Photography News 14

Papers review

ON TEST

Papers for black&white

CansonBaryta Photographique 310gsm

SPECS

PRICE £21.87 A4 25 sheets, £47.24 A3 25 sheets CONTACT canson-infinity.com AVAILABILITY A4, A3, A3+, A2, 8.5x11in, 11x17in, 17x22in, roll SIZES 17in, 24in, 36in, 44in, 50in WEIGHT 310gsm DOWNLOADABLE ICC

Nothing beats that feeling of producing a mono print in the darkroom, but printing at home with modern materials can equal it. Any one of these eight papers will give you that feeling

Words & pictures by Will Cheung

GENERIC PROFILES Yes (Canon, Epson, HP)

shades of grey, especially the lighter tones, from a single black cartridge is almost impossible. For this test we used an Epson Stylus Pro 3880, which has four blacks although only three are in use at any one time – Photo Black, Matt Black, Light Black and Light Light Black. With a capable printer ready, all you need now is a good paper and here are eight of the best around. For the test we selected papers that have the look and feel of darkroom fibre-based or FB materials. Such papers when air-dried have a lovely sheen rather than a high gloss and look gorgeous with the right image. Try them for yourself.

Making a lovely monochrome image is immensely rewarding but to confine the image to the computer monitor is criminal. To truly appreciate your work you need to get it printed on a quality paper. You may farm your printing out to a lab service and that’s fine, but for the ultimate fulfilment nothing beats home printing. Before we turn our attention to the papers, we need to talk about the printer. It is self-evident you need a decent photographic quality unit but for quality monochrome output you need one that has more than one black ink cartridge. Trying to convincingly deliver all those delicate

There is much to admire in this paper with its very slight creamy base. It lies flat out of the box and has a fine, smooth sheen. Most importantly it responds well to printing. It seems ideally suited to scenes where there is an abundance of delicate shades of grey and it delivers beautiful results that have a great deal of tonal subtlety. Shadow details come out with plenty of detail visible but it doesn’t skimp on blacks either which look deep and rich. A nicely priced paper that can be thoroughly recommended and certainly one for the shortlist.

Fotospeed PlatinumBaryta 300gsm

SPECS

PRICE £22.99 A4 20 sheets, £43.99 A3 20 sheets CONTACT

fotospeed.com AVAILABILITY A4, A3, A3+, A2, roll sizes 17in, 24in, 36in, 44in, panoramic WEIGHT 300gsm DOWNLOADABLE ICC

GENERIC PROFILES Yes (Canon, Epson, HP)

This Fotospeed material has a smooth, very tactile sheen finish and it lies flat straight out of the box. Its base colour is very marginally off-white. No complaints about print quality and this paper proved to be an excellent all-rounder dealing well with our range of monochrome test images which included portraits and landscapes. Tonal gradation was smooth, shadows held plenty of detail and blacks come out as deep as most people would want. A fine paper at a price which is competitive.

Photography News | Issue 14