New Ink

I've finally wrapped up the printing I needed to get done for an upcoming show. I'm leaving tomorrow for a few days of camping and photography in Glacier; I'll deliver the work to the gallery the day after I return from the park. As usual, I was in a rush to get everything printed, sufficiently dry for matting and framing, labeled, and priced. With that behind me I can enjoy the park, if not the expected crowds.

I made the last several prints on a mat (matte) paper, as mentioned in my previous posting. I'd made two prints, had set up the file for the next one, and walked to the printer to insert the sheet of paper. The LCD displayed a message, "Replace Ink", which I'd not seen before. This is the no-nonsense, "can't go any further until you replace ink" message. The display indicated the LLK must be replaced. This ink has been showing 1% for a very long time, so it was hardly a surprise that it was finally empty.

I replaced the LLK "starter" cartridge with a new, 150ml cart. This is the first of the 90ml carts to be discarded and replaced. The LCD ink status display now shows one ink (#10) at full capacity. I have several others that have been at 1% for some time. 150ml carts are on-hand for those.

Update: earlier this month I posted here about printing black and white. Since then I've thought about this a bit more. Yesterday I posted a new article on my site about shooting, but not printing much black and white.

  --Jay

The Humidity Factor

I've got a show to hang in a couple of weeks. Between now and then I'll be camping in Glacier National Park for a few days. I have the rest of this week to make any additional prints I'll want for the show. I'll finish the framing when I get back from the park. Most of the printing is done, except for a few I want to print on mat papers. Yesterday I switched from PK to MK, and just like the last time I did this, the printer did not run a cleaning cycle after the ink swap. When the switch completed I ran a nozzle check print and found no problems.

A panorama of an image from Freezeout Lake, along the

Rocky Mountain Front. This is printing on Moab Entrada

Natural. The finished print is 39 inches (1m) long. You can

see the photo here (it's the first image on the page).

There's been much debate in the usual forums about the affect of humidity on these machines. Some say they see more nozzle clogs (I prefer to think of these as "ink delivery problems", in which I'd include clogs, but also other reasons for missing nozzles in the check prints) when humidity is high, while seeing their problems diminish in lower humidities. Others report exactly the opposite; for them high humidity means fewer clogs. "High" and "low" aren't clearly defined in these discussions. The debate continues, but without more than anecdotal evidence one can only conclude that humidity may play a role. It seems there are more reports of issues with higher, rather than lower humidity.

Here in western Montana, we get most of our rain in May and June. That's been true for this year; in fact we've had record rain amounts all around us, and I've been seeing decent levels in my rain gauge lately. As you'd expect, this means humidity levels, which are typically quite low and drop lower during summer, have been higher that usual. When I printed my nozzle check yesterday, my low-cost digital hygrometer showed 63%RH, a full 20 points higher than I've seen in the room nearly the entire time I've owned the 7900. The nozzle check print was fine, and the dozen prints I ran afterward (MK ink on mat papers) were also fine.

Our rainy season will pass as it always has, it'll get hot, and very dry (our rainy season gives way to wildfire season). I record the room temperature and humidity on each nozzle check print, so I'll continue to watch this, and perhaps determine, at least in my own printing setup, the impact of humidity.

  --Jay

Ink Update

After a long period of chilly and wet weather, conditions here have finally begun to swing toward summer; I've been very busy with outdoor chores and other good-weather responsibilities, and have done no printing in recent days. I have, however, squeezed in a little time to be out photographing locally. My last print job for a client was a week ago. Except for dealing with a stubborn clog in the VM channel, which required a "powerful" cleaning to clear, it was completely routine.

Today I received a large (for me) order of frames and mats from Documounts. I returned home from an errand to find a sixty pound (27kg) box on my front porch. Along with inventory already on hand, this should cover most of what I'll need for my summer shows. I'll be making a number of prints in coming weeks to fill those frames. Any additional framing I might need will be done by a local framer who's done a wonderful job in the past on some of my largest panoramas.

Update to my previous (8 June) posting: Yesterday I received the promised replacement Y ink from IT Supplies. The expiration date is March, 2014. I have not received the promised return shipping label for the Y ink they sent earlier, that being the one that expires in about two weeks.

  --Jay

Old New Ink

Sunday (3 June) I ordered Yellow and Vivid Light Magenta inks from my usual vendor, IT Supplies. Yesterday I received the ink. The logistics of these things always fascinate me. The Y shipped from Minnesota, in a "Jiffylite"® bag. The VLM shipped in a cardboard box from California. Both shipped via UPS, and arrived together, same day, same front porch in western Montana. Amazing.

I opened the box, and found a large Epson carton with the VLM. This carton is larger than, and physically quite different in form from the previous four inks I've received. The expiration date on the VLM is January, 2014.

The new VLM (center), the new Y (right), and the LLK I've had on-hand for a few
months. The package for the oldest of the lot, the Y, is a tight fit to the cartridge. The
other cartons are much larger. The VLM carton is heavy corrugated cardboard, while the
others are thin fiberboard.

I opened the bag, and found a very small Epson carton with the Y cartridge. This carton is very thin fiberboard, and smaller than the other inks I have on hand. Epson's clearly found reason to tinker with their packaging design. The expiration date on the Y is July, 2012. We're about three weeks from its expiration date, making it useless to me. It's all but certain I wouldn't install this ink in the printer before the expiration date.

This morning I called IT Supplies. I spoke with Chris for about 30 seconds. He promised to get a new Y on the way, one with a more typical (18 months, more or less) expiration date, and to email a return label for the "old" Y.

I've used IT Supplies for ink and paper as long as I've been printing because they have good prices, nice people to deal with, and almost always ship quickly. Orders greater that USD $100 ship free; it's always too easy to exceed $100 when ordering. I've had a couple of problems before with shipments from them, usually the result of horrible packaging. In those cases I assumed they had a new kid working in the shipping department, a kid with no common sense, and they didn't train him very well or make him put away his cell phone. But IT Supplies has always handled any problem quickly, and with minimum hassle for me.

They should never have sent the old ink. Fortunately, I don't need it today, and they are taking care of the problem.

I'm happy the VLM is a keeper. The "starter" ink cartridge in the printer has just dropped down to 1%, not sufficient to proceed if I need to do a cleaning on that channel. I should mention that all of the inks in my 7900 are still the starter inks, the 90ml cartridges that come with the machine. Several are showing 1% on the LCD, and have been for weeks. When a cleaning is required I'm usually asked by the printer to replace those inks. After the cleaning, I've reinstalled the 1% cartridges, and then continued printing as usual.

Update: My friend Dean, who's had a 7900 for several years, ordered ink a month ago from B&H. One of the cartridges he received had an expiration date of August, 2012. He returned it for a "fresher" replacement. The replacement had exactly the same expiration date as the one he'd just returned. Giving up on B&H, Dean returned that ink, and then ordered from IT Supplies. He's not yet received that order. One can only wonder what he'll get.

Update #2: If I'd seen this, I probably wouldn't have made this posting. I've been a little busy, and hadn't looked at the Luminous Landscape forums in several days.

  --Jay

Black and White

I love black and white photos; most of the pictures displayed on our walls are B&W work by other photographers. I like shooting for B&W, and I also like the occasional surprise of an image I'd intended for color that turns out to be really nice in B&W.

I don't print much B&W for the simple reason that it doesn't sell where I live. I've displayed B&W work in the galleries where I typically have work. I've never sold one. I've never sold any of the B&W pieces on my Web site, either, which may mean it's not strictly the taste of the local folk at work. Perhaps I'm simply a lousy B&W shooter or printer. In any case, I don't print much B&W except for my own enjoyment, and I rarely display any in galleries.

My Canon iPF 5000 was only a so-so printer of B&W, at least on gloss papers. Metameric failure and gloss differential were both problems with that printer's ink-set on gloss papers. Naturally, neither was an issue on matte paper.

The 7900 has no obvious metameric issues when printing B&W on EEF or GGFS, the two gloss papers I use. There is some gloss diff, sometimes so slight it's hard to see, but in other cases a bit more obvious. This is impossible to find when a print is mounted under glass. Short of applying a coating to the finished prints, I suspect the gloss diff issue with 7900 prints is as good as it's likely to get anytime soon. (Obviously, gloss diff is the same with color prints—unprinted white areas of paper will have whatever gloss the paper has, whether one is printing B&W or color.)

Bynum Derelict ©2010, Jay Cross

I will have seven or eight pieces in a show that will hang in early July. I've decided to make all of my pictures in this show fairly large, printing on 17 inch roll paper or 17x22 inch (US C size) sheets for the smallest, with one or two perhaps larger. One of the images will be of a crumbling old building in Bynum, Montana. I pass this old wreck on my drive to and from Freezeout Lake, a place I visit most years in March, along the Rocky Mountain Front near Choteau, Montana. In 2010, on my drive home from photographing the geese migration at Freezeout, I stopped to photograph the derelict building. It was about 11:00 in the morning, extremely windy, and with bright sun peeking through a somewhat stormy sky. Contrast in the tones of the old boards of the shack was extreme, thanks to the sun on the weathered wood. There was no question this would be a black and white photograph.

I processed the photo as I typically do in Photoshop, and then used a black and white adjustment layer for the conversion. To complete the image I reduced the opacity of the B&W layer to 94%, toning the image slightly.

I printed this as I would a color image, 16 inches wide on a 17x22 inch sheet of EEF. I am very happy with this print. It's quite sharp; I like the exposed nails in many of the loose boards, and the detail in the wood grain. I did not use the Epson driver's Advanced Black and White (ABW) mode. I never have. Perhaps I should make a small print just to get a look at what ABW will do. Since there's no soft-proofing an ABW print, one has no real clue how the print will look until it's printed. My normal workflow includes soft-proofing in Photoshop, and while it's not perfect, I'd feel a little lost not doing it. Each ABW print would be a crap-shoot. I guess I'm not much of a gambler.

Update, 29 June 2012: Yesterday I posted a new article on my site, about shooting black and white but not printing a lot of it. The article was inspired, more or less, by this blog post.

  --Jay

A Clog and a Batch of Prints

I've had some nice sales recently in local galleries. Most of these have been small matted-and-bagged prints; several of those have been photos of the snowy owls which graced us with their presence for four months this past winter and spring.

A local gallery has an unusual exhibit, for which photographers were asked to provide a selection of their work to be used at inspiration for paintings, carvings, pottery, and works in other media, by artists in the area. About 60 photos from eight to ten photographers (including me) were made available for the painters and other artists. These artists then had several months to create whatever work the photos inspired.

The original photos, and the works they inspired, where hung together for the exhibit. The result is a fascinating show, fun to browse. Some of the artists interpreted the photos literally. These were mostly painters, who created paintings quite similar to the photos. A few painters did much more impressionistic paintings, while others took an abstract approach. There was also some fabric art, one large, painted wood carving, and some ceramic pieces.

Three of the ten photos I offered were selected; I had a framed print of each in the show. I had the good fortune to sell two of those photos right away. The buyers were out-of-towners passing through, so they took the photos at the time of purchase, leaving voids in the exhibit. Having more of the same frames and mats in the same sizes on-hand, I made new prints to fill those voids. Almost immediately, one of those "replacement" prints sold. Naturally, I printed a replacement for that one, too, which I'll deliver to the gallery tomorrow.

As usual, I ran a nozzle check print. Nearly all of the LLK channel was missing. Only a few broken bars at the top of that pattern printed. This is not the first time I've seen LLK go missing. When it's happened before, a normal pair cleaning (LLK/Y pair) has improved the pattern, but not completely cleared the problem. A second normal cleaning of the pair often leaves a few missing nozzles, requiring a "powerful" cleaning to make things right. Fortunately, the most recent firmware update for the 7900 added the capability to execute powerful cleanings on channel pairs. So, for this problem, I ran a powerful clean of the pair right from the start. I then printed a nozzle check, which showed the problem resolved.

A snapshot of a section of my magnetic "viewing booth". This is a 48 x 54 inch

galvanized steel sheet, hung to cover the doorway to a basement crawl space. My 

5000°K bulbs haven't arrived; the awful color you see here was provided by a 

florescent fixture above the left, and daylight on the right. Yikes!

With that out of the way I proceeded to make seven prints. Those are shown above on my magnetic viewing panel. The replacement for the twice-sold picture is at right, printed on B size (11x17 inches) Canson Infinity Platine Fibre Rag 310. Wonderful stuff. The raven picture at left (on GGFS) is my most popular image. The matted-and-bagged 11x14s are cheap to purchase, and sell about as quickly as I print them. I wish I had a few more pictures like that!

  --Jay

The Espon Rebate Follies Continue

I've spent the past few days in The Palouse, in eastern Washington. The weather wasn't good, making my shot-count fairly low, but we explored and found some places we'll visit again. There's some stunning scenery of wheat and canola (rape seed) fields and the infrastructure required to farm them. I have a weakness for decaying old farm buildings, which are plentiful in The Palouse. The bad weather gave me an excuse to concentrate on some of these old derelicts. I'm about to begin making prints for my upcoming summer shows; those will include a few photos from this trip.

Wheat fields in The Palouse on a rainy May morning

While I was away I received an email from Epson, indicating my "rebate" roll of paper had shipped! I returned home to find, on my front porch, several boxes, one of which bore Epson labels. Finally, the efforts to get the promised rebate from Epson had succeeded. But wait—maybe not.

The label on the shipping carton indicated the contents were Exhibition Canvas Matte (Epson # S045257). Upon opening the box I found it did indeed contain a roll of canvas. I was sure I'd requested Exhibition Fiber Paper (S045189). Either I checked the wrong box on the rebate form, or Epson sent the wrong item. I reviewed the emails I'd sent to Epson, which included the rebate form, the purchase receipt, and the UPC barcode from the shipping crate. I had checked the EEF option, so the error was theirs.

After all this time, after sending the required supporting items to Epson three times, in three different ways, they finally fulfill the rebate, and they send the wrong item. I'm trying to think of some other way this could have been screwed up.... Nope, can't think of one.

I fired off an email to Erika, the person with whom I'd corresponded previously. I explained that I'd received the wrong stuff, and included a copy of the rebate form clearly showing the checked box for EEF. I received a replay indicating the situation would be reviewed.

Dear Jay Cross 

Thank You for your email concerning your rebate.   It has been received and sent to the Rebate Center for inquiry on the documents needed for processing.  We are sorry for any inconvenience this mishap has caused you.  Please allow 3 to 4 weeks for processing for rebate.

Sincerely,

Erika

Epson Call Center

It's not entirely clear what this means, what will happen next. Who knew this was to become an on-going story, The Great Epson Rebate Follies.

  --Jay