the last word

Photography meets digital computer technology. Photography wins -- most of the time.

  • site home
  • blog home
  • galleries
  • contact
  • underwater
  • the bleeding edge
You are here: Home / The Last Word / PhotoLucida 2009: printing problems

PhotoLucida 2009: printing problems

April 10, 2009 JimK Leave a Comment

When I posted yesterday, I had just gotten my first 17×25 print out of my Epson 3800, and it looked great. I was stoked. I printed another.

Uh-oh. The print had little whitish horizontal marks in the black background at the top part of the image. The marks didn’t go clear across the page, but appeared in two widely-space sections. Their outlines were irregular. It looked like the print head was rubbing against the paper, and scraping off some of the ink.

I tried another print. Same problem. The irregular scraped areas were in the same general place, towards the top of the image, but they were differently shaped. I began to formulate a theory. The Harman FB AL paper is heavy, but floppy — much more flexible than matte-finish papers of similar weight. The fact that I was printing on 17×25 stock instead of my usual 17×22 meant that there was three inches more of heavy paper sticking up out of the back of the printer. Maybe the weight of that paper kept the paper lower in the printer from lying flat. That would explain why there were mo scrape marks on the lower part of the image.  I pushed the printer back toward the wall so that it would hold up the paper as it fed into the printer. Better, but still not fixed. I went to bed.

This morning I considered my options. The first was to use the front-loading feature of the printer rather than the rear manual feed slot that I had been using. That would give a completely flat paper path, and might keep the paper from bucking up and into the print head.  I checked the manual, and found that you couldn’t use front-loading for paper wider than 16.5 inches.

My next though was to trim the paper to 17×22 before printing. I was prepared to give up the look that came from printing on 17×25; I figured I’d just make the image smaller and higher on the page when I printed it from Lightroom. I made a test print. It looked fine. I tried another. The printer put the image waaay too high on the page, so that it was bleeding off the top. “Once is happenstance,” I said to myself, as I tossed the print into the round file. I  printed another image.

The scrapes were back. Only in one place, not two, and not as bad as before, but definitely bad enough to ruin the print. I pulled up the 9800 manual and was looking for the section on how to change to Photo Black ink when the phone rang. It was Hunter Witherill. I whined at him at little, and he suggested that maybe the printer platen was set too low, even though I didn’t think the Harman paper was any thicker than Exhibition Fiber. I set the Platen Gap to “Wide”, and made a test print. It was fine. Not knowing whether I had just been lucky or whether Hunter’s suggestion had worked, I printed another image. Success.  I felt good that the problem is solved, and stupid for not figuring it out myself.

I made a jig to trim the 17×25 paper down to 17×22, and printed the whole series. I did not try going back to 17×25, although I’m pretty sure I could have made it work. I’ve wasted enough time on this already.

The Last Word

← PhotoLucida 2009: printing PhotoLucida 2009: more printing →

Leave a Reply Cancel reply

Your email address will not be published. Required fields are marked *

February 2023
S M T W T F S
 1234
567891011
12131415161718
19202122232425
262728  
« Jan    

Articles

  • About
    • Patents and papers about color
    • Who am I?
  • Good 35-70 MF lens
  • How to…
    • Backing up photographic images
    • How to change email providers
  • Lens screening testing
    • Equipment and Software
    • Examples
      • Bad and OK 200-600 at 600
      • Excellent 180-400 zoom
      • Fair 14-30mm zoom
      • Good 100-200 mm MF zoom
      • Good 100-400 zoom
      • Good 100mm lens on P1 P45+
      • Good 120mm MF lens
      • Good 18mm FF lens
      • Good 24-105 mm FF lens
      • Good 24-70 FF zoom
      • Good 35 mm FF lens
      • Good 60 mm lens on IQ3-100
      • Good 63 mm MF lens
      • Good 65 mm FF lens
      • Good 85 mm FF lens
      • Good and bad 25mm FF lenses
      • Good zoom at 24 mm
      • Marginal 18mm lens
      • Marginal 35mm FF lens
      • Mildly problematic 55 mm FF lens
      • OK 16-35mm zoom
      • OK 60mm lens on P1 P45+
      • OK Sony 600mm f/4
      • Pretty good 16-35 FF zoom
      • Pretty good 90mm FF lens
      • Problematic 400 mm FF lens
      • Tilted 20 mm f/1.8 FF lens
      • Tilted 30 mm MF lens
      • Tilted 50 mm FF lens
      • Two 15mm FF lenses
    • Found a problem – now what?
    • Goals for this test
    • Minimum target distances
      • MFT
      • APS-C
      • Full frame
      • Small medium format
    • Printable Siemens Star targets
    • Target size on sensor
      • MFT
      • APS-C
      • Full frame
      • Small medium format
    • Test instructions — postproduction
    • Test instructions — reading the images
    • Test instructions – capture
    • Theory of the test
    • What’s wrong with conventional lens screening?
  • Previsualization heresy
  • Privacy Policy
  • Recommended photographic web sites
  • Using in-camera histograms for ETTR
    • Acknowledgments
    • Why ETTR?
    • Normal in-camera histograms
    • Image processing for in-camera histograms
    • Making the in-camera histogram closely represent the raw histogram
    • Shortcuts to UniWB
    • Preparing for monitor-based UniWB
    • A one-step UniWB procedure
    • The math behind the one-step method
    • Iteration using Newton’s Method

Category List

Recent Comments

  • Brian Olson on Fuji GFX 100S exposure strategy, M and A modes
  • JimK on Picking a macro lens
  • JimK on Picking a macro lens
  • Glenn Whorrall on Picking a macro lens
  • JimK on What pitch do you need to scan 6×6 TMax 100?
  • Hatzipavlis Peter on What pitch do you need to scan 6×6 TMax 100?
  • JeyB on Internal focusing 100ish macro lenses
  • JimK on How focus-bracketing systems work
  • Garry George on How focus-bracketing systems work
  • Rhonald on Format size and image quality

Archives

Copyright © 2023 · Daily Dish Pro On Genesis Framework · WordPress · Log in

Unless otherwise noted, all images copyright Jim Kasson.