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Image Science Christmas 2006 Update!
As usual there's some mixed news up the top and an article/chat down the bottom. We hope this update finds you well and the Image Science team wish you a very happy and safe festive season. Thanks for your support this year and we look forward to working with you in 2007!
The News Snippets
Christmas Break
Image Science shuts for Christmas at lunchtime on the 22nd of December, and re-opens on the 15th of January 2007.
Epson 3800s
We haven't had a chance to put a web page up yet, but we can now order and supply Epson 3800s at competitive prices. And of course we can put packages together involving calibration equipment, profiles, Eizo monitors etc. This printer gets our vote for best bang for buck at the moment. If you're interested, drop us a line for a quote.
Our price for the printer is $2150 (inc. GST) and we throw in a inkjet paper super sampler as well (normally $55!). This give you samples of pretty much all the beautiful papers we have on offer here, so you can start printing with your new printer straight away. Add two custom profiles for just $100 if you like (normally $135!).
Our office isn't quite big enough to handle stock of the 7800s and 9800s, and we're not wanting to get involved with large printer installs, so for the moment this is the only model we're carrying. It's a great one though - both matte and photo black inks loaded at the same time, fantastic and well proven Ultrachrome K3 inks, and a new paper handling system said to be much better indeed with fine art papers than previous models. Sounds like an ideal machine to us, and we're already getting profiles through from some of our customers that look very good. Epson are definitely on to a winner with this one!
Eizo Price Drop!
As some of you may have noticed, Eizo recently reduced their prices - now, what would be nicer for Christmas than a world class, colour accurate monitor? If you've been thinking about upgrading your screen, now's a good time. We're an all Eizo office these days and we would never, ever go back to anything else. They're just great monitors!
Eizo Monitors at Image Science
Eye One Display 2 - Newsletter Special!!
Mention this newsletter and you can have an Eye One Display Version 2 for just $395 (plus $10 for Express Post anywhere in the country if needed). Add two custom profiles for just $110 (normally $135!) if you want!! This offer is only valid until Christmas, and while stocks last. So get your orders in quickly!
11 by 14 Prat Folios
We've now got stock of the Prat Pampa Spiral books in my own personal favourite folio size - 11 by 14 inches. In the US, this is absolutely the standard folio size. Big enough to be noticeably more substantial than A4, and to hold an 8 by 10/12 without feeling in any way tight. And of course they're easier to take around town than an A3 size folio!
Prat Pampa Folios at Image Science
Christmas Cards!!
We've got good stocks of all the sizes of Crane Museo double sided, laser scored inkjet printable cards. We used these for our wedding invitations, our own Christmas cards in the last few months and they're excellent. A few Epson 2400 owners have reported they had some trouble feeding the cards, but apparently if you apply light pressure just as the printer attempts to take up the card they do go through OK. We actually used our Canon IP5200 office printer to print them all, and they went through with no issue at all. We've also tried them in Epson 2100s and some other Canon models without trouble. The Epson 2400s do seem to be a bit more temperamental with paper feeding than most printers. If anyone has any tips we'd love to hear them!
Crane Museo Cards at Image Science
Hahnemuehle Albums to change - time to snap up the current ones!!
The much loved Hahnemuehle inkjet printable albums are about to undergo an upgrade - both in price and in slickness! We haven't seen the new ones yet, but they're quite beautiful by all reports. Leather covers, interleaves between the pages, and 20 sheets of 276 gsm weight Photo Rag paper (yes, yet another weight of Photo Rag). The matching new refills will be 40 sheets, with interleaves, and Chicago screw extensions included. So all in all a big upgrade - they should be excellent. They will, inevitably, be noticeably dearer as well (but we don't have any pricing info yet, I'm afraid!)
So, now is the time to snap up the current albums and refills (which are great, and very affordable!) if you want them - because they'll never be this cheap again. The swap over will occur in January if all goes to plan so I'd get any orders in before Christmas if you're attached to the current styles and prices (which we are - we'd prefer it if they'd keep both types!)
Hahnemuehle Albums at Image Science
Hahnemuehle Photo Rag Pearl coming!
Hahnemuehle (who have a lot of news this month!) - have announced a new 320 weight Photo Rag Pearl paper. Details remain sketchy at this point but we're expecting (n.b. this is a complete guess!) that it will be similar to their Fine Art Pearl paper but without optical brighteners in it (i.e. a direct competitor to current market leader Crane Silver Rag). We should see this early in the new year. We're happy to take pre-orders if you're wanting some of the first shipment.
Hahnemuehle Pricing To Rise
Unfortunately, Hahnemuehle have finally come through with their threatened price rises - the first in at least 5 years I think. Prices will be going up at least 10-20%, any time in the next week or two, so I'd advise doing some big orders now to lock in the current prices. This will be a universal price rise for all Hahnemuehle products in Australia.
Ink Consistency Checking
We've recently developed a new methodology for testing ink consistency, so if you're running something like a Continuous Ink System, or a set of aftermarket inks, and want to find out definitively how well your inks compare to the OEM inks - in both gamut and consistency over time terms - then we can do a report for you. Depending on what needs to be done, the cost would be in the $100 to $200 range. We've also gathered some data on the OEM (i.e. original) inks recently, and as per 'gut feelings' the OEM inks are extraordinarily consistent - with next to no variance between batches or over time. Quite remarkable in fact - but not surprising, or profiles wouldn't be as effective as they are. Some of our original profiles from around 2002 are still happily being used and are as accurate as ever!
Jeremy's Corner
First, let me say a big thank you to all who asked about our wedding and offered good wishes for us - you'll be pleased to know the wedding went fabulously well! October 7th, the big day, was 27 degrees, big blue skies, just perfect. The ceremony (held by celebrant Glenda Lofts) was fantastic - full of warmth, gentle humour and down to earth sentiment. The reception (at Bluestone Restaurant/Bar) was great - lots of friends and family, funny speeches, excellent food, lots of drinks - perfect! And it was all captured wonderfully by George Trifunovic of Ardmillan Studios who I would thoroughly recommend to anyone looking for really classy, yet really relaxed wedding or portrait photography - it's hard to express in words how happy we were with his efforts on the day (even from a picky photographer's perspective!). That Leica wide open black and white look - makes even me look half decent!!
Second, the all important honeymoon - well, we're just about to take the proper honeymoon - on Lord Howe Island - which brings me to our closing dates. A bit longer than normal this year, so please plan around the following dates:
Image Science will be shut for Christmas at lunchtime on the 22nd of December, and re-opens on the 15th of January 2007
It's hard to believe that Christmas is only two weeks away as I write this. This year has gone so quickly for us, and it's been an exceptionally busy one. What with all the new things going on here, teaching at RMIT, and organising a wedding, I feel like I've barely had a moment to reflect. And next year we have all sorts of new plans that I'm just beginning to think about now. Well, it's good to keep busy - I've even been taking more photographs than normal lately, which is great - I've been able to catch up on all those family and friends jobs we photographer's always have on our To Do list. But everywhere I turn there is a new baby, or someone turning 80, or something else wonderful and worth documenting. The biggest challenge is finding the time to process all the raw files and get everything printed. I'm certainly appreciating my new cameras's RAW + JPG mode which gives me the best of both worlds - ultimate quality that comes from the control offered by RAW, but also the speed of JPG delivery. Very nice. I've also been appreciating the skin tones from the D200 - finally, something as nice, if not nicer, for skin tones than those classic negative films. Lovely, rich, creamy skin tones - I'd been missing them, and was simply never able to achieve really excellent skin tones with the 6 megapixel machines that are thankfully no longer the only reasonably priced options. It's funny, the skin tones that come so easily from the D200 have a really distinct look about them that is uncannily reminiscent of the legendary Hasselblad/Zeiss look.
We've worked on some really exciting things this year - LOTS of exhibitions, complete folios, and some big scanning projects. Our clients have won top awards with our prints/scans/profiles at pretty much every major event this year. It's been an interesting year, and we've seen some really great work come through. People really seem to be mastering digital finally, with colour management a much more pervasive part of their approach. This has led directly to much higher quality results than ever before across the board, and with the advent of stunning papers like Silver Rag, black and white is firmly back on the photographic menu, with quality clearly exceeding that of silver gelatin prints now readily available. Sure, it still takes some technique and practice to get it right, but once mastered, and with proper profiles etc, the results can be nothing short of gob smacking. With the inkiest, deepest blacks EVER available to photographers. This stuff has really come of age now, and it's all very exciting.
Given the huge end of year workload we've had, I haven't had time to put anything really coherent to paper lately, so I'll have to get back to that in the new year. Right after I finally add proper online sales to the web site. And finish my book on digital fine printing. And spend more quality time with Amy. And ... well, I'll fit it in somewhere!
Looking forward to what 2007 will bring!
Cheers, and best wishes for the holidays!
Jeremy and Amy Daalder
Directors,
Image Science
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