Slashdot Mirror
Domain: lyson.com
Stories and comments across the archive that link to lyson.com.
Comments · 9
-
Re:B&W inkjet all the way
While I'm sure those of us who print almost exclusively in black and white are a minority, I will say that Epson inkjets (2200 and now 2400 as well as the more expensive 4800 and up) are phenomenal at producing both neutral or toned b&w prints on a huge range of matte (or glossy) archival paper stocks.
If B&W is really your bag... I mean really really your bag... you can get scaled black inks for many photo printers via third parties such as mediastreet or lyson.
http://www.mediastreet.com/site/generations_gq.htm l
http://www.lyson.com/quad-black-tone.html
Don't get me wrong... epson does a fab job in B&W... so does HP with their 8150 and 8750... the ones that have the optional #100 multi level grey cartridge IIRC. But... a 6 tank printer filled with various levels of black ink is going to have a bit of an edge over 2 or 3 tones of black. -
Somewhat sad, but
Don't get me wrong... I still like film as a medium. It's beautiful, high resolution per volume, and requires pretty base fundamental technologies. That old medium or large format camera from the early 20th century is still going to outperform digital in terms of raw resolution. Small format is debatable, esp since color resolution was getting close to that of old B&W the last time I checked. Contact prints, while lossy, is as low tech as you can get. I use to get away with using an old slide projector and an easel on the wall.
But who wants to work in a dark room? You've got the chemistry issue, bulky enlarger issue, and making a room light tight issue, not to speak of working under a safe light. And the printer market is so saturated that you can get an entry level photo printer for $100, an a5 dye sub for $300 and laser for $400. HP has their own photo gray cart for their printers, or you can go with bulk ink and B&W multitone ink.
http://www.lyson.com/quad-black-tone.html
http://www.inksupply.com/bwpage.cfm
http://www.weink.com/ecom/catalog/chromiumbw_-_mak e_your_own_b_w_ink_kits_4228684.htm
If I was going to get back into B&W imagery... I'd get my self a $100 Canon i960 inkjet printer if not an Epson, hex black tone ink, and go print happy. Lots of control, buckish/page, Ilford classic pearl paper, and go print happy.
-
Re:Color Laser as good as color inkjet?
The predominant photographic-quality printers you'll find in professional shops are either Epson large-format inkjets or various dye-sublimation units for "standard" print packages (wallet prints, 5x7's, 8x10's). For large-format prints, generally it's an Epson Ultrachrome-system inkjet with a CIF (Continuous Ink Flow) system installed. Laser printers, with a few exceptions, are restricted to 8.5"-wide paper, and can't print on thick art boards, specialty papers, and canvas like pigment inkjet systems.
Color laser printers also tend to band, and have a narrower color gamut. Dye-subs produce a true continuous-tone image, though at the expense of sharpness and format size. Inkjets produce both an acceptable quality print for exhibition/sale as a fine-art piece, as well as offering a large range of materials and sizes that can be printed.
See the folks at Lyson and MediaStreet for continuous inking systems and professional-quality bulk inks.
-
Re:Great, they're only four years behind Epson.How can you print an animated 3D rendering? I only print photographs. A lot of the pictures I print are landscapes. Most of the rest are of people or pets. You seem to have gotten very confused about me viewing the color spaces printable with the i9900 and the SP2200, as opposed to making prints on the printers. CIE color spaces are all three dimensional, if you want to get a decent comparison between two color spaces, a flat image file doesn't really cut it, it's just one slice through the actual color space taken in the middle, perpendicular to the white/black axis. But there's no point in printing the color spaces, the whole point in having them rendered three dimensionally is to be able to spin them around and compare them on all three axes. Would you like me to email you a
What about an Epson 1280 with Lyson Fotonic inks and a CIS?
It seems to meet all your criteria.
- Well under $700 ( $300)
- Lasts well over 10 years
- Prints 13 x 19's
- Has a wide gamut with bright colors
- Makes excellent prints (without any "bronzing") on both Matte and Glossy papers
- And, as I listed above, works well with Lyson's CIS system.Of course some of the sprays are also known to slightly change the color tones too
The sprays slightly increase the contrast by making the blacks appear darker. That's all. If you think they actually change the colors, get your ICC profile made with a coated printed target. But they don't shift the colors, they just extend the contrast ratio a little further into black. -
Re:Great, they're only four years behind Epson.How can you print an animated 3D rendering? I only print photographs. A lot of the pictures I print are landscapes. Most of the rest are of people or pets. You seem to have gotten very confused about me viewing the color spaces printable with the i9900 and the SP2200, as opposed to making prints on the printers. CIE color spaces are all three dimensional, if you want to get a decent comparison between two color spaces, a flat image file doesn't really cut it, it's just one slice through the actual color space taken in the middle, perpendicular to the white/black axis. But there's no point in printing the color spaces, the whole point in having them rendered three dimensionally is to be able to spin them around and compare them on all three axes. Would you like me to email you a
What about an Epson 1280 with Lyson Fotonic inks and a CIS?
It seems to meet all your criteria.
- Well under $700 ( $300)
- Lasts well over 10 years
- Prints 13 x 19's
- Has a wide gamut with bright colors
- Makes excellent prints (without any "bronzing") on both Matte and Glossy papers
- And, as I listed above, works well with Lyson's CIS system.Of course some of the sprays are also known to slightly change the color tones too
The sprays slightly increase the contrast by making the blacks appear darker. That's all. If you think they actually change the colors, get your ICC profile made with a coated printed target. But they don't shift the colors, they just extend the contrast ratio a little further into black. -
Re:Great, they're only four years behind Epson.How can you print an animated 3D rendering? I only print photographs. A lot of the pictures I print are landscapes. Most of the rest are of people or pets. You seem to have gotten very confused about me viewing the color spaces printable with the i9900 and the SP2200, as opposed to making prints on the printers. CIE color spaces are all three dimensional, if you want to get a decent comparison between two color spaces, a flat image file doesn't really cut it, it's just one slice through the actual color space taken in the middle, perpendicular to the white/black axis. But there's no point in printing the color spaces, the whole point in having them rendered three dimensionally is to be able to spin them around and compare them on all three axes. Would you like me to email you a
What about an Epson 1280 with Lyson Fotonic inks and a CIS?
It seems to meet all your criteria.
- Well under $700 ( $300)
- Lasts well over 10 years
- Prints 13 x 19's
- Has a wide gamut with bright colors
- Makes excellent prints (without any "bronzing") on both Matte and Glossy papers
- And, as I listed above, works well with Lyson's CIS system.Of course some of the sprays are also known to slightly change the color tones too
The sprays slightly increase the contrast by making the blacks appear darker. That's all. If you think they actually change the colors, get your ICC profile made with a coated printed target. But they don't shift the colors, they just extend the contrast ratio a little further into black. -
Re:Great, they're only four years behind Epson.How can you print an animated 3D rendering? I only print photographs. A lot of the pictures I print are landscapes. Most of the rest are of people or pets. You seem to have gotten very confused about me viewing the color spaces printable with the i9900 and the SP2200, as opposed to making prints on the printers. CIE color spaces are all three dimensional, if you want to get a decent comparison between two color spaces, a flat image file doesn't really cut it, it's just one slice through the actual color space taken in the middle, perpendicular to the white/black axis. But there's no point in printing the color spaces, the whole point in having them rendered three dimensionally is to be able to spin them around and compare them on all three axes. Would you like me to email you a
What about an Epson 1280 with Lyson Fotonic inks and a CIS?
It seems to meet all your criteria.
- Well under $700 ( $300)
- Lasts well over 10 years
- Prints 13 x 19's
- Has a wide gamut with bright colors
- Makes excellent prints (without any "bronzing") on both Matte and Glossy papers
- And, as I listed above, works well with Lyson's CIS system.Of course some of the sprays are also known to slightly change the color tones too
The sprays slightly increase the contrast by making the blacks appear darker. That's all. If you think they actually change the colors, get your ICC profile made with a coated printed target. But they don't shift the colors, they just extend the contrast ratio a little further into black. -
Epson's not the only competition... sort of.I'd like to point out that Canon isn't even close to being second to market here. The catch is, that all the other competitors provide third-party inks that also only work on Epson's piezoelectric inkjet printers.
There's Lyson, InkJet Mall's generic, Luminos, Jet Tec, and Media Street.
I'm probably missing some, too.
-
Re: Kodak FUD?|
You're right, most photographic prints made for the whole history of photography have terrible problems with degradation.Really old black & whites, from Daguerreotypes to early silver gelatin prints, fade horribly when subjected to light. For most glossy black & white prints the substrate slowly breaks down into vinegar, causing the emulsion layer to bunch up, crack, and peel. Nearly all color prints face horrible color shifts- some in as little as two or three years, while others are good for ten or twenty. Most negatives fade too, and a lot of slides are just awful. Kodachrome slides last well, but a lot of Ektachrome slides fade entirely to red in just ten to twenty years. And I don't just mean a red "shift," I mean near total loss of two thirds of the image data. And it doesn't matter much if you store them "right"- in complete darkness, with low humidity and constant temperature. They still fade. It's an internal chemical process. Yes, light fading usually makes things much worse, but most photographic prints have trouble with dark fading too.
The world expert in photographic print longevity is Henry Wilhelm. You can download a lot of great articles on print longevity, as well as the entire text of his book, The Permanence and Care of Color Photographs: Traditional and Digital Color Prints, Color Negatives, Slides, and Motion Pictures, from his website.
Fuji Crystal Archive and Kodak Duralife papers are both good attempts to fix this problem, but most existing prints were done before these were developed. Even most expensive prints from professional studios fade away terribly.
What can you do about it?
Well Bill Gates knows. He owns Corbis, which bought New York's famous Bettman Archive and is storing the whole thing in sub-zero storage underneath Iron Mountain in Pennsylvania.
But what can the average user do? Scanning and digital storage is pretty good, but it's true that unless you run regular backups, a hard drive crash can obliterate your entire photographic history in seconds. And most backup media have potential problems too. I'd suggest backing up your photographs to a Mitsui Gold Archival CD. Various libraries have certified these as an "archival" format. Then keep two copies of each CD in different locations (far apart), in case of a natural disaster.
This is very safe and affordable, if not particularly convenient. As for prints from the digital files lasting, most ink jet prints aren't any better than photographic prints. A lot of older Canon printers produced photographic prints that were practically worthless in a year. But there are a few very good options now. Epson has three printers with archival, pigmented ink sets: the 2000p, the 2200 (2100 in Europe), and the R800. Additionally, many Epsons, and some other printers, can use third-party long-life ink sets, made by companies like Lyson, MIS, and others. Used on the right papers and stored properly, prints made with these should last for several generations.
Disclaimer: I have a company that preserves photographs. I have no ties with anyone listed above in this message. If you are interested, my company, The Family Reserve, is here.
