Prints

Dogman said:
Hahnemuhle's Bamboo paper is sweet with that different but beautiful texture. I recently tried Awagami washi bamboo. It has a more traditional texture and I think it looks great with photos that have subdued or pastel colors.

I also like Hahnemuhle's Museum Etching for a more traditional and more heavily textured paper. But I generally print on Epson Hot Press Natural because I like a smoother texture and HPN is usually a bit cheaper but gorgeous just the same. Other smoother surface papers I've tried and like are Canon's Rag Photographique, Velin Museum Rag (previously designated "Arches Museum Rag") and Printmaking Rag (previously designated "BFK Rives"). These are all more expensive than Epson HPN unless you find them on sale. They all have great tonality with B&W and also print color well.
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Thank you for this info! Very helpful.
 
I am a very recent convert to printing. Back in the day I only shot Kodachrome and projected it. Since I came back to photography a few years ago I've been happy to view my B&W photos on the computer and post online. However, I recently did four prints that my wife wanted for a wall in our living room. I printed straight from Lightroom on Canon A4 Semi-Gloss at 240dpi on a very ordinary inkjet printer and was absolutely blown away by the results. The photos look just so much better than they ever did on the screen with much better tonal gradation and clarity. I'm really looking forward to trying different papers and upgrading to a better printer. I've come to the realisation that it's not a photo unless it's printed :).

cheers,
clay
 
I'm feeling significantly poorer after just submitting a huge order for prints and frames. It's been a few years since my last print / frame order, so had a lot to cover, but OYE.
 
The thing with dye-sublimation metal prints is that they haven't been extensively tested for archival quality. bayphoto's own longevity test on their wesbite shows that the magenta dyes fade at a much faster rate than cyan or yellow, so it's possible that a metal print will turn greenish over time.
 
Erik van Straten said:
What is a "metal print"? I've never heard of it.

Erik.
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Erik,

Pretty much is a dye sublimation on a metal panel like aluminum.

The flat sheet of metal floats due to the back structural support that has a smaller perimeter than the print. No framing and no borders. Printed with a bleeding edge.

This process enhances contrast and in color the tones get saturated. Wonderfull clean modern look with the right image and rather striking when well done, but I would not want to print all my work in this manner. Works great where high contrast and saturation enhance the image.

Last year at Photoville I spun a wheel of fortune at the Duggal booth and won a metal print offer. For $98.00 I could of gotten one of my images made in a metal print with backing which normally would of cost over $300.00. I ended up giving my prize to Steve at the NYC Meet-Up. The size was smaller than 20x30.

Cal
 
I've had metallic prints done by WHCC and, while I don't know the composition of the material, it's not metal. I suspect it's a surface finish that is designed to simulate metal. The prints are indeed luminous.

I know folks now actually print on metal surfaces, but that's a different thing.

John
 
johnwolf said:
I've had metallic prints done by WHCC and, while I don't know the composition of the material, it's not metal. I suspect it's a surface finish that is designed to simulate metal. The prints are indeed luminous.

I know folks now actually print on metal surfaces, but that's a different thing.

John
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John,

At Duggal it was aluminum and they advertise it as so. Of course other substraights can be used.

Cal
 
Calzone said:
M,

I bet some of those shots from Cuba look great on metal panel prints due to color saturation. That Cuban light is special.

Cal
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Thank you, Cal!

You know, I've only printed my Cuba photos on the Hahnemühle bamboo paper. I'll have to give one of Precision's metal prints a shot.

Any suggestions for which one to be my test print? Here's my Flickr album of them.
 
maggieo said:
Thank you, Cal!

You know, I've only printed my Cuba photos on the Hahnemühle bamboo paper. I'll have to give one of Precision's metal prints a shot.

Any suggestions for which one to be my test print? Here's my Flickr album of them.
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Maggie,

I think because the metal prints I saw from Duggal on aluminum saturates color and adds contrast to heighten realty I think the drama in these three shot would be my pick.

Not in any order: Woman holding rooster; Female boxer on ropes; and Nose of 50's Chevy on a car lift.

I think shooting with Peter Turnley in Cuba must of been a great experience. I went to hear Peter speak at the Leica Gallery in SoHo. I modest and humble man. I loved his work on Cuba.

Loved that he work on a road crew to save enough money to take a trip to Paris and never came back.

Cal
 
Coming back to the book idea...

I haven't printed in a few years, but I'm due to get back into it soon. Having said that, I settled into to using Hahnemuhle's fine art leather ink jet photo albums. Basically it's double sided photo rag in a post binder. The post is decent as you can reorder the prints if you want later, i.e. the binding isn't perm. The quality of the leather is also decent. I was using B&W prints with Eboni-6 inks

Funny thing is, I landed on that solution as a function of
- the best user experience by hand held and flipping through pages
- relatively "cheap" as it's two sided and the binding also covers the cost of plastic sleeves and storage boxes

More recently I've used DSCL in the UK for their luxury book option. It's ok. It's still pricy, I've start to use custom layouts for each page varying the size and location to get full use of the page/space -- but that's a major time investment to set up.

I want to go back to the Hahnemuhle photo option and do it myself. Ideally I'd move to the new ultra back HD peizography inks for B&W and the new Epson inks for colour. The downside is that I don't print often and had lots of ink clogs and spillage spoiling papers and wasted too much time with purging and head cleans.

Yes, print size is overrated. Hard to display, transport, share and store. I started to standardise on 10 inch max width for A4 with most prints in 2:3 ratio giving 10x6.67 picture size. That lets fingerprints stay on the white edges and not in the picture. For A3 it'd be 15x10 picture size. A3 book is getting a bit sloppy/big to pick up and page through for reader without.
 
rbrooks said:
Coming back to the book idea...

I haven't printed in a few years, but I'm due to get back into it soon. Having said that, I settled into to using Hahnemuhle's fine art leather ink jet photo albums. Basically it's double sided photo rag in a post binder. The post is decent as you can reorder the prints if you want later, i.e. the binding isn't perm. The quality of the leather is also decent. I was using B&W prints with Eboni-6 inks

Funny thing is, I landed on that solution as a function of
- the best user experience by hand held and flipping through pages
- relatively "cheap" as it's two sided and the binding also covers the cost of plastic sleeves and storage boxes

More recently I've used DSCL in the UK for their luxury book option. It's ok. It's still pricy, I've start to use custom layouts for each page varying the size and location to get full use of the page/space -- but that's a major time investment to set up.

I want to go back to the Hahnemuhle photo option and do it myself. Ideally I'd move to the new ultra back HD peizography inks for B&W and the new Epson inks for colour. The downside is that I don't print often and had lots of ink clogs and spillage spoiling papers and wasted too much time with purging and head cleans.

Yes, print size is overrated. Hard to display, transport, share and store. I started to standardise on 10 inch max width for A4 with most prints in 2:3 ratio giving 10x6.67 picture size. That lets fingerprints stay on the white edges and not in the picture. For A3 it'd be 15x10 picture size. A3 book is getting a bit sloppy/big to pick up and page through for reader without.
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RB,

For readers as I remember Hahnemuele offered covers and pages separately. Am I remembering correctly?

I use the new Piezography Pro. In fact I was invited to be an "early adopter" and had this new inkset before it was available to the general public. What is so great about PP is if you print glossy it is "one pass printing." Really works well on the Baryta coated papers I favor. Another feature in PP is blending a splitone in the print head. The Photoblack from this inkset is mucho dark. Really expands dynamic range.

Previously I printed Piezography K-7, but for printing huge I will load my 7800 with "Enhanced K-7 High Density" which is basically my old K-7 with the new blacker-black. I blend my own custom split tone with Selenium highlights and Warm Neutral shadows. I tend to make the transition in the mids as broad as possible. I think Enhanced K-7 HD is best exploited on huge prints.

For color I would try to secure a 3880 so I could load third party inks, and I would use Jon Cone color archival pigment inks. The 3880 that is no longer in production has a long print head life and is a real workhorse. Mine is over three years old and is running strong. Also know that the newer inks from Jon Cone seem less prone to clogging. The cost when compared to OEM Epson is about 1/10th the cost per ml. Pigments are encapsulated just like Epson and in fact can be mixed with Epson inks. Of course best results when using Jon Cone profiles from their library.

I use Piezoflush to store my 7800. Not so wealthy to run it all year round. This is good maintenance. One year I spent $10K on paper and ink. Ouch. Running two big printers is not inexpensive, but I tend to bulk up to save money.

Some printers use the K-7 gloss overcoat over their color prints. It is said that this enhances detail, adds contrast, and saturation. Perhaps a step toward that metalic print look.

Big prints have a billboard like effect. They capture a viewer from a distance and invite one for a closer view. Definitely a big impact, and not the same intimate experience of holding a print or book in your hands. Printing for exhibition is a different experience and challenge.

Cal
 
Cal,

I have a 3880 and am now using Jon Cone's color inks. I am not familiar with the K-7 gloss overcoat for color prints you mentioned. Can you elaborate?
 
ptpdprinter said:
Cal,

I have a 3880 and am now using Jon Cone's color inks. I am not familiar with the K-7 gloss overcoat for color prints you mentioned. Can you elaborate?
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PTP,

I learned about this from the Piezography Forum.

I'm a B&W printer. My old K-7 process uses 7 shades of black to print my B&W images. For glossy printing a cover layer of "Gloss Overcoat" is required, so glossy printing is a two step process: first printing is 7 shades of black; then after drying a layer of "Gloss Overcoat" is printed.

The effect is that the contrast fully emerges and so does the shadow detail. Any gloss differential or bronzing disappears. There is an additional benefit is that the "GO" protects the pigment underneath and makes the prints to handle a lot of handling.

At NYC Meet-Ups I spit on one of my prints and squeege the wet print with my hand as a display of the added durability. Also there have been accidents where I have actually drooled on my prints inadvertantly. LOL.

So on the Piezography Forums some color printers rave about Gloss Overcoating their color prints for added detail, added saturation, added contrast, and added durability.

At Piezography they actually use a printer loaded with "GO" in all channels for fast and easy application. They also can remap a printer with a dead nozzle for this purpose.

In real life in my 3880 I got "Pizza Wheels" which were only apparent in areas laden with blacks or vast amounts of shadows as an artifact. Basically the paper transport leaves/creates an artifact. I got a workaround from Walter Blackwell that uses the rear loading, but disables the pin wheels that creates the Pizza Wheels. realize that this artifact is because of heavy ink load, and with Piezography this is where the expanded tone comes from.

If you like PM me. When I load my 7800 with Enhanced K-7 I could apply a coat of "GO" over one of your color prints. Soon I will be loading the printer I affectionately named "The Jersey Barrier" because of its size. Realize that I have a 3880 and a 7800 in a one bedroom luxury apartment in Madhattan. and that my gal is a famous Fashion Blogger. I don't know which is is more clutter, her clothes and shoes, or my printing stuff.

So anyways I have a client waiting for me to print 20x30's on 24x36. Doing unidirectional at 2880 takes about 44 minutes for just one pass. I like to wait a full day for the 7 shades of black to fully cure before printing the gloss overcoat. That too takes 44 minutes. Like developing film my limitations is drying space. For now I'll be loading Piezography Pro to exploit that one pass printing.

I'm seriously thinking of setting up my 3880 like yours with Jon Cone Color archival pigment inks.

Then again I want/need a 9800 or 9880 to really go big. Some files of the right subject with great lighting and perfect exposure really will hold up to a full 24x36 and you can still nose up into the print. The 9800 or 9880 will be for Enhanced K-7 HD.

BTW I think JC is coming up with the curves for Cone Color to use the gloss HD black. You should look into this. In my printing I'm finding that I use a lot less black ink because the black is so black. Also the added stop of contrast really opens up the prints, and there is an illusion of higher resolution due to the more define contrast from the blacker black.

As always I save where I can. I bulk up and take advantage of twice a year sales at Piezography.

Cal
 
So, can I use the Cone inks (?) in my 3880 and still print decent B&W and Color? I'm not quite clear what the difference is among all the choices.
 
ptpdprinter said:
And I am on the lookout for another 3880 to dedicate to Piezography for BW printing. I have no room for a 7880.
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PTP,

Neither do I. LOL.

Funny thing is that I got my 7800 for a meager $100.00. I was at a NYC Meet-Up when I heard my name mentioned. A friend of Chris' was moving back to Japan and only wanted $100.00 for the 7800. Joe offered to help because I no longer own a car (NYC).

So I get a working printer that needed some maintenance, no cloggs. I run the diagnostics and discover that this 9 year old printer only made 1802 prints before I owned it. Pretty much was lightly used. I cleaned the capping station and flushed out the color inks and let the print sit with Piezoflush for half a year. This is good practice and resolulizes accumulated ink in the dampers and print head. Pretty much freshens up a printer.

The refillable carts are about 350 ml and are oversized so you can no longer close the cart doors. In practice I have to top the "GO" every two weeks and the other carts once a month. The 7800 is a thirsty printer especially if you print big. LOL.

Cal
 
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