This blog is about my transition from film to digital, from using a view camera to using a Canon EOS 5D as my main camera. My digital transition started years ago, however. It started at the other end of the chain: printing. It all happened when I moved from a large apartment where I had a permanent darkroom to a smaller one that I share in a more expensive city. Space having become a premium, the permanent darkroom was not realistic anymore. Having started a year before to explore film scanning and digital printing for colour, I started to see what I could do in B&W.
It soon appeared my Epson 1290 could not produce acceptable B&W prints. Well, no ink-jet printer at the time could, unless one used specialized B&W ink-sets. The one that started it all was Jon Cone with its Piezography. So I stared with a Piezography ink-set for my 1290. It was hard, expensive and frustrating but after a few weeks of sweat and tears I started to produce prints at least as good as what I had been able to do in the darkroom. At the same time, the missed Barry Thornton released his last book ‘Elements of Transition’ that told his own transition from wet to digital printing. That book is still valuable reading today.
The Piezography ink-set I used then was called PiezoTone Neutral. It was neutral all right, and metamerism-free but decidedly warm, very warm, and limited to matte papers. So I became interested in their competitor, MIS. MIS had developed a variable tone ink-set which included support for both glossy and matte papers. The dream come true. So I got that and used it nearly 2 years. It was never really good on glossy but in the mean time I had discovered the Moab Entrada and had started to really like the matte cotton papers.
Then Cone released his Neutral K7 ink-set, promising better neutrality than the old PiezoTone set and variable tone by using different papers. And, 7 levels of gray instead of 4. Initially I thought 7 levels to be overkill but the user reports were raving about incredible smoothness. Anyway, what caught my attention was the promise to get neutral tone without a blue toner ink to mix. That blue ink in the MIS set creates problems to get a finely linearized neutral curve with QuadToneRIP. It is possible, but certainly not easy. With the NK7 I would not have to deal with it. Another appealing claim from Cone was that the ink-set was designed to avoid head clogging, even when the printer is not used often. That had been a major problem with the Ebony ink. It will never clog if you print at least once a week. But don’t go push it much further because then it will clog and it can be very hard to clean. Besides, while allowing cooler prints, they never completely matched Piezography in pure beauty.
Before switching to NK7, I had fallen for the Epson hype about K3 and their so-called Advanced Black and White mode. That was quite a disappointment so I had no problem ditching the K3 and replacing them with NK7. I went for a continuous inking system to reduce the ink cost and avoid the nearly constant cartridges replacements and their ink waste the R2400 imposes.
At last, finally, an ink-set that delivers for B&W printing. This is just great. It is smooth, it is beautiful, it is neutral, tones do vary with paper, it is easy to calibrate and profile, predictable, reliable and clogs a lot less. Yes, it can still clog when the printer is left idle too long, like 3-4 weeks, but it is much easier to clean than an Ebony clog.
What can be improved:
Clogging: as I it still does happen more than with the original Epson inks. Not a show stopper, a very moderate usage is enough to prevent it and the Epson cleaning routine clears it, albeit wasting a lot of ink.
DMax: It depends on the paper. On Hahnemühle PhotoRag I get 1.58, not too bad. On Moab Entrada Natural I get 1.49, not really glorious and Epson Velvet Fine Art is unusable with a DMax of 1.32! How does it compare to silver paper? Well, I used quite a lot of Agfa Paper. Agfa claimed a DMax of 2.1. I did not have a densitometer at the time, but it should be noted to get a silver paper to DMax, you need heavy over-exposure and very long development. After around 1.8-1.9, the density curve gets very flat, killing the contrast in that range. On the other hand, with a prover calibration, NK7 gives a linear progression up to its DMax, so the whole range is fully usable. So we should compare DMax 1.58 for NK7 (my best case so far) with 1.8 for silver. A real difference, but not night and day. Still, I wish we could get more.
Price: $44 for 4oz. (118ml). Everyone agrees Epson charges a lot for their inks, but this is very close to Epson prices. I understand there is a lot of research involved and we are on a niche inside a niche market.
Shipping price: Probably due to relatively low volumes, UPS shipping from Cone to Europe is atrociously expensive, making the total cost of the inks even higher. B&H carries a small part of the Piezography range, why not the whole range? B&H has very good UPS prices.
All in all, this is the best solution I have found for B&W printing.
Stephane :: Feb.05.2007 ::
Printing ::
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