digineges/gelatin silver/printer comments and questions

    I suppose all of this post really boils down to two simple questions--Is
anyone making good diginegs for gelatin silver using any of the standard
transparency materials? If so, how do you avoid grain? More detail
follows.
    I need to start with the fact that I'm using an Epson R800 printer with
second party dye based inks, not the (expensive) OEM pigment based ones.
    I started out trying to use Nelson's Precision method but for gelatin
silver instead of one of the alt processes. I foolishly reasoned that the
turn-around speed of gelatin silver would save me a lot of time in working
out the process to make a correct curve.
    The first thing I discovered was that the dye based inks are transparent
to light, so none of the colors blocked much. I switched to black, which,
as you know, is really a mixture of colors plus some of the black ink.
This worked in that it gave me negatives which printed from DMAX to DMIN.
But, the images on three different transparent material were all grainy. I
used Avery, Office Depot and Pictorico. The Pictorico was by far the least
grainy but still too grainy to use.
    In desparation to get some, any, decent print I printed a negative on
Epson Premium Glossy Paper (which isn't paper but plastic). A little
fooling around with the curve and I got a very nice print. The light
back-printing of EPSON on the paper did NOT show up in the print.
Unfortunatly, this paper is opaque to UV, so this will not work with the alt
processes I want to use.
    With that rather long introduction, here are my questions: The R800
does not appear to have the kinds of settings that the other Epson printers
mentioned here have. No such thing as microweave or dpi settings, though
one of the supplies web sites gives what it claims are accurate dpi outputs
for the three (Fine, Photo and RPM [really pretty machine?]) settings. I
just learned about the existance of RPM--do you suppose it is worth
repeating the tests with it--it is apparently the highest setting. Any
other suggestions to eliminate the grain?
    There is another third party ink called Dragon Drool III (I'm not making
this up) which claims to be a close clone of the Epson Ultrachrome inks.
Does anyone have any experience with it?
     Thanks for any help. Charles Portland OR
Received on Sun Apr 10 12:26:03 2005