Toronto Black & White Photography: B&W Prints using Epson’s R2880 and QuadTone Rip

Once again I had the honour of being asked to donate prints to be auctioned off for the 2nd Annual Fund Raising Event for the Kelly Shires Breast Cancer Snow Run. For the previous event, I had donated 8″x 10″ colour prints, which had been printed on my Epson R1400. That printer was a workhorse, but after three (3) years of heavy duty use (including printing all of our own wedding invitations) it finally died. My volume of printing is not such that would’ve have justified the purchase of Epson’s entry level model into their Professional line, the 3880. At that time, the technology available in their R2880 was on par with what their 3800 offered, the only drawbacks were the size of the ink cartridges and the fact that you have to swap the photo and matte black cartridges out every time you switch papers, which unfortunately I do quite often.

Back then, if I had had the benefit of waiting I would’ve held off until the R3000 came out. However, as with all equipment failures in any line of work, they usually happen at the most inopportune time. When the R1400 broke down, I had to make a quick decision, as I needed to deliver a DVD (the cover is printed on matte paper) from an engagement session to a couple traveling back to Alberta the very next day. It all came down to space, I just couldn’t fit the 3880 anywhere near my workstation, whereas the R2880 had a footprint very close to my old R1400. Fast forward over a year and I can honestly say that I don’t regret the purchase one bit. The R2880 delivers stunning colour prints, but where it really shines is delivering beautiful dead neutral black and white prints. Now, you can choose to use Epson’s own ABW driver and get great results or you can opt to get geeky and a little bit anal about it and use Roy Harrington’s QuadTone Rip driver to take the capabilities of the printer to a whole new level.

Anyway, I could keep blabbing on about the printer and the kind of images it can produce, but I think it’s better if I explain it in pictures. All prints were done using 13″ x 19″ Epson’s Ultra Premium Photo Paper Luster. Here are a couple of images I hadn’t posted on the blog before but some of you might have seen then on my Facebook page already. Below each one of them is a picture that my wife took of me holding the print from the R2880: