22. January 2003
Printing black & white photos on a color inkjet printer can be tricky. Avoiding color casts is very difficult and often it can't be totally avoided. The new Epson 2100/2200 inkjet printer ads a gray-ink (and in Europe also additional calibrating software), but other printers can be used as well. Using my Epson 1290 (1280 in the US) I've managed to make a few decent b&w prints.
I will try to share my experiences with you in a few articles, this one being the first.
Black ink only & high speed films
Using the black ink only to create an absolute neutral grayscale image is an option used by many. The Epson 1290/1280 offers you the possibility of printing at 2880dpi and this high resolution really makes it possible to use the black ink only when printing b&w images (or color images converted to b&w).
Although the option of only using the black ink does produce "grainy" looking prints I've seen it done very nicely, but I've been reluctant to really try it out myself, because of the special, high contrast look it gives.
BUT, then I started experimenting with fast films like the Ilford Delta 3200 or the Kodak T-MAX P3200 film, which are very fast and very grainy films in themselves. Then I thought, this film must be the perfect one to print using the black ink only(?)
The input
As always I scan using the Minolta Dimage Scan Multi Pro film scanner. It is capable of 4800dpi on 35mm material, which was what I used for the photo in this test.
4800dpi on a 3200 ISO film is overkill, in fact it is far too much, but I like to see the grain in the film when I scan and I really did see the grain here:
Kodak T-MAX P3200, Bessa R2 with 15mm Super Wide Heliar
I think the 3200 ISO films cries for high contrast so I actually increased the contrast a little bit after scanning. sharpness on the other hand has a catastrophic effect on these grains.
The photo looks quite "smooth" when scaled down, but let's see it close up:
Actual size. 1:1 pixels
Looks a bit scarring to me who is used to the fine grains of Fuji Provia and Kodak E100S, but it's fun to experiment with. And the fast film gives you shooting possibilities quit beyond the fine grain, slow films - but that's another story, let's look at the output.
The output
Setting up the printer
As mentioned I'm using the Epson 1290 printer which can print on paper sizes up to A3+ (or banner) and I would recommend that you print on at least DIN A5. The dots from the black ink has the same size no matter what paper you use, and making the image larger does give more "room" for the dots to form the image.
For the example here I'm using a custom cut of about 9x13 inches (23 x 32,9 cm).
Here are the driver settings I'm using:
Not all paper types allows for the 2880dpi setting, but I was using "Premium Glossy" for this example and on that you can print at 2880dpi. The Premium Semigloss can also be used, but in my experience it renders the black with a little bit of a green cast(?). For color prints I normally use the ColorLife paper, in case you are wondering.
The result
Although I must say, that I will never be addicted to these kind of prints, I really am surprised! The printout comes very close to having the same "feeling" as the grainy scan.
Here is the crop from above scanned from the printout:
Scanned on Epson 1640SU
The above image was scanned on an Epson 1640SU flatbed scanner at 1600dpi, resized to fit the size of the crop above and sharpened a little bit.
Pretty close isn't it? One can actually find every grain again in this print (as mentioned, the entire print measures about 9x13 inches).
Brighter areas aren't quite that perfect though:
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The scan
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The print
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Again the print was scanned on an Epson flatbed scanner and resized to match the scan and finally it was sharpened a bit.
Here we can clearly see each black dot laid down by the printer and, at this print size, the dots are a bit bigger than the smallest grain visible on the scan.
But we are very close to printing all the information from the scan for sure.
A final example:
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The scan
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The print
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If you look very closely here, you can see a "pattern" in the dots laid down by the printer, whereas the grains seems to appear in a total random pattern.
Conclusion
Using the black ink only for printing high speed films will give you a printout that closely match the scanned image. In other words, you will get most of the information from the negative onto print.
The size of your printout does matter a bit though. At printouts smaller than DIN A4 or so, the individual dots from the black ink might be a bit bigger than the smallest grains from the 3200 ISO film. This will be visible in brighter areas of the picture. If you on the other hand print the image on an A3+ paper (13x19 inches) I would think that the dot-size of the black ink would match even the smallest grains visible on a scan of a 3200 ISO film.
Using 3200 ISO film is quite interesting, so I can only urge you to try it out.
Links
There are a number of pages dealing with printing black & white. I'll give you links to some of them here:
• Norman Koren : Black & white, matting and framing.
• Luminous-Landscape : Hartmann Single Black: A Procedure For Printing Scanned 35mm Black-and-White Negatives (by Mike Johnston).
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