Do you print?

T

Todd.Hanz

Guest
I was printing a few images for someone today and realized I had not used my printer in a few weeks. I have lots of BW shots that would look nice printed but I have not had the urge lately.
I use an Epson 2200 which gives outstanding results, esp. in BW, so I was wondering if any of you print much and what you use?

Todd
 
I'm not doing any digital printing yet - semi-luddite as I am.
BUT have been glancing at the Epson range of printers and the 2200 in particular.

Part of thinking about getting a printer this year is that I have a number of photos that needs to be printed soon and I think I'm computer-savvy enough to be able to pick up digital printing pretty quickly.

Any special pro's and con's you want to share when it comes to b&w printing on the 2200?
 
you're talking computer printing?

i have never, i just get the scans done and email or post here mostly.
i still have a full working darkroom. well it's working - i'm not, at least not in the darkroom.

joe
 
I only have a cheapo HP 35xx printer, and hardly use it at all. I bought it mainly because I sometimes need to print some documents, so I didn't pay much attention to the quality of photographic prints.
So far I've printed only 2 or 3 monochrome photos of mine. IMO the prints looked fine. One of them is now hanging framed on the wall. Only since a few weeks I've become interested in the technicalities of digital printing, and boy! is this stuff daunting and costly! :)
 
I do a ton of printing. (Digital SLR, plus 5MP point and shoot = lots of photos in short periods of time.) I use a Canon i960 and a Canon i950. I'm thrilled with the performance of both.

I generally print straight out of Canon's Easy-PhotoPrint Plus - it's convenient and straightforward. Adobe PhotoShop Elements is another option.

As for paper, if I'm just printing snap shots for friends or family, I'll use Canon's PhotoPaper Plus Glossy - it's economical and the results are fine.

If I'm printing something for myself, I'll use Ilford Gallerie Smooth Pearl Paper - easily my favorite. If it's going under glass, it's Gallerie Smooth Heavyweight Matte.
 
I have a four year old Epson 870 (think it's the 2200's great great grandfather).

B&W looks fantastic on Epson Matt Heavyweight paper. Paper selection is very important with these micro-drop inkjets.

I cut the A4 sheet in half and use the postcard size settings (10 X 15cm?).
 
I don't know what it's like where you live, but over here (the Netherlands) having your film developed and printed has become so cheap that I can't justify printing myself. Mind you, I'm not even talking about the so called 'budget prints' but 'quality print' colour, b&w, 120 roll film.

The only advantages of printing myself would be to beat the turn around time, which is 2 days, and to have extended control over the output. But when I need a print darker/lighter or with more/less contrast I drop the negs off and have it done as well.

The main obstacle for me at this point to get into home printing would be to buy a decent scanner, as I shoot 120 type film as well (which drives up the cost of an optical film scanner into the 1600 euro range).
 
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I rarely print anything. My family and friends share images via email and websites. When I do need prints, I upload them to a digital printing service and get back very nice prints. No incentive whatever to own a printer and feed it ink cartridges :)

Gene
 
Digital printing can open a whole new can of worms.
I hate to go into too much detail as you can do a Google search and come up with 10 years worth of reading material.
I have used my Epson 2200 for a small portrait studio we ran and have printed many of my customers photos with it, it's a great printer for color and black and white. We went into digital printing to give us better control of our end product, the lab we use does great work as well but with the Epson we can also have 2-3 hour turn around.
Paper is very important when printing from an inkjet, I'd say stick with your manufacturers suggestions until you have a good workflow and understand the process.
For black and white printing, most inkjet printers will print with all the colors to produce an even tonal range. The problem here is your prints suffer from what is called metemarism, which is a color shift that appears different in various lighting situations. In sunlight it may have a magenta shift in tungsten lighting in may look green. To some people it is not a problem, but for the black and white purist the only way to go is black and white. I print all my monochrome with the black only ink, this gives me a neutral black and white print with no color shift. It also introduces some "grain" which is not really grain but the effect of using only one ink to print, it looks alot like the grain in Tri-X so it's not objectional.
The really serious guys will buy an ink set that will give them various shades of black but produces museum quality prints that will last for ever, pretty expensive but amazing.
Instead of boring the hell out of everyone if you are interested you can check out these links: http://home1.gte.net/res0a2zt/photos.html
http://www.cjcom.net/digiprnarts.htm

The most important thing you need to do to ensure you prints look like what you see on your monitor is to buy a calibration kit which calibrates the brightness and color of your monitor to a standard, it will save you alot of hassle and paper/ink.
It sometimes seems daunting but the results are really nice.

Todd
 
pvdhaar said:
I don't know what it's like where you live, but over here (the Netherlands) having your film developed and printed has become so cheap that I can't justify printing myself. Mind you, I'm not even talking about the so called 'budget prints' but 'quality print' colour, b&w, 120 roll film.

The only advantages of printing myself would be to beat the turn around time, which is 2 days, and to have extended control over the output. But when I need a print darker/lighter or with more/less contrast I drop the negs off and have it done as well.

The main obstacle for me at this point to get into home printing would be to buy a decent scanner, as I shoot 120 type film as well (which drives up the cost of an optical film scanner into the 1600 euro range).
Click to expand...
The new Epson 4870 flatbed handles 6x6 negatives and is supposed to be as good or almost as good as a dedicated medium format film scanner. There are two versions differing only in the accompanying software, the pro version coming with Digital Ice. The cheaper version sells in the States for just under $450.00 and should do what you need.
Kurt M.
 
I hate to admit that I print my Black & White 35mm, 120, and 4x5 the semi-old fashion way. I use a couple of Beseler enlargers and Ilford papers. For my portraits that are larger than 8x10 I use fiber based paper and selenium tone them.

Color prints, I just have my lab print and then re-print if we do not agree on the color or density. On some of the more difficult negatives I will have scanned to CD and then rework them in photoshop, save that new file and have the lab print them.

I prefer to do photography and not sit in front of a computer screen constantly.

Wayne
 
I wish I had the know how (and the equipment) to print the old fashion way, I develop my own BW and have contact printed 4x5 negs but I have never used an enlarger. That's great Wayne! Maybe I need to look into an enlarger..........

Todd
 
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