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Paper Chase - Half Term Report - part 3 of 1 2 3 4

by Mike McNamee Published 01/11/2004

Hahnemuhle had new papers on display, some of which we have already had a look at. Significantly they have extended their range to include 13" and 17" stock for Epson 2100 and 4000 owners as well as introducing a complete new range following their collaboration with Lumijet, the famed American media supplier. The Lumijet Preservation (4 papers) and Portfolio (5 papers) ranges are now to be marketed in the UK. Hahnemuhle have always made at least some of the Lumijet range. The Preservation series has been re-engineered for use with pigment ink sets. Also newly announced from Hahnemuhle are board finishes at 1.2 mm and in sizes 36x44; 36x22 and 24x30 inches. We have tried these out and they look really nice.

The press release also mentions Canvas Satin which we assume is the 340gsm material we tested for the issue before last. This is one of the best canvases we have tested to date although it is not fully water resistant. Other new papers were a White Velvet 268gsm (similar to German Etching but with a brightener) and glossy 270GSM a premium high white paper for the photo retail industry.

We called at the Ilford stand, a little surprised to see them at all (as were others apparently). In terms of supply security for papers everything seems OK. They have decided to stop selling machines but will keep on selling a RIP for their media. The Studio Range of papers has been subsumed into the Galerie Range, where it came from despite claims to the contrary! This, the most profitable part of the Ilford empire, is likely to survive the knife of the receiver as the Moberly site is sold and business is moved to Switzerland.

Epson have rationalised their range a little and added a PremierArt Water Resistant Canvas, a really lovely 350gsm media which delivered sumptuous images and tremendous colour accuracy over the gamut. They also had Ultra smooth Fine Art Paper, a 250gsm highly calendared finish. They now have both Velvet and Somerset velvet Fine Art Paper and many of their materials are available in roll sizes from 13" to 44".

Felix Schoeller had a huge stand and they launched their new range of digital media Ultra 9. Available in three weights from 240 to 300gsm the prints have what they are calling a Glacier finish a kind of light lustre.The print provided certainly looks nice quality. It is described as having an enormous colour gamut, which is a puzzle; it looks quite white to me! It appears to have a certain amount of optical brightener in its PE-micro porous coating.

All the other big paper names had a presence at Photokina, the sharks are obviously circling the lucrative digital market expecting a feeding frenzy to break out over the next few years.

The Grey Tones

The greyscale linearity was good ranging down to a Dmax of 2.15 with even gradation all the way along. The blacks blocked up at around 20RGB points, better than many profiles we have tested. The grey tone balance was biased towards green (see graph). The cast was most obvious in natural daylight and D65 illumination, more neutral in low energy bulb light and quite close to neutral in tungsten light. The metamerism index was higher than we normally find with an Ultrachrome ink set on an art paper, mimicking the effect described above in this feature. As the greys move away from pure neutral the metameric index rises (there is more colour for the effect to leverage upon) and so we plotted the changes over the set of near neutrals placed in our audit target. The graph shows the grey of the print centred upon the Lab colour point a= -4 b= +3.The surrounding data points are those of the patches surrounding the image of the Spanish Dancer. The big triangle in the lower left quadrant of the graph shows where a perfectly matched profile would have mapped the greys, the base colour of the media. The metameric index of the most neutral swatch was 5.1, about twice the value we expect from an art paper and a well-matched profile. Overall though the grey errors were good for a canned profile and would satisfy all but the critical monochrome specialist. The metameric shift towards green is the most unpleasant of the possibilities and we would recommend adjusting the image in Photoshop ahead of printing if using this profile with a 2100 that behaved in the way ours did.

Calumet Brilliant

This is a new paper stocked by Calumet. At £14 ex VAT for a box of 50 A4 it is very competitively priced .The full range includes a gloss, a lustre and a matte. We have only looked at the gloss and used an Epson 2100 to test bed it. We bespoke profiled the paper so we could see what it really does.T he paper is 270gsm, 26 microns thick with a very smooth gloss finish.

The Colour Performance

Whole Gamut

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1st Published 01/11/2004
last update 09/12/2022 14:54:53

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