THE GOLDMAN SACHS DIARIES

 

In Sebastian’s apartment, Roy  informs Pris that Leon and Zhora have been retired by Decker.
The pigs are monitoring them and they are now isolated.
Electric sheep are everywhere, bleating, bleating.
Arjuna looked hard but it had become impossible to tell man from pig, or pig from man.
Pris, in despair, resigns herself:
“…then we’re stupid, and we should die”. Says Pris

 

Review of the Epson Photo Printer 2880

 

The printer arrived, and I’ve been looking at it – no, salivating over it – for several hours, as it sits in the corner. But in a fit of discipline that quite surprised even myself, I decided to do my taxes, some very needed computer maintenance, and a few other mundane chores, so that I could devote my time more effectively to the new printer.

 

Recently, I’ve been concerned about spending too much time using the web as a means of displaying my images, and have started to miss the darkroom, the print-making process, and the tactile sensation of actually holding a print. Since going digital, much of what I do has lacked tangible evidence, and a growing sense of mortality spurs the need to leave behind something other than bits and bytes floating around the ether.

I therefore decided to go back to my roots and create a portfolio of prints, made to the best standards available.

I have been using a 2400, though not nearly enough, but it seems to require some excess maintenance and tends to mark and scratch the surface of my prints, especially on thicker papers, so imagine my surprise at the serendipitous call from Epson asking me to review to the 2880.

The Gods were surely in my favour, so, planning to start work this evening, I decided to make a set of prints on my venerable 2400, for a comparison test with the new machine.

For the purposes of this review, it might help to know my approach.

I have been printing in a wet darkroom for most of my photographic career, and was and still am a follower and admirer of Ansel Adams. He once said that “… the negative is the score and the print, the performance”. I think this is still very much the case.

Since making the move to digital, I have ever striven to match the work I produced in a conventional wet darkroom with prints made on an ink jet. Or, go crazy trying. Well, I think I’m still sane and have had a lot of fun printing these past years. Recently I had recorded some plant life and have been making prints of those I liked, keeping in mind the tradition of the wet print process: tonality, vibrance, richness in the shadows and highlights, and an emotional impact on the viewer. I have been impressed by the large 13 by 19 print made on my 2400 of the flowers in black and white, so I felt that reprinting it on the new 2880 would make for a very good comparison.

Earlier, I had been printing on the Ilford Fibre Silk, which is as near as can be to the old Agfa, Ilford and Kodak exhibition-grade double-weight fibre-based papers. Epson kindly included a packet of their version of fiber paper, called Exhibition Fiber. The difference between the Epson and Ilford is that the base white of the Ilford is a little warmer in comparison to the brighter white of the Epson.

For those of you who are not familiar with these papers, I suggest you have a look at some samples. The original double weight fibre papers felt and handled like rag paper, only with a beautiful kind of dull gloss. The “unglazed” term comes from the process whereby the wet unglazed print was squeegeed onto a highly polished steel plate face down and left to dry, whereupon it would spring free, resulting in a very high gloss print. Traditionally, exhibition prints were made on glossy unglazed paper and the printing was considered so important that a photographer and printer would team up when entering or being submitted for shows. In some places this skill and artisan approach still survives. While writing this review I came across several highly skilled craftsmen and artisans who display considerable expertise in printing. One such person is Keith Cooper at Northlight Images; I have included a link at the bottom of the page.

For the purpose of this review, I am going to limit myself mostly to black and white prints on the glossy fibre based papers for the reasons given above.

Overview, methodology and setting up:

The 2880 comes in the usual big Epson box, packed well, with all the software and hardware necessary to start printing straight away, and it’s a elegantly designed machine about the same size as the previous 1270 and 2400 models.

Setting up and installing were simple and problem-free.

I installed it on my home-built PC which I use for all my photography, and am running XP on a on a three-year old Pentium 4 at 2.4 GHz with 2GB of ram,

My monitor is a 24 inch NEC digital 2490WUXI, and running CS3.

I actually spent a few minutes reading the manual, especially the part about colour management and paper feeding.

Colour management is the big bugaboo of modern digital photography, so, here are a few thoughts on the topic of colour management:

John Napolitano, an old friend and very talented art director, once likened colour management as something akin to driving a car with four steering columns, each driving its own wheel. When he said that, I fell about laughing as it is so true. In the intervening years, that characterization has not changed at all; in fact I would add that the four steering-wheels are now being run by four diabolical bipolar clowns, sometimes in harmony, but more often not.

So, it was with some trepidation that I opened this particular nest of worms and looked at the directions for colour management.

Digressing, I should state that my monitor is calibrated by my eye, with the aid of various targets available on the net. The human eye is notorious for its lack of colour recognition, but very acute when it comes to comparing colours and tonal values when they lie next to each other. So, if you are someone who is into colour management and uses mechanical devices to create profiles and calibrate your monitor and other devices, I suggest you skip to the last section. Personally, I have mixed emotions when it comes to calibrating, and feel there is a law of diminishing returns: testing and knowing the characteristics of the tools of ones craft is critically important for the production of consistent work, but sometimes the reason we do this becomes lost in technicalities; I believe it’s the same in the audio world.

Also, in the commercial world, calibrating monitors leads to murder and mayhem, especially when several persons are involved with the same equipment. The technology is understood by only a few; many people use it without understanding.

My experience with colour management is that everybody I have asked, (and every article read), has without fail given me contradictory information – but, there are areas of consensus.

I decided to follow the directions in the manual as it has been a while since I installed and configured a printer. The new manual seems more comprehensive on the subject of colour management than earlier versions, so I felt encouraged. I also downloaded two profiles, one for the Ilford Fibre, the other for the Epson fibre, designed for the 2880. The Epson fibre profile comes from an outside source.

Both downloads and installation went easily with no issues. The one difference in the colour management set-up was that the manual suggested I enter “North American Pre press 2″ in the colour setting in Photoshop. I followed everything else the manual recommended.

Before disconnecting my venerable 2400, I made two prints from two different files, one a rich black and white, the other a very saturated colour image with many subtle colours and grays. The reason was to have a baseline with which to compare the new output and for this purpose I used Epson Lustre.

Once I had the new printer hooked up and ready I opened the two previous files and proceeded to make prints, running them as with the 2400, with the 2880 set to level 4 (out of 5); a setting not available in the earlier printer; high-speed was off.

I was very pleased to see that the two printers matched in colour and sharpness tonality and everything else too. That told me that my original settings on the 2400 were quite sensible and that I was consistent. When it comes to any form of calibrating, it’s important to be consistent with the process, and to change only one thing at a time. We have all had the annoying problem of something going wrong regularly enough to require attention, but which works occasionally so as to frustrate any problem-solving.

The black and white image also matched the 2400 in every way, although it seemed a little sharper. As the image was not one that had very fine lines, or really fine detail, and was in fact a little grainy, issues of sharpness would become more apparent in further tests.

At that point, I decided to go back to my original file, which had been shot three years ago, and reprocess it, taking advantage of more recent software and certain gains in my own knowledge. This time, knowing it was going to print, I made the base conversion as a 16 bit Photoshop file, as a black and white image, with as full a range of tones as I was able to pull out.

I will not go into greater detail at this point as the focus here is on the printer.

For the purposes of this test, I made a new file in Photoshop 13 by 19 inches at 240dpi, vertical, onto which I pasted the image. I sized the image to about 6 inches wide, then added my own home-made gray scale along with two gray scales downloaded from the net. All told my test strip ran the width of the paper, and would allow at least four versions at different settings, moving the image down the page after every test run. After each test run, I would alter one setting in the printer.

In the first group of tests, I altered the settings in the dialogue boxes: colour management off, ICM on, canned profile, specific profile, etc.

In the second group of tests I changed the various setting in the Advanced Black and White mode, (ABW).

I was not satisfied with the output, so went on line to search out any information regarding black and white printing. Although I found no reference to it in the Epson instructions, Northlight recommends that you turn off ” Photoshop Handles Colours” in the settings box, and choose “Let Printer Handle Colours”.

Once this setting was changed, I was far happier with the results.

The ABW mode is designed to simulate various black and white processes. Sepia, split toning duo/tri/quadtones etc. There are a number of variables within ABW that you can implement in order to achieve those results, and with my tests, they were beautiful. My only criticism is that the preview is so small as to be somewhat useless; I would like to see that much bigger in order to see the effect of slider movements.

The options for toning were very good, but personally I would rather make my toning, whether duotone, sepia, split etc., in Photoshop or Quadtone RIP

All of the variations gave quite gorgeous results, very deep blacks, no metamerism,

bronzing or colour shift; the tonal range was neutral when it was supposed to be. Highlights were clear and all my gray scale wedges showed a lovely range. Detail resolved itself to my satisfaction; type was very crisp under a magnifying glass, and images that have grain resolved very well.

All the prints looked very similar under varying lighting conditions.

In my opinion, this is fantastic printer, and I would find it hard to part with it, at least until I get a 17 inch model.:)

Parting thought:

We are told that monitor calibration is critically important in achieving good and consistent prints, and even more so then when setting up files for outside printing. It’s not very good to send a file to a client, who then spends many thousands of dollars printing catalogues that show his product as yellow, when it should be red.

There is one area where I suggest a slightly different approach. The sheer tactile feel of a beautiful print is unique; what you see on the monitor is merely an approximation, especially in black and white. Sometimes the subtlety of a print, and the variations open to us are not readily apparent, and it is only when several prints are laid side by side, on different papers with different settings, that we can make informed judgements and perhaps achieve the divine.

I am indebted to Northlight Images for some additional references and would urge you to visit their site as it has a wealth of information and many useful downloads of grays scales and such.

http://www.northlight-images.co.uk/article_pages/black_and_white_test.html

I am indebted to my brother Paul, for his help in editing this article