As an ancient citizen who grew up in the black and white darkroom era, and who worked, both at a pro lab, and in my own darkroom for a very long time, I tried to embrace inkjet printing as soon as possible. Ah, there was the great potential for excellent black and white prints that could compare with black and white fiber prints. In the darkroom, if I can remember that far back, my paper of choice was Ilford Gallerie Graded paper.
Later, I got lazy and switched to Ilford Multigrade fiber. Prints were air-dried on screens. Everyone talked about the best way to keep fiber prints flat after they dried.
Then inkjets entered the picture (so to speak).
At first I used inkjets (with dye inks) for cards and for testing. I kept my wet darkroom as my business depended on darkroom prints. And when you even spoke the word, Inkjet, your print value dropped.
Then Epson 4800 arrived. It had a built-in driver for black and white prints. Papers were beginning to appear that were especially made to resemble the Ilford Gallerie paper that I compared my inkjet prints with. Eventually, I became convinced that an inkjet print could rival or even surpass a darkroom black and white print. (Heresy at the time, and even now.)
I switched to the digital darkroom and eventually bought an Epson large format printer and managed to squeeze it into my studio apartment and tossed out the Zone VI enlarger. That’s right – I couldn’t find anyone to rent a van and take it off my hands. It is many years since I made that swap, and I have some conclusions.
Now to the point: the inkjet is going to be looked back on as a primitive piece of equipment. It’s primitive in the same way that the Space Shuttle is primitive: it is just way too complex.
The darkroom, even today when paper is exposed by LEDs but go through chemical baths is still more reliable than inkjet printers. You will often run across the acronym term Lambda. Now this means that light sensitive paper is exposed with LEDs, but it doesn’t always tell you what exactly the process is. In other words, I’ve seen it used to mean that color prints and color chemicals are being used; and I’ve seen it mean that RC silver prints will be produced, and also and this is most rare and the best solution for black and white prints, that the prints will be exposed on true silver fiber paper giving you the best of both worlds.
This Lambda fiber process is best for darkroom prints that normally require a lot of fine-tuning (dodging, burning, bleaching). Once you’ve got your digital file ready in Photoshop or your post-processing program of choice – you can get have the digital file used to produce a perfect Lambda darkroom print.
And printing processes that rely on “stamping” as opposed to “spraying” are also more reliable.
Think about what that high-end fine art printer is doing. The drivers for communicating with the inkjet printer are okay. That’s not the bottleneck. The problem is that the technique depends on micro-spraying drops of pigment ink onto various types of paper, sometimes spraying as many as 2880 drops per inch, and these drops are coming from maybe eight different print heads.
And all that ink spritzing around. It gets on the print head(s) and needs to be wiped off. So something like a windshield wiper (though smaller) wipes off the excess ink and splashes it into a maintenance tank that is supposed to sop it up. But all it takes is a single hair to get onto that maintenance tank, get picked up by the print head – and voila – you are in trouble again.
To make matters worse, and to the surprise of the novice printer, the combination of high-end paper and ink turns out to be more expensive than the darkroom fiber print. That isn’t counting labor. If everything is working properly, then the inkjet is the clear winner as a labor saving device. Again – that’s if everything is working.
But given the complexity of what is being done when you print a large black and white print, there’s more chance for something to go wrong.
Example: last week, an old enemy arrived on the Epson 7800 prints – a small amount of ink splatter on one edge of the print. Didn’t matter the size of the print – there it was. Luckily, I have seen this before and suspected that the maintenance tank – the box that keeps the splattered extra ink – was messed up, although the Epson Driver indicators were – as NASA would say – Nominal.
Nevertheless, I pulled a dry maintenance tank from my 4800 printer (which I hadn’t used for a while) and that maintenance tank had had a chance to dry out, and I exchanged it with the Epson 7800 print – and voila. The very next 7800 print was perfect, and no more splatters since then (about two weeks ago).
On the other hand, the Epson 4800 which I hadn’t used for a while had clogged nozzles and it took every trick in the world to clean them (not to mention all the wasted ink which is more valuable than gold bullion).
So with all the incredible software that has progressed like crazy – I use NIK software for most of my post processing – their still is a bottle neck and it is the inkjet fine art printer which I suspect will one day go the way of the shuttle.
This recalls the investigation that the great physicist Richard Feynman did on the Challenger shuttle disaster. He cut through all the complex technology and demonstrated that the o-rings used to connect parts of the rocket hardened at the cold temperatures Florida was experiencing on the morning of the launch. It was a simple mechanical miscalculation that cost the lives of those astronauts and the teacher aboard.
As Feyman testified, “For a successful technology, reality must take precedence over public relations, for Nature cannot be fooled.” I bet that Epson doesn’t make it clear that clogged nozzles and messed up maintenance tanks can be a problem with their printers.
Lester: no, that’s not exactly in their brochures.
There are other printers by HP where the print head is part of each cartridge. I have used those as well, and they present other issues. Every inkjet printer has it’s own list of pros and cons. Epson printers have been the de facto choice for fine art on various types of media for many years.
The best solution (literally) are LAMBDA prints made by printing digital files onto Fiber paper. Not many labs do this, and it’s too expensive for my customers. But that does offer the best of both worlds.
Mike Johnston at
http://theonlinephotographer.typepad.com/the_online_photographer/2011/06/a-print-offer-with-a-twist.html.,mention a digital b&w lab:
http://www.digitalsilverimaging.com/.
They claim:
“Extraordinary Black & White Prints
The fusion of modern digital technology and true silver gelatin fiber printing. We use a Durst Theta 51 photographic laser printer that exposes Ilford silver gelatin papers at 400ppi. The RGB tri-color laser produces continuous tones and your print is processed in traditional Ilford black and white photo chemistry for a completely neutral image tone that is archival. No more unwanted color cast or annoying ink reflections on the surface of your prints.”
Prices sound reasonable.Your opinion is important here.Does it worth a trial?.
I have seen prints from http://www.digitalsilverimaging.com/ and yes – assuming that you are doing them on fiber (they also offer RC which I haven’t seen but of course know what it is) they are top-notch without a doubt and the best of both worlds.
To do fiber prints for my customers through them, is too expensive to offer, but for a gallery show or a customer who is willing to pay for a silver gelatin print – absolutely the way to go. And when I say “too expensive” look up their price for say a 16 x 20, add shipping and then check my price for an inkjet on Exhibition Paper… The point is, that unless you are going to make more than one print with them (of the same image) at a time — and then you end up with inventory that you haven’t sold — it cuts into my profit in the same way that having a high-end inkjet print outsourced does.
P.S. SilverImaging 16 x 20 for one print: $123 (add shipping) $150
My Retail Price for a 16 x 20 print: $175
Now you could say – why not offer these prints as an option?
Answer – because then people say the other prints must not be very good. Also, customers that buy prints from a web site have a definite price point, and it is under $200. I could “fool” customers and offer RC prints – but these didn’t appeal to me when I was doing darkroom work and I never did sell them – so don’t feel like starting now, and my inkjets are richer with better feeling than RC prints – even though you can easily call them silver prints.
Right.Unfortunately there are no magical solutions.
Thank you for your answer.
Dave,
The newer Epsons have far fewer or no clogging issues. My 3880 has been fine. The Canons are reported to be fine as well. Perfect – no. These devices, particularly in a professional environment, are meant to be kept for 2-4 years and replaced. A business expense. But I’m afraid we wouldn’t read your colorful posts about coaxing -or kicking- photos out of your aged Epson’s if you sprang for a new one.
If it’s new then it doesn’t count. Both my 4800 and 7800 were perfect for at least a year and a half.
My zone vi enlarger was perfect for two decades.
Dave, that Silverimaging pricing above is for their “Custom” 16×20 print.
Since you do all your own prep work and have a ready to print file, you can get a 16×20 print for $24.99, using their ROES system.
I have not tried them but this seems pretty similar to the way we have done prints via West Coast Imaging…except you’re getting a true B&W silver image.
Here’s the relevant page:
http://www.digitalsilverimaging.com/directtoprint
It would be worth doing a test print or 2.
Jeff, It doesn’t say anywhere that ROES is for FIBER b&w. If that turns out to be for fiber paper, then that is an excellent deal. I’ll find out.
Dave, you are probably right, that price will be for RC paper only…. Although it is worth looking into to see if there is better pricing available on the fiber prints.