Archived posting to the Leica Users Group, 2002/03/25

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Subject: [Leica] Re: Leica B/W digital printing options
From: William Gower <w_gower@sympatico.ca>
Date: Mon, 25 Mar 2002 19:39:21 -0600

John Brownlow wrote:

> I heartily recommend a CIS bulk inking system from
> www.nomorecarts.com and some nice third party inks like Generations or
> MIS.
>

This is especially true with the "chipped" cartridges for the 870, 1270, 
890, etc.

I slowly eased my way into B+W digital printing with a 870 and the MIS 
Variable Mix cartridges. After going through six cartridge sets, I 
simply have to bit the bullet and get a CIS.

The chipped MIS cartridges have been a real pain the ass -  50% of the 
time they are not recognized by the printer. This leaves me to yank out 
the cartridge, replace the MIS chip it with an OEM Epson chip, replace 
the MIS cartridge, purge, print, purge, print....until I get a good 
nozzle  pattern. This wastes a whole lot of expensive ink.

I've written a letter to MIS explaining the problem and returned a few 
faulty chips, but I haven't gotten a response from them yet.

Otherwise, using one of the RGB workflow methods (I prefer the slightly 
warm curve on Epson Archival Matte or Epson Premium Semigloss) I'm 
convinced that archival Quadtone (or in my case Hextone) printing is the 
way for me. A larger A3 printer and a CIS is on the horizon.

Again, like John mentioned before, not going the Piezo route meant  it 
took a lot of fussing around playing with curves, papers and various 
films and developers before I got what what I thought was a really good 
print. The early results were perfectly acceptable, just not amazing.

This was as much a scanner issue as it was an ink issue I'm sure. My 
secret to finally getting an amazing looking inkjet print was ditching 
Tri-X for a finer grained film - in my case APX100 in Microdol-X. If I 
need more speed, I go with TMax 400.

Something about APX100 and this developer, my scanner (2820 dpi 
Minolta + VueScan) and the MIS-VM inks makes a inkjet print that more 
than equals a"wet" print. Something that makes you step back and say 
"wow".

My thoughts.

William













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Replies: Reply from George Hartzell <hartzell@kestrel.alerce.com> (Re: [Leica] Re: Leica B/W digital printing options)
Reply from Javier Perez <summarex@yahoo.com> ([Leica] digilux?)