[Leica] Could this actually work...?

[Martin Howard <mvhoward@mac.com>]

I've been speculating.  Actually, what I've been doing is playing with 
my
i950, trying (with varying success) to get it to print B&W prints with
predictible results, while reading lots of things about digital B&W
printing on the 'net.

It would appear that this is an area in which there is a terrible 
amount of
confusion and very little science.  Filling the void is speculation on
everything ranging from tonality to longevity, plus a number of 
companies
that sell various solutions.  Most expensive, some probably very good.

However... I've been thinking.  Good quality inkjet printers are 
available
today for less than $250.  That's not a lot of money.  I bought my i950
from B&H for that and it's a 6-ink, 2 picoliter inkjet printer.

Piezography BW have apparently annouced that they are going to release 
an
ink kit plus ICC profile for this printer.  However, judging by the cost
of similar products for the Epson line, it would appear that this alone 
is
going to cost more than half the cost of the printer.

So... I've been thinking.

India ink is permanent.  Good quality, "archival" paper is readily
available.  The i950 is blessed with not with separate ink wells, but 
also
with a removable printer head.  Together, these seem to suggest a 
solution.

I'm guessing that it would be possible to dilute concentrated ink to
reproducable dilutions.  I'm also guessing that it would be possible to
refill empty Canon ink wells with such diluted ink.

Creating step wedges in Photoshop is easy.  So, let's play a little game
of thought.  Imagine that we got some suitable ink.  Imagine that we
diluted this in six different dilutions, from one very black, through 
six
levels of dilution, to one very light.  Imagine that we filled empty ink
wells with this, plugged them into a dedicated printer head and slapped
the whole thing into an i950.

Then, we fill our printer with some good quality, archival art paper of
suitable weight.  Now, imagine that we created a set of step wedges in
Photoshop and printed these on, say, 8x10" or 8.5x11" paper.

What we need to do now is somehow measure the density of the various
patches of the step wedge.  From this, we could create an ICC profile 
that
would be plugged into Photoshop to allow on-screen, soft-proof editing 
of
an image.  Voila!  Reproducable, pure ink, archival quality prints.

Or am I wrong?

Questions:

* What kind of inks could you use?

* What would you dilute them with?

* How do you measure the density in the output?

* Am I totally bonkers?


M.

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