A black and white digital printing frenzy
I’ve been keeping the printer busy with experiments in black and white. As you can see in the photo, I’m working out ways to make digital prints that — maybe — look something like the black and white prints I get in the darkroom. And, yes, it’s a steep curve. The material you can read online is over-technical, fussy and boring, for the most part.
On Saturday I went out in the woods and shot a roll of Tri-X on the Pentax LX; I also carried the K-7 and duplicated all 30 images, shot for shot, on the digital camera. (The lenses were fairly well matched in length: a 28mm f/2.8 on the LX and a 21mm f/3.2 on the K-7.)
I’m liking these first experiments. Initial reaction: Digital prints — at least the ones I make on watercolor paper — are sharper and cleaner, but don’t have the full dynamic range of darkroom prints. They’re also cheaper if you buy regular artist’s watercolor paper and cut it down and use non-manufacturer ink, like the MIS continuous inking system I bought.
Initial reactions to the MIS system: Like all things digital, it’s fussy. But, with excellent help from the support folks at inksupply.com, I got the thing up and running and it’s only stumbled a couple times.
I especially like having a big stack of paper and big bottle of ink to play with, without having sunk much money into it.
More as I learn more.
PS: You can see in the photo that I’m beginning to hand color some digital prints. That, too, is very different.
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