See everyone this Sunday at Lorelie's.
In today's episode of "This Old Photographer" Cal gets an E-mail from Jon Cone, the master printer who developed Piezography.
"So Cal, what is the deal?"
"Well Norm, I kinda missed the really big blowout sale at Piezography held around Thanksgiving every year, and I was kinda bummed. Cash flow and bad timing, but I kinda got a second chance today, and I had the opportunity at my boring day-job to use my journalism skills to do my obsessive data mining to figure out how to be clever."
"So Cal, what did you discover?"
"I learned Norm that because I was greedy and stockpiled Piezography Pro Inks when I was selected to be an early adopter that I was mighty-mighty clever because the same Photo Black used for Piezography Pro printing is also used for converting my K-7 printing with 7 shades of black into a K-7 HD system."
"What are the advantages of this HD upgrade?"
"Well Norm, first there is the blacker-black, the darkest on the planet, and this black is also glossier. I expect this added gloss will add acutance to the blacks so they stand out more. I also expect even more dynamic range than my present 20x30 K-7 images that are printed on 24x36 inch paper that I annoy people with. I especially think all these advantages will get or be more pronounced in my annoying bigger prints, and this excites me."
"Any technical difficulties or challenges."
"As you know I'm a mighty smart guy, but I'm dumb around computers, even though at my day-job my job title is Cyclotron Engineer and basically I operate, run and maintain a partical beam acelerator and manage a nuclear physics lab. The new K-7 HD upgrade requires a software upgrade that I have to license to have access to the profiles required to adopt the upgrade to K-7 HD."
"Any new possibilities?"
"Well because the black is so black and the contrast gets enhanced there are reports that it elevates matte printing to approach that of glossy printing. To me that is a big deal. Imagine matte prints that don't look flat and compressed as far as contrast, and matte prints without the sheen of glossy prints with the same tonal range of glossy prints."
"Wow. That would be a very striking big deal."
"It also opens up possibilities with using a larger base of papers. Currently I only print glossy and only on Baryta coated papers, so a whole new universe of paper usage opens up."
"And because of your obsessive compulsive behavior that you can't control of course you will kinda go crazy exploring fine art matte papers."
"So also there is kind of a matte black HD that takes things even further. The Piezography Pro Photo Black some people use as their matte black. This means I can be mighty clever and switch between matte and glossy without having to change inks by just switching paper profiles, but if I want to destroy the world and use a black that is the blackest black that is kinda like a black hole I can take things to the next step and print matte images that enjoy the full tonal range of glossy prints on Baryta paper that I presently enjoy."
"Well Cal, now you are scaring me. Your non-HD K-7 prints people say are stunning. Hard to imagine blacker blacks and enhanced dynamic range? The experience of holding or seeing one of your prints already has a HDR like effect."
"Norm, at this point I'm really inspired. As an early adopter of Piezography Pro, where I was kind of a Beta tester of a new printing system before it was available to the general public, my skill level advanced. I know from exprience that K-7 even though it requires two-pass printing lays down more ink. I suspect seeing even more depth in my large prints using K-7 HD.
"In our next episode of "This Old Photographer" I suspect more crazy advances, and unintended consequencs as Cal runs with the ball. See you next month at "This Old Photographer."
Cal