On Mar 9, 2006, at 6:42 AM, Mark Roberts wrote:
Even more interesting (to me, anyway), is that the first *and*
second place
pictures were printed in an Epson inkjet printer, as opposed to
photographic
paper.
Sigh. It was only a matter of time until digital B&W printing started
to overtake wet printing. I'm moving that direction myself. I *am*
going to keep my darkroom equipment and do web B&W prints, but I
suspect that within a couple of years, I'll be doing so just because
silver gelatin prints will have extra sales value simply because of
their novelty, rather than their quality. "Gee, you mean that print
wasn't made on a computer?!"
It's only within the past couple of years that you can get ink and
paper (in pricing and printers accessible for small lab/home use!)
that work well consistently for B&W printing. I've been doing all my
printing via inkjet printers for a decade or more now, but for B&W
I'd always duotone to get decent results until 2001-2002. That's when
I went the quadtone ink/dedicated printer route and started to see
some major improvements.
Now, with the R2400 and K3 inkset, you can make better B&W on the
inkjet printer than in the darkroom with today's available darkroom
papers and chemistry. Measurements with a densitometer show
conclusively that, with the right paper and ink combination, you can
get deeper blacks and whiter whites than in the darkroom. Once you
can do that, it's all a matter of knowing how to best process the
images.
Godfrey
