By Popular Demand

 

Lochwood, Dumfriesshire

I’ve been fairly inundated with desperate pleas (well, three people have asked but I somehow sensed the pent-up demand eating away like leprosy at many more readers) for me to share some of my methods since moving back to digital.

First of all, I’m no expert. On anything. During my first dalliance with digital, c. late 1990s-2007, I considered myself to be handy with Photoshop 5, as it was back then. Having returned to the world of pixels and viewed some YouTube videos, I can safely say that my skill level is now hovering around the bottom of whatever scale is used to judge these things. The world has moved on, the filthy swine.

I know enough to do what I want to do but it’s almost certain that there will be quicker and/or better solutions to most processing problems. Discovering that made me feel a bit like a carburettor expert being asked by a pal to work on his latest multi-point fuel injected Lexus.

When it comes to inkjet printing, I feel I’m near the cutting edge - or would be if we were living in 2014. Early this century, getting decent black and white inkjet prints was quite difficult. But a few years into the new millennium, a very clever man, Roy Harrington, developed Quad Tone Rip (QTR) software which takes the place of the Epson print driver and makes it possible to gain the sort of control over an Epson printer that Saddam once wielded over Iraq.

Anyone prepared to spend a bit of time and effort could get excellent, neutral black and white prints. I think it’s fair to say that the latest photo printers from Epson and Canon employ a similar approach to Roy’s pioneering process and now produce much the same results with a minimum of fuss.

Frosty Hedgerow Undergrowth

So my D700 camera dates back to about 2008 and my printing set-up to 2014 and yet I’m producing prints that compare well to those from up-to-date photo printers, courtesy of QTR. How do I know this? A friend’s friend printed out a black and white test image on his Canon which I poured over alongside the same print from my Epson. There was really very little difference - the biggest one being that my ink costs are about one-tenth of the Canon’s. That’s because I buy the Claria ink in bottles used for refilling Epson’s bulk “ecotank” models and fill my own cartridges with it, a process that takes just a few minutes. It’s around £12.50 for a 70ml bottle of genuine Claria black ink from the Epson website and that’s enough for around six cartridges. In normal use, that would probably last me at least a year.

There’s nothing special I’m doing with the D700, it just has a nice full frame sensor that’s capable of high quality results. There are lots of cameras nowadays that are technically better but the D700 gives me great A3+ prints and I don’t need anything more than that. I’m still not keen on a tripod but I do tend to use primes for sharpness where I can, which means the 35mm f2 and 85mm f1.8 AF-D lenses. That set-up delivers nice, sharp pictures for Photoshop which, in turn, produces quality files for the printer. It's really the QTR software that makes all the difference. If you want to check out QTR and how it all works then the two best resources are:

http://www.quadtonerip.com/html/QTRsupport.html

and

https://www.paulroark.com/BW-Info/

Things might seem a bit overwhelming at first but it’s not as complicated as it looks. I bought an old Epson 1400 printer with its Claria dye ink set and have been using the “profiles” developed by Mr Roark to produce my prints. If you’re happy using an Epson 1400 with the standard Claria inks along with Epson Premium Glossy Photo paper then it can be almost a “plug and play” set-up as exactly that combination is catered for in the profiles. You can be off and running in an afternoon.

Shore Road, By the River Nith

One of the nicest aspects of inkjet printing is the large range of papers available, some produced by paper companies that have been around for several hundred years. All tastes are catered for from glossy and satin resin coated, through baryta and on to the textured and smooth art papers. I’ve settled for the time being on Marrutt’s velvet fine art paper which has a lovely soft, textured matt surface. It’s about £35 for 50 sheets of A4 so a lot cheaper than Ilford’s FB MG.

When I returned to inkjet printing with QTR, I was using a profile that used predominantly the black ink with just a little bit of yellow and light magenta for a neutral image. However, there are some advantages to using just the black ink so that’s where I’m concentrating my efforts. With the Claria dye black, the print tone on velvet fine art paper is on the cool side for my taste. I’ve sent off for a third party black pigment ink that should give me a warm tone which I think I’ll prefer.

With just a single black ink doing all the printing, the process is about as straightforward as it gets. It used to be that black only printing produced somewhat grainy results but that was back when the dots used to build up the photograph were about twice the size they are today. Quite a few of the more recent Epson printers have tiny 1.5 picolitre dots which are all but invisible at normal viewing distances. Yes, blending several inks together to produce a greyscale print still results in a marginally "smoother" look as the dots are hidden even better but the difference isn’t great and it doesn't bother me at all. If you click on the pics on this page, they should open up as quite big images. They were snapped with my iphone which adds contrast so please keep that in mind. But you'll hopefully agree that they look like nice prints.

I'm not too hung up these days on the archival qualities of a print. If it lasts for five or ten years under glass on a wall and 80 years as a portfolio print in a box then I'm more than happy with that. However, a big advantage of using just a black pigment ink on acid free paper is that you'll get probably the most archival qualities of any print media including silver gelatin. Two to three hundreds years is a reasonable estimate for these "carbon on cotton" prints. So if you have a photograph for the ages then this process might merit some attention.

And before I forget to say it, a Happy New Year to all who visit this wee blog!