Taking The 7900 Leap

Over the last year or two, I have watched as various new papers have come out for black and white inkjet printing. I have really wanted to venture into black and white, but just never really liked the appearance on matte paper, though I do love the appearance of color prints on matte watercolor paper. In theory, I could change my 7600 printer over to photo black ink to use the new highly touted Baryta papers for black and white printing, but it is quite expensive as well as being a hassle to change over.

I have watched Epson printers morph from the 7600 to 7800 to 7880 and never really had a desire to upgrade, mainly because of the dual black ink issue. But now, with the advent of the new Epson 7900, changing the black inks is automatic and entails minimal wastage. Still, there is a small amount of ink thrown away when making the switch, but not very much....I believe it is 2-4 ml. One would think that since Epson totally revamped the head technology, they might have factored in separate nozzles for each of the two black inks so that no ink would be lost when switching, but then again they do sell ink...so not surprising. I understand it actually took a competitor's printer that makes such switches easily to motivate Epson to do so as well. But.....I digress.....

I decided to make the jump and ordered a 7900! I had been thinking about it for a while and, frankly, was not really ready to buy just yet. However, Epson has a $500 cash rebate on the machine if purchased before 3/31, so it didn't make sense to wait. I purchased it from Shades Of Paper, which is where I purchase all my media and ink and have been extremely impressed with their prices, superb and personal customer service, and rapid shipping. It should also be noted that the price listed on any of the printer vendor's websites (including Shades Of Paper) is not the real price. It is similar to buying a car. You have to get on the phone and talk to someone to get the real price. Sometimes you have to call more than once. Truth be told, when you include the $500 rebate, the final phone price, and the fact that the 7900 stand is included in the price of the printer I actually got the 7900 for less than I purchased my 7600 plus stand for back in 2004.

So, I am looking forward to experimenting with black and white printing as well as luster/semi-gloss color printing all with a wider color gamut, smaller droplets, improved dithering and at a faster speed. It had been my experience from back when I was printing with an Epson 870 that prints on luster papers matched the soft-proofing in Photoshop much better than matte papers did, and others have reported this as well. I am hoping that there might even be some time savings due to less required 'tweaking' of images with these papers. This is also quite important to me as I tend to be an incessant 'tweaker'.

The printer won't arrive until late next week and I plan on making some diary type posts about the machine, my impressions, and any problems that might occur. I can say right now that my first problem is going to be getting home for the delivery truck and hoping that I can get the delivery folks to take the machine through the front door of my home. My understanding is that with the packaging it weighs over 300 pounds. Then I have to try to get it up a narrow winding staircase. It can be carried up unpacked and off the stand, but it is still quite large, long, and heavy. Even in this 'naked' state I believe it weighs over 150 pounds. I managed, with some help, to get my 7600 up the staircase and this is just a bit bigger in dimension, so I am hoping it makes its way up 'with a little help from my friends' in an intact state as well.

More Abstract Rock Patterns

I continue to be intrigues by the abstract patterns in Jasper rock samples. This one looked like an erupting volcano to me!

Volcano
Copyright Howard Grill

Information Regarding PDF e-Books

In Brooks Jensen's recent Lenswork podcast, which one can listen to here, he extols the virtues of using pdf format e-books to enable photographers to reach a wider audience, while avoiding the fiscal constraints that are associated with publishing a physical book. I was intrigued by this, though I wonder if the constraints are as strong as implied given the newer methods of self-publishing associated with print-on-demand services available from companies like Blurb.

Nonetheless, I found the idea interesting and tried to search around the internet a bit for information about designing and producing a pdf photography book. However, I found very little out there. Now, I know very little about using Adobe Acrobat and suspect that my inability to locate information on this subject may simply be that what is required is a good general book about how to use Acrobat, as opposed to special information on how to create pdf photography books.

So, I guess I am hoping that perhaps someone out there might be able to provide some good resource books or websites on the topic of how to use Acrobat to publish photographic e-books....or at least some place to start obtaining a bit of background knowledge. Anybody want to make suggestions????

Rock Geography

Another image from my ongoing rock photography series. This one looked like part of the US coastline to me. Would you agree with it being the outline of the state of Florida???

Florida
Copyright Howard Grill

Fotoblur

Since my last post was about a new photography magazine, I thought I would keep to that subject for one more day. I hadn't been planning to do so, but I discovered the inaugural issue of a new magazine that I think holds real potential.

I read about a new magazine named Fotoblur that was associated with a 'photographic community', and the images are chosen for publication by that community. The first thing I did was give a big yawn......sounds just like JPG Magazine. But then I took a look at the preview of the print on demand magazine.......and I was extremely impressed! Impressed enough that I went ahead and ordered it, though I hadn't been planning to do so. I received it in the mail yesterday.....and was blown away. The images were really superb and the printing was terrific. In my opinion, this is a whole different genre than JPG, with the photographs being much more of a 'fine art' genre.

I have not yet checked out the community, but, as I said, am extremely impressed with the magazine. So much so that I intend to buy the next issue and see if the quality is maintained. The stated goal is for publication on a quarterly basis, and I do hope that they are successful. I would imagine that the print on demand, while it makes for a higher priced magazine for the consumer, probably insulates the publication from the type of financial problems that are apparently affecting JPG. Nonetheless, I think the quality justifies the $16.20 price tag.

Want to check out the magazine.....see here and just click on the 'Show Preview" button to view the whole issue. The community can be checked out here, with a much smaller preview of the magazine.

Color

I am always on the lookout for interesting photography magazines, as there seem to be relatively few really good ones. B&W magazine is one that I find worthwhile and enjoy getting. Recently, the publishers of B&W introduced a new magazine entitled "Color". Being a subscriber to B&W, I took the them up on their invitation to also subscribe to Color and recently received the magazine's premier issue.

Overall, I am quite pleased with it, both in terms of the quality of the photographic reproductions and the image content. The issue had a diverse selection of well-known, as well as somewhat lesser known, color photographers as well as a nice cross-section of subjects including nature, street photography etc.

My opinion on what might have made it a bit better? The layout and presentation is exactly the same as B&W magazine. On the one hand, why mess with a formula that has done well....on the other hand, it might be nice to have had something a bit different or imaginative (along with the associated risk that it might not work well). In addition, I personally find the writing a bit bland. But, hey, given the relative dearth of good quality photography magazines available, why complain. After seeing the first issue, I am definitely glad that I subscribed.