In September 2009 I was cruising to Bermuda. The ship turned out to be full of wonderful geometry and with time on my hands I was happy clicking away with my camera. As always I tried to capture geometry of shapes and lines trying to create rhythmical and balanced compositions.
Eboni 6 is wonderful set of inks. It’s very smooth and probably has the longest longevity imaginable because it’s pure carbon. It’s also much cheaper than OEM ink, it’s even more than twice cheaper than Peizography inks. But there is one problem – it’s too warm. Paul Roark, who is independent developer of this ink, recommends using some special papers which allow for cool images with this ink.
Also Paul recommended to try to print using combination of Black Only mode (BO) made possible by QTR RIP and Eboni 6 mode which uses all 6 inks. BO is much cooler than Eboni 6 (EB6) because it doesn’t use diluted inks that are very warm. On the other hand EB6 is much smoother than BO. I also like BO for its very white highlights.
To find the best combination of BO and EB6 I’ve printed 6 21-step wedges with different combinations of BO and EB6, read them with photometer. I was interested in Lab B values which mainly show how warm is the ink, to be neutral it has to be close to 0. With this data I’ve generated Excel chart below.
As we can see in the shadows – above 65% – all curves are getting close, but for light tones EB6 has much more warms than BO. QTR allows split toning, so we can use different combination of curves for highlight, midtones and shadows. From this chart clear that for highlights better to use 100% BO. For midtones we can use 60% BO which curve is pretty close to 100% BO, but still smoother than 100% BO. For shadow 20% BO-80% EB6 looks right – it’s not very warm and pretty smooth.
I’ve printed out print with these settings on Moab 190 Natural paper and comparing to plain EB6 print it’s much cooler, highlights are white, midtones are slightly warm, much cooler than on EB6 print, and darks are pretty dark. I would say it’s pretty good for pure carbon inks.
Since I’ve started my research into printing with dedicated b&w printer and monochrome inks I’ve found many different ways to use inks to generate print. After studying internet forums and work of Paul Roark I’ve found that inks can be used in following manner:
1. Black only printing – image printed using only one 100% black ink (BO)
2. Three 100% black inks used to print image (3K)
3. One 100% black and one 2% black inks create print (YK)
4. All 6 inks are used to create print (EB6)
From what I’ve gathered Black Only has been used for a while by a group of hard core fine art printers. It gives very good quality but considered rough, the prints are considered not very smooth. A few years ago Paul Roark came up with idea to use 3 100% inks, some people tried it and used it with great success. Also it was Paul’s idea to try to use only 2 channels – 100% black and 6% black in yellow chanel.
Another Paul’s idea was to use 50% 3K with 50% of YK. The question is: which set is the best in depicting better looking images with high tonal range
To compare this techniques I’ve printed out 21-step wedge using Epson 1400 and MIS inks, then I’ve scanned small patches at 10%, 20%, 50% density with scanner resolution 4800 dpi. Let’s see what we’ve got.
As you see below Bo with only one gun firing shows distinctive black dots which become less visible with the incrase of density.
3K looks the same, surprisingly 3K doesn’t look smoother than 1K. The same story with YK and 3K-YK. The only smooth prints I’ve got from Eboni-6 inks. All other combinations of inks have rough pattern, which may be not a bad thing in some cases.
I had also checked luminosity of these inks, it looks almost the same for all of them, pretty much linear, so there is no impact of the difference on image quality.
Conclusion: it looks like all inks discussed above BO, 3K, YK, 3kYK have the same dithering quality – pretty rough, consisting of dark dots. The only set of inks giving smooth picture is Eboni 6, but it’s also the warmest.
BO ink gives whiter white tones. So image quality should be the best with Eboni-6, using 3k doesn’t give better quality then 1k. Still the difference in image quality is really hard to see with eyes.
My big project of the summer 2009 was “Museums”. Museums look like nice place to take great pictures. They are filled with pieces of art, people and sometimes have nice architecture. Everybody is taking pictures so it’s easy to shoot discreetly unsuspecting people. Too bad that a lot of museums don’t allow taking pictures and it’s real shame. May be they share belief – when you take picture of a person you can also steal his/her soul.
Before I started to shoot my project I’ve researched on the web – what pictures people usually take in museums. I’ve made a list of things to avoid:
1. Don’t shoot pieces of art unless they are part of visual composition – somebody else created this art, it’s not my goal to reproduce other artist’s work
2. Don’t take pictures of people mimicking statues
3. No pictures of people yawning or sleeping in front of paintings or sculptures
4. Avoid taking picture of nice old lady looking at the genitals of a naked male statue
5. Don’t bring models and shoot them naked between statues and children
So what’s left for me to do? My goal was to shoot visual compositions created by pieces of art, people surrounding them and architecture of the buildings they are placed in.
Let’s look at some examples.
The two dinosaurs - skeleton and the one on the wall – create rhythmic repetition in the picture. The dinosaur on the wall looks like it’s trying to reach for the kid in front of him, the skeleton dinosaur looks like he wants to be petted on the head. This interaction between 2 dinosaurs and the children creates visual composition that makes this picture. I called this picture “We are friends”.
The distance between this nice old lady and the statue on the right is equal to the distance between the statues she is shooting, and with the camera on her face which makes it look similar to the faces of the statues she looks like she continues the row of statues, and the figure on the paintings behind her back completes the row.
This picture captures harmony created for one fleeting moment. The people surrounding the shack stand there in height order – the 5 people in front of the shack go from the tallest one to the shortest and so do 2 men on the side of the shack. Each of them has a dynamic pose that shows that in a second they will be gone from their places and break this order. Richness of details and tones adds interest to this picture.
The picture above is taken in American Museum of Natural History, New York. When viewer looks at it the eye first follows the curve, skips to the sphere on the top and then directed by 2 beams goes down to the lone figure on the floor which is really the center of the picture.
I’ll let you go now to my website to view the rest of the pictures http://www.photo3dart.com/pages/museums.htm. If you like them please let me know.
My great appreciation to Thomas C. Campbell, translator of the book by Harald Mante “The Photograph – Composition and Color Design”, for his help during my work on this project, his critiques and advices. Thank you Tom, you are a great guy!
Photobook looks more like a book – not like an album – when it has a picture on the cover. I mean not only picture but also some text like title, author’s name and whatever else you want to put on the cover of your book. If you do it on Photoshop you can create nice image for front cover that includes picture(s) and text and print it on Fine Art paper. The problem is – how to place it on the cover and how to protect the paper which will be very vulnerable on the outer side of the cover.
After some research I’ve found the solution – Xyron 900 Creative Station. You can see it on the picture with refill cartridge (view from the back).
This nice little machine can do a lot with different cartridges. For us the most interesting cartridge is the one that has laminate on one side and permanent adhesive on the other side. You place your picture in the machine, keep turning the handle till you picture shows on the other side of the machine, cut it off with the built-in paper cutter (red on the picture above). At this point the picture is covered with transparent laminate film and the back of the picture is covered by glue under some peeling paper. Remove the peeling paper from the back of the picture and stick it on the book cover. That’s all, you can do the same with the back of the cover if you wish so. Bellow is example of my book with picture on the cover.
The machine Xyron 900 is not only cute but also not expensive, the best deal I’ve found here: http://papercents.com/xyron-900.html and you need to buy a special cartridge which I’ve found here http://store.scrapbooking-warehouse.com/402645.html . You can also use this machine to make refrigerator magnets and sell them on artshows.
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Like many photographers I was searching for a way to create my own photo books. The easiest solution – to order one on the Internet. I’ve tried some of the services offered and found following pros: the book cost is pretty low as long as you stay with soft cover and black and white pages. With hard cover and color the price goes up. Also some learning curve is required to learn proprietary software for book creation.
Cons: you can’t use your own printer and favorite paper and get the better quality.
Also it is possible to use photo books sold by some companies. They sell cover and pages and user can print on the pages using his/her own printer and then assemble the book. Examples of these books are Stone Edition StoneHinge, Moab Chinle. This books are nice but costly, around $80 for cover and 25 pages.
I wanted inexpensive cover, I wanted to print on the paper of my choosing and I wanted to be able to bind easily these pages with the cover. This was when I’ve found Unibind.
Unibind makes covers with steel spine and glue. For photobooks they make landscape format hard covers. The pricing is pretty good – letter sized hardcover costs $8-10.
After you print your own pages you insert them in the cover, put them in the special machine – thermo binder – and in a short while you have your book. The machine melts the glue in the spine and after some cooling off the book is bound. The quality is very good and the book looks very professional.
This was a short overview, now let’s go into details.
For photographers Unibind made specail binding machine called “Unibind Photobook Creator”. This is a stripped down and very cheap version of their entry level binding machine XU138. You can read comparison here: http://www.mybinding.com/.sc/ms/ch/Comparing-the-Unibind-XU138-with-the-Unibind-Photobook-Creator.html I think that for majority of the users Photobook Creator is just fine. I found the best places to buy it are following: http://www.adorama.com/FSUPBCK.html and also here even better http://www.acherryontop.com/shop/search/unibind/112437
Here is the picture of the XU138:
As you see it has 2 compartments – one for heating and one for cooling. It works only on Unibind covers because they have steel spine and this machine is turned on by a magnet that reacts on steel spine. You can use non-Unibind covers by tricking the machine by placing a spare Unibind cover beside non-Unibind cover. Also these machines can be used by binding to bare steel spines which can be bought separately very cheap and used with custom covers (Photobook creator can’t do it). It can also bind more than one book at a time. Time needed for binding – 30 sec, after this 15 min cooling.
Now I want to tell you a little dirty secret. Vendors selling these machines are not allowed to advertise low price, so they usually list on their websites price close to the listed price. But if you call them up with some luck you may get much better quote.
Now let’s talk about paper, for photobook you need double-sided paper. Paper shouldn’t be too thick and ink shouldn’t rub off on opposite page. Here are some papers I’ve found and used:
Ilford Smooth Heavyweight Matte Paper – very nice paper and cheap too. I used it to make books and was happy with results, but it’s full of OBA and it’s probably made from wood pulp.
Inkpress semigloss duo – this is the paper I liked the least, actually didn’t like at all. It’s too thin – 9 mil, full of OBA, I didn’t like it’s colors – but it’s matter of taste.
Inkpress Fine Art Matte – much better, thicker – 12 mil, no OBA, good quality, not expensive, still 75% from wood pulp. Still I had a lot of problems with this paper – headstrikes was the main one.
PremierArt Fine Art paper – nice paper, no OBA, good quality
And there is also Moab Entrada Natural 190 – good paper, no OBA.
I’m going to try Red River aurora fine art – looks like a nice paper and cheap too.
It looks like all nice papers are matte, there is also Inkjetart Micro Ceramic Luster Duo but I didn’t try that one. Matte paper may be a problem if book is heavily handled, in this case pages can be sprayed with protective spray.
Next we’ll discuss covers. Covers are sold in different sizes usually in packs of 10. Some places like Adorama sell in packs of 2. From ACherryOnTop.com you can buy one cover http://www.acherryontop.com/shop/search/unibind?v=s6. The biggest choice of colors and sizes is on the site where I’ve bought my covers: http://thermobinding.com/shop/home.php?cat=312 Marty is very nice guy, he gave me a free sample, I was able to buy in packs of 5. They carry different sizes and I’ve got from them unique 11×17″ cover.
Book cover may have window cut in it so a portion of the front page will be visible. It creates illusion that there is a picture on the cover. I didn’t like it when I saw it first. And then I’ve found a way to put a full size picture on the cover, and not only on the front one but also on the back if you want. I will describe it in the next post. So I never buy cover with window in it.
The covers are differentiated not only by their size but also by spine size. Most common is 5mm which allows to make book with 15-20 pages depending on what paper you using. There are also bigger spine sizes up to 12mm. They can fit up to 45 pages.
So now that you have machine, pages and cover the rest is simple. Insert your printed pages into the cover, I use rubber band to make sure they won’t move.
Then I place the cover on heating surface, machine turns on automatically, red light goes on. After 30 sec light becomes green. Take the cover and tap it firmly on a hard surface. Place it in cooling compartment or on the table to cool off. Wait at least 15 min. Now open the book – isn’t it wonderful?
On the next picture are samples of my books – black and white and colored, letter size and 11″x17″. The big one is not binded yet.
Please read the next post for more on photo books.
Last week I’ve visited The Cloisters – Museum of Medieval Art. It is a beautiful museum full of pieces of art. Here are some pictures.
Continuing with my “Museums of New York” project I’ve visited MOMA (Museum of Modern Art). I love this museum, it’s so full of energy and youth. Here are some pictures:
I started to work on new project called “Museums”, the first one to visit was Metropolitan NY Museum. Here are some pictures.
