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Rangefinder
Magazine Rƒ Cookbook by David A. Williams
This man represents the forgotten soldier. I think of him as perhaps a school teacher in civilian life who is now seeing many of the generations he taught fed into the obscene mincer of relentless battle. The French alone lost over 500,000 men in this six-month battle, many thousands were totally unidentifiable and never found. In many areas of the region, the topsoil is simply missing—vaporized by the strength and quantity of the bombardment. This is a homage to an image of a U.S. Marine taken in Korea by (I believe) David Douglas Duncan. There is the same look of terror, shell-shock and complete desperate sadness in the eyes. Sadly, that look has never, and will never change. The Epson Stylus Photo 1280 and 2200 printers are probably the greatest gifts photographers have been given in recent times. When you consider what these machines will do and what we had to pay previously for color darkrooms to produce the same size print, then these extraordinary machines really are amazing. What power over the image we now have! I can use all of my darkroom knowledge to produce an image I probably couldn’t make in the darkroom due to lack of materials. The choice available in inkjet papers alone is extraordinary and beautiful. My paper of choice is English PermaJet Portrait Classic 300 gsm, an acid-free, mould-made paper. To me, the paper gives the illusion of a beautiful gravure book illustration from years ago.
I was already firmly convinced of the capabilities of color images at 1440 dpi resolution, but I did do the tests and found little noticeable difference at 2880 dpi. Where the difference became noticeable, wonderful and totally necessary was in using the apparently little-known ability of the Epson 1280 to perform 2880 dpi resolution from the black ink cartridge only to make stunning black-and-white prints. This function is easily selected in the standard Epson print dialog boxes provided with the printing software. The only thing I would add is that if your Gamma check box in the printer software is set to 1.8, you may want to change it to 2.2. This will have the effect of printing a darker image. This is sometimes needed as the print at 1.8 can be a little light. Having said that, I try to not to play with the printer offsets at all. One of the single biggest reasons for inconsistency with digital work is that the computer monitor is not profiled correctly. Comparing your screen to sample pictures is not enough. Do yourself the biggest favor ever and buy yourself a PhotoCal ‘Spyder’ monitor profiling tool (or spread the cost around a few pals and share it!) Think of it as a light meter for your computer. It is the single best investment you can ever make in digital equipment. Chasing color and density correction
through multiple offsetting is the way to go mad quickly. What do I mean?
Well some folks change the screen,
then adjust the printer, then adjust the screen, then adjust the printer… you
end up so far out-of-plumb it’s not funny. Just as the lab processes
your film according to specs, you need to work at known standards with
digital as well. |
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