B&W Shots with A80

[SYS]

I'm a new owner of A80, and as I love B&W photography, one of the first things I immediately tested was its B&W feature. Overall I was pretty happy with the results, albeit I found all of the results a bit on the soft side.

The real problem I have is that, my old Canon i850 printer is printing these B&W photos with predominantly purplish hue. Except for the white part, there is no true black whatsoever. Is this due to my printer being cheap and low end, or is this the way it is with all photo printers? Is there a secret to printing these B&W's in real B&W's as with traditional photography? A software trick?

Thanks in advance for any helpful responses.

SYS

[kiev4a]

Don't know if you are printing directly to a printer from the camera. I print black and white and color through Photoshop to an Epson printer and if I forget to convert the image to grayscale, I get the blue you describe. Even though the picture from the camera may look black and white, it is still actually an RGB image unless you convert it to grayscale. You might also be able to just tell your printer to print using the black and white cartridge rather than color mode.

[SYS]

Thanks, Kiev4a, for your helpful response. I used the software that came with the camera. Since I do have the Photoshop, let me try it there with the grayscale conversion you mentioned. Thanks!

[Don Schaeffer]

You might find a hint of color when you print in black and white. I think it's because the inks don't perfectly match in the printer. I get a slight bluish cast with my Epson printer. I think it's attractive and I live with it.

[SYS]

Don, you're right. I tried the grayscale on the Printshop, as well as setting my printer to grayscale printing. While the method did reduce the amount of purplish or bluish hue, I still didn't find the photo to be true B&W.

Does anyone have the answer to this problem? I'd really like to obtain the true B&W photos with digital cameras.

[kodos]

I have the HP Photosmart 7960 -- it's a great printer, and has a grayscale cartridge for printing TRUE grayscale (B&W) images.

No hue on it whatsoever, and I've been tickled with its performance. You can get them for around $200 US these days too (I got mine a few months back for around $300 and it's worth every penny).

Good luck!

[RoB_m]

Don, you're right. I tried the grayscale on the Printshop, as well as setting my printer to grayscale printing. While the method did reduce the amount of purplish or bluish hue, I still didn't find the photo to be true B&W.

Does anyone have the answer to this problem? I'd really like to obtain the true B&W photos with digital cameras.

go to a printer. or get a printer that uses gray and black inks. when a relatively cheap color printer prints a black and white picture, it's always going to get a hue beause it can't make perfect grays from blue, red and yellow.

[kiev4a]

I have an epson 785exp and I scan in a lot of black and white negatives that I print out. haven't don it for awhile (and that printer is at home and I'm at work) But I'm pretty sure I just go to printer options and set it to print black and white (I assume that is black cartridge only. My scanner always scans in the negatives as RGB files and if I don't convert them to grayscale in Photoshop I get big time blue cast.
I've haven't shot in B&W mode with my A80 yet but I suspect if you pulled the file into Photoshop it would say it's RGB--even if there is no color.

[Don Schaeffer]

You can set the printer to print only using the black cartridge. Most printers will give a much reduced resolution if you do this. I've never bothered.

[SYS]

Thank you all for your kind and informative responses to my question. I think the simplest solution to my B&W issue is to upgrade the printer itself, especially now that the price on good photo printers have come down quite a bit. The fact that I'm tired of only printing photos up to 8X10 max is another reason why I'm definitely leaning towards the upgrade. I think I'll use the one that I have now just for regular printing and get myself a photo printer that can print up to 19X13 or something close to that.

Ah.... so many things to buy and not enough money, or enough money but no permission from my ever watchful wife....

You guys are a wonderful bunch!! Keep clicking!!

[RoB_m]

i use epson 1280s for B&W. they print 13x19 and can take the third party upgrade to use 6 shades of gray ink for the ultimate tonality.