Has anyone tried the new Pictorico Ultra OHP and give us any sort of comparison? I have a roll sitting at the house and was just wondering what to expect (but I'm waiting for the printer to arrive).
Since I print 8"x12" (from dslr) and 9.6"x12" (from 4x5negs) the 13" roll seems much cheaper than 13"x19" sheets!
Has anyone tried the new Pictorico Ultra OHP and give us any sort of comparison? I have a roll sitting at the house and was just wondering what to expect (but I'm waiting for the printer to arrive).
Since I print 8"x12" (from dslr) and 9.6"x12" (from 4x5negs) the 13" roll seems much cheaper than 13"x19" sheets!
I have now gone through two rolls of the new Pictorico Ultra OHP and I think I am going back to the older stuff. I admit I have not done any rigorous testing, but looking at palladium prints made with either material, I cannot see any substantive difference in smoothness of tone. Also, looking at the negs with a loupe I cannot see any obvious difference in dot pattern.
The Ultra OHP is supposed to take more ink. However, printing with a Quadtone profile that uses all seven of the Ultrachrome inks on my Epson 4000 I have no problem achieving densities in the ultraviolet of over 4.0 on the old style OHP. That is more than enough density for any purpose I use it for. So, unless some of you folks come up with a compelling reason to switch, I think I will just save some money and stay with the standard, old style OHP. Cheers, Ron-san
I presume you are using black ink to get that kind of UV density or are you using a combination of all color inks?
Thanks,
Don Bryant
Don, On the old OHP I use a QTR profile called RR4000-UCmk7-OHP-Pd that is attached to this message. This profile uses matte black and light black ink plus a lesser amount of all the others. It makes fine negs for printing on palladium. As you can see, the default ink limit is only set at 44, so it could be dialed up much higher (I did it once by accident) and you will get a much, much denser neg. I don't know how high you can go before the ink begins to run, but the density is well over 4.0 in the UV.
To try out the Ultra OHP I decided it needed a slightly different profile, so I redid it and while I was at it I dialed the matte black ink way down, kept the light black about where it was, and increased all the others. This profile is attached and is called RR4000-UCmk7-OHPU-Pd. To my eye I cannot see any quality difference, due to either the lower usage of dark black, nor to usage of Ultra OHP.
I really wonder if the fear of black inks is not a red herring? Certainly you get inferior negs when you print with only matte black and light black ink. But I bet the printer would also print poor negs if you only used Cyan and light Cyan (never done the experiment, though). My guess is that using all possible inks leads to smoother tones, but no one ink is better or worse than any other. Anyone have any hard evidence to the contrary?? Cheers, Ron-san
I have been cutting the roll down to 13" x 8" and gang printing 2 5.5" x 6.875" digital negatives on each of these sheets. At this size and the larger 9.6" x 12" size I'm working with, it's cheaper to go with the roll and cut it down than to print on 8.5"x11" or 13"x19"
I am beginning to think the whole fear of black inks is a little misguided. My do-it-yourself approach (Color ratio) that I documented on alternativephotography.com uses black inks since the colors are in RGB space, and I have never had any issues with it.
Ron, I wanted to tell you that I got your new book from Amazon the other day, and it is very well written and informative. The chapter on QTR is eye-opening, and the profiles you posted here for the 2200 are working really well. So well in fact, that I am debating whether futzing with making the QTR profile print me some of my green negatives is just a waste of time. The idea that you can dispense with correction curves altogether and just hit command-I and then flip your negative and print is pretty compelling. My other thought is that if you think about what we are doing when we apply curves in photoshop, we are taking the file and 'bending' it once before sending it to the printer driver which will 'bend' it again. With the inevitable losses that occur with any numerical transform on a data file, it makes a lot of sense to me to just do it one time. Oh well, Philosophy 101....
Clay
Originally Posted by Ron-san
Don, On the old OHP I use a QTR profile called RR4000-UCmk7-OHP-Pd that is attached to this message. This profile uses matte black and light black ink plus a lesser amount of all the others. It makes fine negs for printing on palladium. As you can see, the default ink limit is only set at 44, so it could be dialed up much higher (I did it once by accident) and you will get a much, much denser neg. I don't know how high you can go before the ink begins to run, but the density is well over 4.0 in the UV.
To try out the Ultra OHP I decided it needed a slightly different profile, so I redid it and while I was at it I dialed the matte black ink way down, kept the light black about where it was, and increased all the others. This profile is attached and is called RR4000-UCmk7-OHPU-Pd. To my eye I cannot see any quality difference, due to either the lower usage of dark black, nor to usage of Ultra OHP.
I really wonder if the fear of black inks is not a red herring? Certainly you get inferior negs when you print with only matte black and light black ink. But I bet the printer would also print poor negs if you only used Cyan and light Cyan (never done the experiment, though). My guess is that using all possible inks leads to smoother tones, but no one ink is better or worse than any other. Anyone have any hard evidence to the contrary?? Cheers, Ron-san
I am beginning to think the whole fear of black inks is a little misguided. My do-it-yourself approach (Color ratio) that I documented on alternativephotography.com uses black inks since the colors are in RGB space, and I have never had any issues with it.
Ron, I wanted to tell you that I got your new book from Amazon the other day, and it is very well written and informative. The chapter on QTR is eye-opening, and the profiles you posted here for the 2200 are working really well. So well in fact, that I am debating whether futzing with making the QTR profile print me some of my green negatives is just a waste of time. The idea that you can dispense with correction curves altogether and just hit command-I and then flip your negative and print is pretty compelling. My other thought is that if you think about what we are doing when we apply curves in photoshop, we are taking the file and 'bending' it once before sending it to the printer driver which will 'bend' it again. With the inevitable losses that occur with any numerical transform on a data file, it makes a lot of sense to me to just do it one time. Oh well, Philosophy 101....
Clay
Thanks, Clay. Can I get you to write ad copy for the book?? Actually, I am a bit embarassed about how out of date the book already is, and the number of typos it contains. Brad and I are going to try and address these issues with updates on our web site www.digital-negatives.com. Cheers, Ron Reeder
Ron, the book is great. You are shooting at a moving target. Already, your updates are useful. The recent one on QTR controls to address banding ---I can't think of a more pertinent issue. Keep up the good work. ---Nathan
The curve I use is mostly color, but does use the black inks, too. Ron, I got my 2200 working again so once I finish the set of prints I'm doing right now I'll give the QTR a try and see the difference.
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Originally Posted by Jeremy Moore 
