Have you ever tried pinhole photography? It’s an insanely fun process that gives you an unprecedented level of freedom to experiment with the photographic process. Unfortunately, like all types of analog photography, it has been getting tougher and more expensive in recent years. However, pinhole and other direct positive photographers scored a win today, as Ilford has has announced the return of their Harman Direct Positive Fiber Base Paper.

Just in case you’re not familiar with the process, pinhole photography involves creating a camera out of a box (or really anything with an empty space inside and a small hole in the front to let in light). Rather than creating a negative, the image is exposed directly onto the paper, creating a finished print once it’s developed. Because the process is different than printing in the dark room, it can require some specific materials.

The supply of Ilford’s Harman Direct Positive Fiber Paper dried up when they could no longer get the emulsion, but over the past year, they got it figured out and now it’s available for purchase again. According to Ilford, there was quite a bit of demand for it to come back, which is reassuring news.

It may still be a little tricky to find it here in the states for a while during the production ramp up, but it will be there if you want it. And if you have never tried pinhole photography, you should. It’s one of the most fun ways to ruin a bunch of photographic paper and maybe even make a real print or two.

Official Site

Want to learn about taking pinhole photographs? Check out our tutorial!

The post New Gear: Ilford Brings Back Harman Direct Positive Paper to Make Pinhole Photographers Happy appeared first on Popular Photography.

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At Paris Photo, I met a woman who is doing research into the “materiality of photography,” or in other words, the physical properties of photographs. She’s been working with photo-preservationists, restorers and chemists to learn more about photographic paper, which is not—as is all too easy to forget in this age of screen-based image consumption—a simple flat surface. Instead, it’s made up of different layers, and they react in different ways to different conditions of light and temperature. Alison Rossiter, an American photographer living in New Jersey, is doing detective work that would fit in here. I also found her work at Paris Photo, where she was represented by two galleries. To make these images, Rossiter (who, not coincidentally, has experience in photographic conservation) located sheets of undeveloped photographic paper from the early 20th century, then developed them herself. The result is a strange, almost haunted series in which we see the fingerprints and dust left behind over the course of decades.

Looking at these photos, it’s tempting to make a quasi-dramatic statement, like “what we are truly seeing here is the raw trace of time.” In a way, though, isn’t that more or less accurate? In some of her other works with these expired materials, Rossiter has played with their development more actively, but here she’s developed them in a “straight” way, leaving you only to “see” the effects of time on the paper itself. We could think of these re-developed pieces of photo paper as a clear-headed exploration into the early days of photography. What she’s doing is in correspondence with the early camera magazines we’ve been featuring, or the work of Daisuke Yokota, who has tried to introduce similar distortions into his photos, in a natural (but, obviously, sped-up) way.

It’s a little odd to show these images online, because they lose all of the physical characteristics that were really there on the wall when I saw them. This is true of any photographic image when it’s displayed online, but it seems especially true in this case. Looking at Rossiter’s images, it’s easy to wonder what will happen to the photos being printed today.

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#Repost @jlcvisuals with @repostapp ・・・ #notiphone A #silvermedal for the incredible fencer @amassialas, photographed with my #8x10viewcamera for #Latimes #Olympian #portrait series. #blackandwhite #photography #filmisnotdead #art #olympics #olympics2016 #rio #fencing #usafencing #teamusa #silver

A photo posted by Jay L. Clendenin (@jaylclendenin) on Aug 9, 2016 at 12:48am PDT

Large format photography is a fascinating process here in the digital age. It’s slow, wonderful, beautiful, frustrating, and perhaps most importantly, really expensive. Photographer Jay L. Clendenin has been shooting large-format portraits of Olympic athletes in Rio, but he has been skipping the typical negatives and directly exposing photo paper, which is then developed into a paper negative that can be scanned and reversed in post.

It’s still not as cheap as 35mm film—let alone digital—

Large format photography is a fascinating process here in the digital age. It’s slow, wonderful, beautiful, frustrating, and perhaps most importantly, really expensive. Photographer Jay L. Clendenin has been shooting large-format portraits of Olympic athletes in Rio, but he has been skipping the typical negatives and directly exposing photo paper, which is then developed into a paper negative that can be scanned and reversed in post.

It’s still not as cheap as 35mm film—let alone digital—

The post Photographer Jay L. Clendenin Shoots Olympic Athlete Portraits With a Large-Format Camera Directly To Photo Paper appeared first on Popular Photography.

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Epson Stylus Pro 7900

The most annoying thing about Epson pro printers has been the need to manually swap out black cartridges whenever you wanted to switch from glossy to matte paper, and back again. That task wasted time and expensive ink. The company’s latest pro printers solve the problem with an extra ink channel. Epson calls it “auto sharing black ink channel technology,” a complicated way of saying that the 24-inch Stylus Pro 7900 (and companion 44-inch SP9900) can simultaneously accommodate photo (glossy) and matte black ink cartridges-and that the printer switches between them on the fly, from sheet to sheet.

The ability to switch blacks automatically actually first appeared in the Stylus Pro 3800, a scaled-down 17-inch model, and in the massive 64-inch SP11880. Those models use an inkset called Ultrachrome K3 with Vivid Magenta, which required eight and nine channels respectively. But the two newest pro models use an inkset dubbed Ultrachrome HDR, for high dynamic range, which features new orange and green inks, for a total of ten channels. (There’s an eleventh cartridge slot for the black not in use.) The green and orange inks are designed to further expand the color gamut of prints, and on paper (so to speak) they do. Whether the overall improvement is visible or not, the green and orange inks can make a real difference in the rendition of skin tones because both contain a measure of yellow, an inkjet nemesis.

There are other improvements: New heads and better dithering algorithms deliver even greater dot consistency, though only the most practiced eye will notice. Print speed has essentially doubled. Paper loading is greatly simplified-made painless compared to the competition’s with a new, spindle-free system.

The printers’ front panel now has a color LCD that makes ink information easier to read, and controls are less confusing. You can even get an add-on X-Rite spectrophotometer, an option aimed at the built-in one on HP’s Z-series printers. Last but certainly not least, you can mix and match cartridge sizes, including new high-capacity 350ml and 700ml ones, for better ink economy- and serious sticker shock! About $4,000.

HP Designjet Z3200

The next generation HP Designjet Z3200 offers better paper handling, faster print speed, and a larger internal hard drive than its groundbreaking predecessor, HP’s Designjet Z3100. Most notably, though, it introduces a new HP Chromatic Red ink that substantially extends the color gamut of its pigment-based prints. In our tests we found that bright colors printed with excellent saturation and detail, and that skin tones were very natural. Black-and-white output from the Z3200 is outstanding, whether made with a standard profile or the driver’s grayscale option. Either way, or in color, our images were superbly sharp and detailed on all the HP-branded and third-party media we tried.

What could be improved? We’d like an extension for the single-sheet paper feed tray, for better support of large sheets. We’d also like a roll-feeding procedure that’s as simple as the one for sheet media. The Z-series roll feed on either the 24- or 48-inch model is not as user-friendly as in Epson’s competing 24- and 44-inch printers, because it requires a back-bending reach-over if you try to load the paper from the front. (We were also asked to re-feed the roll paper a few times.) And you will need to get behind the printer if loading paper from the rear. All in all, though, this is an impressive machine. About $3,500 (24-inch).

Canon Pixma Pro9500 Mark II

This second- generation version of Canon’s first pigment-based 13×19-inch printer is a fairly modest upgrade of the original, but that means it’s a terrific printer. It uses the same archival Lucia pigment inkset, which features three grays-light gray but no light light gray, with automatic switching between photo (glossy) and matte black-plus the colors, including red and green, that made its predecessor stand out. While the Pro9500 Mark II does an excellent job with color images, even the color inks contribute to the exceptionally rich, smooth tonality of its black-and-white output. Thousands of nozzles in its replaceable printhead, plus a three-picoliter droplet size and 4800x2800dpi resolution, make prints breathtakingly sharp as well.

With front and rear slots, the Mark II is able to handle very heavy papers- over a millimeter thick (front) and/or up to 300gsm (rear). Paper feeding is not the easiest or quickest in its class. And for some reason the new model is slightly slower than the original, though we don’t think that’s a big deal when you’re printing at this level of quality. Besides, if you’re using Windows Vista, the Canon software even has an ambient-light adjustment feature that fine-tunes color to suit your anticipated illumination. About $800. Epson Stylus Photo R2880 We loved the 13-inch Epson Stylus Photo R2400, but it drank ink like water and never seemed as well-built as Epson’s pro models (though lots of pros were and still are using it). The SP R2880 addresses those issues, and then some. It uses Epson’s UltraChrome K3 inkset-yes, the one with Vivid Magentas-and as a result improves the rendition of purplish colors and smooths transitions in hue.

The R2880 still requires wasteful manual swapping of matte and photo black inks, a problem fixed in at least four of Epson’s newer printers. It seems a shame to burden a 13×19 printer-one likely to be used as much by serious amateurs as pros-with this shortcoming. A printer this size is in fact the perfect tool with which to experiment with different media, from so-called baryta paper to heavy, raggy stocks, some of which will require matte black and others glossy black. The Stylus Photo R2880 invites that kind of experimentation with its ability to handle both thick sheets and roll paper. Bitching aside, though, the R2880 makes gorgeous prints. About $700.

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Analog photography is making a huge comeback at the moment, which means eBay has been lighting up with lots of older gear, from old film cameras to darkroom equipment and supplies. Unfortunately, this auction—which apparently somehow ended in a sale—probably didn’t work out so well for either the buyer or the seller.

If you’re scratching your head about why this is funny, then consider why the paper typically comes with those thick, black, lightproof, plastic bags.

Shout out to our friend (and really awesome photographer) Justin Borucki for pointing this out.

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1. Hahnemühle Bamboo

$25, street, for 20 8.5×11-inch sheets
www.hahnemuehle.com
Bamboo is the “it” fiber lately for fans of environmentally friendly products, and this renewable resource turns out to make a great surface for prints. The heavy, matte, Digital Fine Art paper’s warm tone suits photos that would be rendered too stark by the optical brighteners that make many mainstream papers extra white.

2. Harman FB Mp Warmtone

$24, street, for 15 8.5×11-inch sheets
www.harman-inkjet.com
Made for black-and-white photos, this fiber-based paper will give you prints that look more like they’ve just finished a bath in the fixer than a trip through your inkjet printer. And a barium compound in the paper keeps pictures sharp by preventing the bleeding you get with some matte surfaces.

3. Innova FibaPrint

Warm Tone Gloss, $48, street, for 25 8.5×11-inch sheets
www.innovaart.com
Unlike some less-expensive glossy papers that can feel flimsy, this surface really resembles classic fiber-based darkroom paper. With a subtly textured gloss that holds ink well, this premium paper is a great choice when you need to make prints with more presence.

4. Moab Moenkopi Unryu 55

$18, street, for 10 8.27×11.69-inch (A4) sheets
www.moabpaper.com
If you are looking to take your pictures out of the realm of ordinary photographic paper, this textured and slightly translucent surface will do the trick. The traditionally, sustainably produced paper has a slight iridescence and, despite its novelty, retains your picture’s sharpness.

5. Adorama ProJet Silver Mirror
$27, direct, for 10 8.5×11-inch sheets
www.adorama.com
This filmy, reflective surface is fun for printing wackier projects, and it gives your images an almost three-dimensional depth. One caveat: To prevent this easily crumpled surface from jamming your printer, stick it to another piece of paper before you send it through.

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Direct positive paper portrait

Modern digital cameras make taking a technically nice picture pretty easy. It gets harder and harder to trick smartphone cameras into making truly bad images, and most camera auto modes get it right more often than not. But, it wasn’t always this way. In fact, some photographic techniques still require patience, skill, some knowledge of chemistry, and a big box of rubber gloves. For this project, I shot portraits with a setup that’s decidedly not for photographing people, let alone from close-up. But, that’s the beauty of old school photography—imperfection is what makes it great. It’s also just as much about the process as it is the final product. I shot and developed these photos of the Popular Science staff in the Popular Science office.

Materials

If you’re starting from scratch, this kind of shoot requires a pretty substantial investment in terms of gear. Here’s what I used for the shoot:

• A large format camera: The film requires a big camera, like the ones with the accordion-style bodies for which you need to throw a cape over your head to focus and compose your shot. I have two and both cost me less than $150 each on Craigslist.
• Lots of lights: I used three dedicated photography studio strobes that total 2,000 watts of total power. It’s enough to leave big, pink, residual blobs in your vision after you have your picture taken. You can do without this, but you’ll need to shoot in direct, bright sunlight unless your subject can stay perfectly still for minutes at a time (they can’t).
• Film: For this shoot we used Ilford Harman Direct Positive Paper, which I’ll get into the mechanics of later on. It’s less than $1 per sheet, which actually makes it cheaper than typical black-and-white film in the 4×5-inch format.
• A safe light: A red bulb to illuminate the room where you’ll do your developing.
• Trays and chemicals: A small set of developing trays and a full collection of chemicals (there are three total) should only cost you about $30 total.

Large-format camera

The shooting process

The “film” we used for this project isn’t plastic, but rather it’s a fiber-based paper coated with an emulsion of silver halide crystals suspended in gelatin. It’s basically the same stuff you’d find if you were making prints in a traditional dark room.

The film isn’t sensitive to red light, so you can load the individual sheets of film into the special holders under the red haze of the safelight. I loaded the film the night before because it’s a fairly time-consuming process, especially in large numbers. I loaded a total of 40 sheets and it too me about the the length of one full episode of the excellent Weirdest Thing I Learned This Week podcast.

The first part of the shoot involved setting up the lights. The typical arrangement (we moved things around throughout the day) involved a bare flash in a standard reflector directly next to the camera lens to provide an even blanket of illumination—we just needed to get a lot of light on the subject to expose the paper.

Digital light test

The second light was a light in a modifier called a beauty dish, which slightly diffuses the light by bouncing it off of a metal plate in the center of the reflector, then funneling it out to the edges of the dish. This light gave direction and texture to the shadows to keep it from looking like a mugshot.

The last light was a 400 watt light—half as powerful as the other two—pointed directly as the back of the subject’s ear to create a kicker light that separates our subjects from the dark black backdrop.

Because the paper absorbs light so slowly, all the lights were fired at full power. It’s bright. Really bright. Like, staring at the sun bright.

We took one or two shots of each person and then headed for the developer.

Paper portrait example

Processing the image and making the picture

Developing the paper image only takes a series of three chemicals. The first is the developer, which reacts with the silver halide crystals and causes them to turn into metallic silver. This is what forms the dark areas on the paper that make up the actual image. The developer also includes an alkaline agent to raise the PH, and chemicals like sodium sulfite to reduce the rate at which the chemical reacts with the oxygen in the air. Leaving developer exposed to oxygen too long—especially if it’s used—turns it dark red and renders it useless.

How you develop is your own choice. You can neurotically control the temperature and the agitation if you want to develop for specific times. Or, you can eyeball it and treat it more like an art. I typically choose the latter for one-off prints like this.

Example 2

Once it’s out of the developer, it goes into a mildly acidic solution called a “stop,” which typically uses something like citric acid to stop the silver reaction. Then, the paper goes into a thiosulfate solution called fix, which clears away any undeveloped silver halide crystals that are hanging around the paper. After a few minutes in the fix, it goes into a wash of clean water to remove excess chemicals before hanging up to dry.

From start to finish, the whole process, including loading the film, probably takes roughly six or seven minutes per picture. It’s a far cry from shooting with a digital camera.

The challenges

As you can see with some of the examples, there is a lot of variability, even if the setup doesn’t change much.

Example 3

Because the film isn’t sensitive to every color of light, it renders skin differently than you might expect. Freckles appear very pronounced. Even though we used a lens that opens to just f/5.6—which seems tiny and slow by modern digital camera standards—the large negative made for an extremely narrow band of focus, which I frankly missed a couple times when it came to hitting the eyes.

You’ll also notice some chemical patterns on some of the photos, which is the result of too much—or sometimes too little—agitation of the liquid while the picture was in the tray.

I also managed to get a few very blatant fingerprints on some of the prints when I touched an undeveloped print with fixing chemical on my fingers.

Example 4

Should you do it?

This process obviously isn’t for everyone, but if you want to get into alternative processes, this is by far one of the simplest and cheapest ways to do it. The chemicals aren’t that toxic—at least compared to some others like tintype, which requires chemicals like cadmium bromide, which is a suspected carcinogen.

But more than anything, it’s really fun. You get to see the print develop in a dark room that you can easily set up in your bathroom without a big enlarger, like the ones required for printing film. Also, Harman paper has been going in-and-out of stock at the big photo retailers regularly, which makes it harder to get as the audience for it shrinks. Sure, it’s a lot more work than a selfie, but that’s the point.

The post Shooting portraits on photo paper is a mixture of chemistry and a dying art appeared first on Popular Photography.

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The variety of inkjet papers available to photographers these days is a far cry from the limited choices offered when the first desktop photo printers were introduced in the mid-1990s. In an effort to convince us that we could make “photo-quality” prints at home, manufacturers initially provided mostly glossy and semi-gloss inkjet papers that matched the look and feel of commercial prints. The addition of matte-surfaced paper made inkjet output much more appealing to the artistically inclined, and Hahnemuhle was ahead of the curve when it introduced the first fine art media for inkjet printing in 1997. As the quality and longevity of inkjet output has improved, so has the range of inkjet papers.

While most printer manufacturers now provide a decent selection of inkjet media, many of the more interesting papers come from independent makers such as Crane, Hahnemuhle, Legion, and Moab. In fact some of these papers are simply rebranded by printer companies. Epson offers Crane’s Textured Fine Art Paper and Legion’s Somerset Velvet, for example, and a few Hahnemuhle offerings are also available from Canon and HP.

The recent surge of interest in black-and-white digital printing has resulted in printers equipped with additional black and grey inks, providing photographers with improved monochrome results that are ideally suited to fine-art papers. A new twist is that the desired look and feel of photographic fiber-based papers is achieved with coatings (given that current fine-art papers are already made of paper or cotton fiber). The big news this year, though, is that black and white’s popularity has brought back an old idea: fiber-based paper. In particular, paper companies have been touting the term Baryta, which will be familiar only to those of you for whom the smell of hypo triggers fond memories of the chemical darkroom. It’s part of what brings the look and feel of old silver halide papers to digital printing. Baryta refers to a barium sulphate coating that’s applied to traditional fiber-based paper to control the way the emulsion interacts with the paper. While not all the new fiber-based papers are coated with real Baryta, they incorporate layers that mimic its effect. Some of the benefits claimed for the new media include deeper blacks, sharper detail, and longer print life for both black and white and color.

Thanks to the evolution of pigment ink formulations, the selection of pigment-compatible papers also has broadened. Many papers can be used with either dye-based or pigment inks. Not all papers are cross-compatible, however; some are still recommended only for dye-based printers. The good news is that it’s now easier to base your choice of paper on aesthetics rather than ink type.

One thing that makes such creative freedom possible is the proliferation of free ICC paper profiles from independent manufacturers. These can be easily downloaded from those companies’ Websites and installed on your computer, eliminating the hassle of creating your own profile. If you stick with media from the printer manufacturer, of course, profiles are built into their printers’ drivers, and also can be downloaded from their Websites. But with intriguing new papers such as the ones we’ve chosen here, and the easy availability of third-party paper profiles, there’s every reason to ink outside the box.

CRANE MUSEO PORTFOLIO RAG

Crane is best known for its stationery products, including letter/envelope combinations and notecards. In response to the growth in inkjet printing, the company developed Museo fine-art digital printing papers. The latest of these is Museo Portfolio Rag. This heavy 100 percent cotton rag paper has a smooth surface and, unlike some lesser papers, does not contain optical brighteners, additives that brighten whites under certain lighting but that may also accelerate fading. As a result it has a warmer-looking tone. In addition to standard-sized and metric-sized sheets (8.5×11 to 35×47 inches, plus A4 and A3), the stiff, hefty Museo Portfolio Rag is available in rolls. Roll widths include 17, 24, 36, 44, and 50 inches. Other Museo papers we like include a new water-resistant Canvas paper for pigment inks that’s available in both glossy and matte surfaces.

Other Museo papers we like include a new water-resistant Canvas Maestro paper that’s available in both glossy and matte surfaces and the Museo Silver Rag, a semi-gloss paper that, although it’s the same 300gsm weight and 0.015″ thickness as the Portfolio Rag, feels a little more supple but produces rich blacks and saturated colors. All three papers are optimized for pigment inks. Additionally, Portfolio Rag is designed to work with matte black inks, whereas Museo Silver Rag is compatible with photo black inks.

HAHNEMUHLE FINEART BARYTA 325

Although Hahnemuhle already offers fiber-based papers, the big news is its upcoming FineArt Baryta 325. Made from 100 percent alpha cellulose, this nicely weighted and bright white paper has an ultrasmooth, glossy surface. Also new from Hahnemuhle and available now is Photo Rag Pearl 320. This smooth surfaced paper is 100 percent cotton fiber linters, which gives it additional stability and longevity as well as the look and feel of traditional Baryta paper. Photo Rag Pearl contains no optical brighteners, so it produces slightly warmer-toned prints. While our color test prints look very good on this paper (and on its sibling, Fine Art Pearl), its pearl surface seems to beg for black and white. The 320gsm paper is available in 17-, 24-, 36- and 44-inch rolls as well as standard cut sheet sizes.

HARMAN PHOTO MATT FB MP

Although U.K.-based Harman Technology now produces Ilford’s silver halide imaging products, the company has its own line of inkjet papers. Two of these incorporate a true Baryta layer: Harman Photo Matt FB Mp and Harman Photo Matt FB Mp Warmtone. (Ilford always made the best matt-surfaced black-and-white enlarging paper, and the warm-tone version should be of special interest to those of us who loved Agfa Portriga-Rapid.) These fiber-based papers have a feel similar to double-weighted enlarging papers and are available in a variety of cut sheet sizes. We tested both on the Canon PIXMA Pro 9500. Maybe it’s our penchant for black and white, but while the color prints looked good, we found these fiber-based papers work especially well for monochrome images, Ilford’s old forte anyway. Both delivered on promises of a deep blacks. For fans of glossy prints, Harman also offers a fiber-based glossy paper.

INNOVA FIBAPRINT

Another U.K.-based company, Innova, offers perhaps the widest range of fiber-based papers we’ve seen. Available in a variety of surfaces, the latest FibaPrint papers include Warmtone Gloss, Gloss, White Semi-Matte, and Ultra Smooth Gloss. All but the Ultra Smooth Gloss, which is a little lighter at 285gsm, are weighted at 300gsm. The name of each paper clearly represents its surface and all are compatible with both dye-based and pigment ink systems. In addition to a variety of cut-sheet sizes, the Innova papers come in rolls from 17 inches to 60 inches wide.

MOAB BY LEGION COLORADO FIBER

Legion Paper is as well-known for its wide variety of art and decorative papers as it is for digital media like the luxurious Somerset Velvet. Last year the company acquired Moab Paper, and it’s now retooling the combined product line. While some papers have been discontinued and others have undergone a name change, we think photographers will be pleased with its latest offerings.

Our favorite of these is a fiber-based paper called Colorado Fiber. It’s available in two surfaces, Satine and Gloss. Although it’s primarily designed for pigment inks, this midweight paper feeds easily into any printer but doesn’t sacrifice that photographic feel. The Satine surface has an especially nice look and feel to it — not quite matte but not semi-gloss or even luster. The Gloss, as promised by the company, is reminiscent of an F-surfaced silver paper. Both papers work well for color and black and white, and are available in sizes ranging from 5×7 inches to A4 in sheets, plus rolls from 13 to 60 inches wide.

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If you have a Canon, Epson, or HP inkjet printer and you use Canon, Epson, or HP ink­jet papers with it, you’ll get more or less predictable results. Each printer’s driver is expecting its own company’s papers, and its inks are made to interact with them. That’s great — unless you want to mix it up and print on any of a huge variety of interesting third-party inkjet papers.

In the chemical darkroom, unless you’re will­ing to invest time and effort hand-coating paper with light-sensitive emulsion, your choices of both surface and image tone are increasingly limited. But one of the advantages of inkjet printing is that you can print on almost any surface thin enough to fit through your printer. Products from independent inkjet paper makers include everything from reflective metallic and cloth canvas surfaces to heavyweight matte.

When you find a paper that piques your interest, how do you make it work with your printer? You probably won’t find third-party offerings pre-installed in your printer’s menu of paper profiles, which auto­matically tell the printer how to distribute its ink for best results.

A third-party paper may come with a recommendation that you set the driver to a specific, often similar paper in the printer company’s own line, which will appear in the driver’s pull-down menu. And some third-party paper makers offer downloadable profiles for their products on their Websites; these can be automatically installed into your printer driver so that the paper appears as a choice in the menu. When you have no profile or recommendation to start with, make your first test print with plain paper selected in the driver. That low-flow setting may provide more than enough ink for a good print.

Even if your system is color-managed, you’ll probably have to do more tests than with paper from your printer company. The cost of these papers varies widely. The least expensive are often affordable alternatives to basic papers made by your printer’s manufacturer. Fine-art papers are pricier, since you’re paying in part for archivally sound ingredients; metallic or coated-fabric surfaces will be more expensive too. But all of these materials can be purchased on the Web, so search to find the best price.

Ilford Galerie Smooth Pearl: Designed to feel like an RC (resin-coated) paper straight out of the old-fashioned fixer, this inkjet photo paper features the Ilford Pearl surface that has charmed so many darkroom denizens. Its microceramic coating means it dries instantly, with no streaking. Buy It

Kodak Professional Inkjet Photo Paper, Lustre Finish: Thick and sturdy, this surface of Kodak Professional paper has a photo paper base and a wide color gamut that remind us of the company’s wet-process papers. Downloadable profiles make it easier to color-manage, especially with Epson printers. Buy It

Moab Entrada Fine Art 300 Natural: This coated archival paper incorporates no optical brighteners — whitening agents that can decompose over time and affect image quality. All cotton, it is matte-surface, warm-toned, double-sided, and comes in two weights, a heavy, thick 300 gsm and a lighter 190 gsm. Buy It

Crane Museo II Archival Double Sided Paper: Made entirely from cotton rag processed with artesian water, this paper incorporates no optical brighteners. But the company says it produces the whitest whites and densest blacks of any non­brightened paper when used with Epson’s UltraChrome inks. It is actually double-sided, with one side smooth and the other velvet-textured. Buy It

Innova 280gsm Photo FibaPrint: This ultra-smooth, acid-free, “Fourdrinier made” paper is made the old-fashioned way — the Fourdrinier brothers’ machine was patented in 1803 — and its surface is very much like that of black-and-white fiber-based silver papers. It’s available in sizes ranging from 8.5×11 sheets to 24-inch-wide rolls (each 49.2 feet long), and it also comes in a heavier, natural-white, museum-quality version. Buy It

Hahnemühle Torchon: The coarse texture of this matte paper makes it an excellent choice for experiments with getting photographs to look like paintings, or for printing arty portraits in the Julia Margaret Cameron mold. It’s coated, bright white, and water-resistant. Buy It

Bergger High Definition Fine Art Satin Smooth Inkjet Paper: Arches has long been known for the quality of its artists’ printmaking and water­color papers. When Bergger applies its inkjet coating to Arches paper, the resulting stock works with both dye- and pigment-based inks, providing a very smooth result. Buy It

Lumijet Canvas Cloth Media: This is one of the few “canvas” inkjet surfaces that’s actually coated fabric, which means you can mount the finished print on a painting stretcher if you like. Printing on canvas takes practice; be sure to start with the plain-paper setting to use as little ink as possible. If you want a smoother, more flexible material, try the Lumijet line’s coated Belgian Linen. Buy It

Legion Somerset Enhanced Velvet: Available in sheets and rolls up to 60 inches wide, this archival paper has an excellent reputation among photographers who like to make large prints. But unlike most such high-end papers, it also comes in a 4×6-inch sheet size, for those who prefer to work on a small scale — or simply want to share their snapshots in style. Buy It

Lyson Pro Photo Gloss: The gloss of tradition­al darkroom papers is one of the hardest properties to match with ink­jet printing. Lyson’s pro-level entry does this well. It’s resin-based, so it feels like a traditional print, and it works with both dye and pigment inks. If your printer uses dye-based inks, and you’d prefer a fiber-based print, try Legion’s Darkroom Archival Gloss. Buy It

Size Matters

Here’s what those inkjet-paper designations mean

Once you’ve settled on the kind of paper you want, you have to pick the size. In the silver-halide darkroom the four most popular sheet sizes were 5×7, 8×10, 11×14, and 16×20. But because inkjet printer companies got their start making office machines, inkjet photo paper comes in workaday sizes such as letter and legal — designated with a baffling system of letter and number combinations. (In fact, the traditional 5×7, 11×14, and 16×20 sizes have been lost in transition.) Here’s some help translating U.S. and metric inkjet paper desig­nations into old-fashioned inches.

U.S. SIZES
A (Letter) 8.5×11 inches
Legal 8.5×14 inches
B (Ledger) 11×17 inches
Super B (same as metric A3+) 13×19 inches
C 17×22 inches
D 22×34 inches
(no letter designations for 4×6, 8×10, or 8×12)

METRIC SIZES
A5 5.8×8.3 inches
A4 8.3×11.7 inches
A3 11.7×16.5 inches
A3+ (same as U.S. Super B) 13×19 inches
A2 16.5×23.4 inches
A1 23.4×33.1 inches

The post How To Get The Most Out Of Your Photo Printing Paper appeared first on Popular Photography.

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