives
that
> I can create for gum printing.  And I've found that there are no
particular
> gains to be had by using Quadtone, or even Color, for that matter.  Just
> plain old black ink, out of one nozzle, at about 270dpi works great.  Call
> it a gum limitation, or call it a limitation on my own perceptual
abilities,

Keith, it occurs to me that you're doing color seps, & if so are really
overlapping FOUR negatives, which would be 1,080 dpi, no?  When I did  gum
color separations about 2 years ago I printed them out on my 300 dpi laser
printer & waxed the paper and they were fine ! In fact the laser printed
dot prints VERY differently from the epson dot I find... and actually much
easier. Somehow the contrast was always right. At the stage I'm at now,
somehow the contrast is always wrong.

Judy




> but there just doesn't seem to be much advantage to using Quadtone inks.
> Another shocking revelation:  I get a better gum print when I use waxed
> paper negatives that when I use Pictorico, etc.  Pictorico, I'm sure,
could
> be fine, but I haven't had time to produce a decent "curve" for it.
> Conveniently, the compressed range of the paper-neg is perfect for my own
> gum process using just the plain, old straight and un-altered output.
>
> Keith
>
>
> Dan
>
>