Having just bought a beautiful new Mac, I am hoping to begin using it to scan and print images taken with my leica m6's. I wonder what scanner/printers people would recommend. Specifically, the Piezography prints I have seen seem to be genuinely "photographic" in their quality (although this system has only just begun to make it over here to the UK and seems quite a hassle to set up.) but much of the sample output from e.g. Epson 1290 printers seems garish and fake in terms of its colours even if the resolution is impressive. I have only just "sealed" the tomb that was my darkroom and I'm beginning to wonder if I'll ever get the lovely results that my Rodagon enlarging lens gave me. There seems to be very little information to be gleaned over here (in Brighton, England) so any comments would be very much appreciated.

-- Steve Jones (stephenjjones@btopenworld.com), November 13, 2001

Answers

Steve - take a look at the answers to a similar question I asked on Nov 4. You will find it in the archive under "Leica in a digital world."

-- Ivor Quaggin (iquaggin@home.com), November 13, 2001.

I have been wondering that meself. I have a dual G4, with 1.5 meg of RAM., set up for graphics. My guess is that I need some time with it to learn how to do this stuff. After all, it took some time to learn how to print. I can do that after decades of experience. This is just a new task.

Art

-- Art (AKarr90975@aol.com), November 13, 2001.

I used a Nikon Coolscan 4000ED and a Epson 1280/1290... it works great for color, truly superb. It isn't better or worse then traditional printing (in my opinion), its a bit different though (some advantages some disadvantages). I have tried using it for Duotone and Quadtone converted B&W images, and highly recommend, that if you intend on doing a lot of Black and White printing you look into something other then the color inks that come with the printer. When i get enough money i'm going to get a dedicated 1280 for Black and White printing... MIS, Piezo, etc. are the way to go for B&W, for color the standard 1280 works great.

-- Matthew Geddert (geddert@yahoo.com), November 13, 2001.

Like Matthew said, except I'm using 5-year-old Nikon LS-1000 scanner and Epson 600 printer. Will try Piezo or some such eventually (like when the Leicas are paid off) 8^)

The magic to digital is the control - being able to vary contrast and sharpness they way you dodge and burn now. The best Epson B&W prints probably still don't quite come up to Ilford Galerie paper for total richness and depth, but already outshine most RC papers and lower-end fiber prints.

-- Andy Piper (apidens@denver.infi.net), November 13, 2001.

Steve, good decision, the move to digital light room gave my photography a huge boost, mostly as you a not restricted to a certain length of time (like minimum 4 hours) to be productive.

Get one of the new Nikon scanners with ICE and GEM, batch scanning, and software which does histograms (the Nikon software does). I didn't due budget but it was false economy, as manually scanning every frame then spotting, and trying to correct color is a big time waster.

If you only shoot B&W then you can forget ICE with convention films.

-- Mark Wrathall (wrathall@laudaair.com), November 14, 2001.

I just got a canon 4000US and epson 1280, and not yet print anything large yet, but play around with the scan in photoshop, I found the way that those color slide convert to B&W by channel mixer seems comes handy, and I can select the mixing level of RGB and result is simulated to using color filter. I am wondering if that is the case, I might be about to just use color silde as my ONLY meida, and not go for B&W film ( or 2nd camera body). Is anyone out there doing the same thing or there is more clear advantage on BW film over this ?

-- joseph (jose_phla@hotmail.com), November 14, 2001.

Steve

I have been using the Piezography system with the Epson 1160 for about eighteen months now. I have also begun using the Nikon 4000 scanner recently.

Although the Piezo system is fairly expensive to import into the UK, by the time FedEx and VAT have been added, my experience has been: - The customer service from the Cone-Editions people has been very good and the stuff always arrives within a few days. - The software was easy to install and has worked without a glitch on my G4 Mac. - The 1160 was easy enough to adapt to the CIS system - it's a bit DIY, but the instructions are good (and it really reduces the cost). - Banding/alignment/paper feeding on the 1160 has been a problem for me, but the latest version of the manual has fixes for most of it. There is also a newsgroup, where you can get good, succinct advice from the people at Cone-editions. - The Nikon 40000 is easy to use (again no problems with software on the Mac) and the ICE function works well with T400CN, producing really clean scans - with plenty of shadow and highlight detail.

As far as results go, you have seen Piezo prints, so you will have formed your own opinions of what to expect. My experience has been that they are very different from Tri-X on Agfa Record Rapid and that has taken some getting used to. However, the tonal range of the inks and the soft surface of the papers can be really lovely, and in a way look more real and more modern than my conventional prints. This is all highly subjective, but working this way has been very refreshing (and it's great to work in the daylight).

In general, I am really impressed that John Cone has produced, not just inks and paper, but software that brings them together in such a clever way.

I hope

-- Nick Judd (hnelson1@hotmail.com), November 14, 2001.

That message should end 'this is useful.'

-- (hnelson1@hotmail.com), November 14, 2001.