[Leica] Inkjet printng

[s.dimitrov at charter.net (Slobodan Dimitrov)]

A little episode for the not faint of heart.

I'm included in an exhibit at the Banning landing Community Center. This is
about 100 years of pile-driving in the Port of LA. It was decided that we
should make inkjet prints, for convenience, of my PN55 (4x5) negs. Well,
after a few days of trying to run some, off an calibrated PC screen, unto a
Canon i9000, I threw in the towel.
That printer is a real piece of junk. The photo reviews that have tried
comparing it to an Epson are outright dishonest and deceitful. The Epson is
literally a plug and print machine compared to the Canon. I can also see why
they are no longer in the film scanning business. Maybe they could fool the
prosumer buyer, but definitely not the commercial user. Thankfully that
piece of Canon junk is not mine.
I decided to go back to the darkroom, for my convenience sake this time, and
do it properly once and for all. It took me two hours to print the 20 images
we needed. With extras, I did 28 prints. After I inspected them, I redid 4
more which took another 20 minutes. A last inspection determined that I
needed to redo three more, in order to match the tones in the highlights
with the other prints. By 1:20pm I was done, and on the road with dried
prints by 2pm. 
That meant I was in the darkroom from 10am until 2pm, a total of four hours.
Even printing with other Epson models, I can't replicate that kind of speed
and quality. And, we're talking about silver gelatin prints here, not that
other stuff.
S. Dimitrov