Digital Printing: The Venchka Way

[venchka]

First you have a friend with a Canon iPF 5000 printer. You mention once that if he ever decides to sell it please call me.
Fast forward.
He calls. Says that he is upgrading to a Canon 6100 or 6300. Would I like the Canon 5000? You bet. How much? $100? I am in!
It took 3 of us to wrestle the beast up the stairs in my apartment.
Fast forward.
The 2010 Large Format Photography Print Exchange rolled around. I had a decent negative that I wasn't ashamed of. I wanted to print with my new to me printer. I stock up with a roll and a box of letter size Moab Entrada Natural Rag paper. Well, for a variety of reasons, all my fault, I ended up printing on Epson Premium Luster (they say 5 stars). I couldn't get the Entrada to behave well at all.
Fast Forward.
Over the weekend and through last night I finally exorcised all the operator error gremlins. Entrada is printing beautifully. B&W and color. I had struggled since February to print a large pano of 5 RAW files stitched together. I worked and worked on it in Lightroom 3. I worked and worked on it with the printer. Crap photos. Then I discovered the color matching switch in the Canon printer driver. Turned it off. Miracle! It only took 11 feet off the roll of Entrada and most of the box of Entrada to get all the settings and profiles, etc. correct.
Now it is easy. Open Lightroom. Pick a photo. Pick a preset template. BAM! Beautiful prints.
The more I do this analog to digital thing the easier it gets. I am having to do less and less in Lightroom. Printing is about 3 clicks. Even digital to digital is getting easier. I can even convert Canon RAW files to passable B&W photos. 😀 😎
Ektar 100 out of the Hasselblad is awesome!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! 😉
That's my story. I'm sticking to it.
Now I just need one great 4x5 negative and some Entrada for the 2011 Print Exchange.

Have fun y'all!

 

[Keith]

It's taken me two years to master my R2400 to the stage where I can prepare an image on my monitor and know I'll be happy with the printed result. I've just started using Iford Smooth Gallery Pearl after working my way through a couple of boxes of their Gold Fibre Silk. I can't decide if I like it better or less at the moment!

It's the price of the ink that kills me though ... in the US cartridges for the Epson are around twelve or thirteen dollars. Here they ask twenty two dollars 😱 which, considering the current state of out two currencies, is an obvious con! 🙁

 

[mfunnell]

It's the price of the ink that kills me though ... in the US cartridges for the Epson are around twelve or thirteen dollars. Here they ask twenty two dollars 😱 which, considering the current state of out two currencies, is an obvious con! 🙁

I have similar pricing problems with Canon inks for my Pro9500. Perhaps worse. If I buy a "full set" package from the US I'm paying about 1/3rd the price I'd pay for individual inks here in Oz (where sets don't seem to be available for the inks I want). I once asked a Canon printer rep about this and he admitted to me that the wholesale price they're charged for supplies from Japan is higher than the retail price in the US. Customers obviously know this, because they're buying fewer and fewer units through Australian channels.

Companies need to learn that this geographical segmentation of markets and charging hugely more in one than another no longer works all that well. (Though it's something Australia has suffered from for a very long time.) Everybody can see what overseas prices are. Shipping options are pretty good these days. If unit price plus shipping from overseas is less (and often it is considerably less) then why not buy that way?

The only people being really scr*w*d here are the manufacturers' own retail channels and customers not net-aware enough to look at world pricing (a rare sort of fish, these days).

I think manufacturers would learn this lesson faster if our own retailers weren't so dumb. The effort they spent whinging about GST would've been far better directed towards getting fair pricing from their suppliers. Of course this would benefit customers as well - and some of our retailers don't seem to like anything which benefits a customer.

...Mike