That was an email I got a couple of days ago. Quite a while ago Zoe and Gerry agreed to give me a special birthday. Part of it was in appreciation for the help I've given Gerry. The first part was a new computer. That is up and running. The scanner is the second part.

It's the Epson V700. It was more than I originally had planned on but I have some paying scanning work coming up so I went for the best flatbed. This eats a little into the third part of the birthday present, a HP B9180 13" wide pigment printer that will be coming in another month or two. I will have to add a few dollars for that one but it will all be worth it.

It's been a long time. Almost 30 years. I had my own darkroom in the 1970s. Part of the reason I got out of photography, in addition to getting married and having three children, was the frustration in not being able to afford the equipment to print like I wanted to. And that was black and white. I was getting into color and, although I had printed color working in a photo lab, printing color at home was very expensive. By the end of the 1970s I had stopped printing. Over the next few years I looked into Carbon printing, Platinum printing, and even Dye Transfer for color. But reality kept any of it from happening. I even tried having labs print Cibachrome but I hated the colors. In 1995 I bought my first PC (I had an Apple IIc in 1985) with an early Epson photo printer, an Olympus digital camera, and Photoshop. My early enthusiasm was dashed when I realized the prints faded pretty fast. My next bout of hope was 4 years ago when I upgraded my computer, bought an Epson C80 pigment printer, and started scanning negatives with an Epson 2450. This combination was closer. The pigment prints lasted much longer but it was only a 4 color printer and it just didn't have the gamut I wanted, even for black and white. The Epson scanner did a good job but not really good enough for 35mm. With the V700 scanner and the HP B9180 printer I will finally be able to make the prints I wanted to 30 years ago. Actually, a lot better prints.

Learning all this new equipment and software is like drinking from a fire hose. In the software department I've added Photoshop CS2 (up from Photoshop 6), Noise Ninja, and FocalBlade for sharpening. I just picked up Martin Evening's Adobe Photoshop CS2 for Photographers and Katrin Eismann's Adobe Photoshop Restoration & Retouching. (I have some restoration work to do and I want to do more. I love restoring old photos!) I need to get serious about learning all this shit. I need to be ready for that printer! Thanks to Zoe and Gerry for making this dream happen.

The scanner left Maspeth, NY, yesterday to arrive Monday, November 6. But who's excited?