I agree - you need a dedicated B&W printer with a set of black + gray
inks to do this properly.
However I use my 1400 on the grayscale setting and plain paper in the
driver menu and get what I think are excellent results - i.e. the dots
in the print from only using one ink makes it resemble rather more a
traditional B&W print with grain! Yippee!! Long Live Dots! (For once...)
Sorry, couldn't resist it....
Howard
David Dyer-Bennet wrote:
On Sat, June 7, 2008 13:55, Chris wrote:
However it lacks the quality I used to get with black and white printing
from mono-negative and plastika chlorobromide paper. I think that digital
still lacks the quality of film. Another ten years of development and it
will be as good as film or better.
I routinely produce results with digital that I never could have come
close to with 35mm film (and I had been doing my own darkroom work since
about 1970).
Your R285 probably isn't a very good B&W printer (my R800 isn't too good
at B&W either), but others in the Epson range (R2400, 3800, 4800, and all
the current big ones) (and some of the HPs) are superb for B&W. I've got
a 20x30 inch (image area) print from a 35mm Tri-x negative I shot in 1975
that I finally managed to make a good print digitally of last year, with
help from a really expert friend and use of his printer (Epson 9800) for
the output. Even 11x14 darkroom prints from tri-x mostly looked grainy
and bad to me; this much larger print looks excellent. (I suppose I
should double-check what film the original negative is, just to be sure).
