Had a very long discussion today with a guy I have spoken with a number of times regarding the lab and his debate about returning to lab printing as opposed to the inkjet’s that he has done for a number of years. He wanted me to convince him that printing in the lab was better than inkjet printing and to his surprise I refused. Both methods have their strengths as well as weaknesses, but >better< is in the eye of the beholder.
Back in the early days of inkjet printers the prints weren’t so great. The color was fabulous as even the early inks delivered a wider color gamut than RA-4 papers but the benefits ended right there. Resolutions were low, paper options were limited, per print prices were sky high and the prints couldn’t stand up to a sneeze test let alone any kind of real moisture test. Kind of like the early digital camera days. Way back when $20,000 bought you about 1 effective mega pixel and the product was shit. I was at that time very anti-inkjet and it had everything to do with the longevity and print quality.
Digital cameras grew up and so have inkjet printers. The color is even better than it was, paper options are abundant and with pigment inks the prints last and last. Which is better? That’s for you to decide for yourself, but I can tell you that many people elect to do both and they do so happily. Epson, Canon and HP all make excellent printers and with proper use the results are fantastic. So, you think you want to buy an inkjet and you want to know some of the pitfalls? I’ll tell you the big ones right now and I’ll even tell you how you can avoid them.
The first pitfall is time. Print times can be 3 minutes or more per 8×10 print and this can seriously cut in to time that you might better spend doing other things. First print out at the lab is about 4 minutes or so but that is dry to dry. The first print come out in 4 minutes but the next print is hot on it’s heals. With inkjet 3 minutes x print quantity = the amount of time that you will be occupied with the process. Next, though print prices for inkjet printers have come down you must always keep in mind that when you are doing your own printing you are responsible for any mistakes that are made. Every single 8×10 print that you throw in the garbage comes right out of your profit and not the lab’s. This is the one that no inkjet salesman really talks about. If we hose 100 8×10’s in the lab the hit for that paper waste comes out of our pocket, not the photographers. Third, you alone are the responsible party when it comes to print quality. If your print come out green the only person that you can yell at is yourself. Should these two reasons keep you off of inkjet? In a word, no.
Use good quality monitors that are calibrated and profiled on a schedule coupled with proper profiling of your printer. You must expect and demand print quality from yourself that you would expect and demand from your lab. Shoot with proper white balance, work in a tightly controlled calibrated & profiled environment and your results will be there. Go in to the process without learning the basics and you will do much more harm to your reputation than you can imagine. Under no circumstances should your customer shoulder the burden of poor execution.
Monitors from Eizo or View Sonic. Profiling hardware and software from Gretag Macbeth. Workflow software like Darkroom Core or Professional. A calendar to keep track of your profiling schedule. These are some of the tools that will help you be a successful self printer and save you many hours of wasted time and consumables.
That’s really it for me on the subject. My boss reads this blog and this post really seems like an inkjet printer commercial and that isn’t what I intended it to be.
What did the guy on the phone decide? Well, I am pretty sure that I convinced him to upgrade his Epson Gemini to the latest version. He has a lot of money invested in the system and his results are really very good. There is no advantage to him or to his customers to change his method. We’ll see over the next few days what he will do. What should you do? Investigate your options. Ask a dealer close to you for a demo. Get some sample prints off of the machine that you like and compare the models. If the print quality is there for you and you can maintain your discipline give it a shot. Just remember to buy from a dealer that you know and trust. In those first few weeks you will want the support that only a professional dealer can provide.
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Filed under: ExpressDigital
My how times have changed. You say, “The first pitfall is time. Print times can be 3 minutes or more per 8×10 print.” Back when dinosaurs plodded about the earth, we made B&W prints in a darkroom and I figured I needed a couple of hours to set up the darkroom, make some prints, and clean up again. Actual time to develop and dry an 8×10 (or even a test strip, for that matter) was probably 30 minutes. By not waiting for it to dry, I could get it down to only two minutes.
How quickly we are able to forget how old we actually are. I didn’t think about the fact that it was only a few years ago that I had a B&W darkroom in my house.