04 22 2013

Location: University City Station

Image Size: 11.5” x 17”

Camera: Superheadz Black Slim Devil

Lens: 22mm, plastic

Film: Fuji Superia 400

Develop: Lab

Scan: Epson V500

Print: Epson 3880/ Piezo K7 inks/ Moab Lasal

I’m now printing out each weekly image at full file size. To create photographs but never print them is like cooking a meal but never even tasting what you've made. A fine print, as I wrote last week, is so markedly different from an on-screen image.  My experience is, you don’t really know what you have until you print it, preferably large It’s no fun having to rush through printing a whole slew of images when the time comes to show them. I like to linger over the work. Running the print through various states on the road to the final image is a great way to do that. Getting a better feel for what the whole image-making chain does helps me make better choices even before I click the shutter.

I’m now printing with a system marketed under the Piezography label that Jon Cone sells through InkjetMall.com   Instead of having eight color cartridges, various shades of gray plus black are substituted and you print via special software. (That is way easier than Epson’s snaggle of settings.) Cone sells various configurations and formulations depending on the printer and the print tone you want. I chose the warm/neutral ink set. The results have been impressive. The light to dark graduations and detail rival darkroom prints and the carbon-based pigment inks are ultra light-fast  Using bulk ink reduces the cost of feeding the printer by about sixty-six percent. Since I’m a perfectionist and experimenter, constantly running small proofs and large outputs, this savings is significant. I've had absolutely no problems with clogged print nozzles. Really my only objection, if you can call it that, is that the refillable cartridges came without reset chips and it was a bit of a DIY operation to remove the Epson electronics without damaging them, so they could be affixed to the new ink units.