Hahnemuhle Bamboo Inkjet Paper

Today I made a test print on Hahnemuhle Bamboo paper. Bamboo is an inkjet paper and part of Hahnemuhle’s Natural Line range.

I have printed colour images before on this paper, but never black and white. I find that with colour images, warm hues are particularly well reproduced and certain complementary colour combinations really sing. This is keeping with Hahnemuhle’s own claims, but I today wanted to test their assertion that the paper is good for black and white too.

The paper has a very attractive surface, which I’ve attempted to show in the above images. Slightly textured, but still largely flat in profile, I was very happy with the way my monochrome piece sat on it.

Surely a paper I will play more with in future work.

Hahnemühle Photo Matt Fibre 200 gsm paper

Make a start in fine art inkjet printing

There is a beguiling range of inkjet printing papers available on today’s market, many of which have specialist characteristics and applications. If you are new to inkjet printing, or indeed are simply in the mood for a different support, it can be difficult to know which paper to choose.

I have several paper types that I regularly use, each for a different purpose. Among these is a category that I might call the inkjet equivalent of a straight print in the darkroom. Having made a first stab at processing an image, I want to print it out and begin to make decisions on how to proceed. I will return to processing, print again, and repeat as necessary. Towards the end of this procedure I will include the final paper, usually one of the most expensive available. The paper I use first will be an ‘economical’ one (for reasons of economy, naturally), but, crucially, must not be so far removed from the final type as to introduce a jump or glitch in the process. It’s pointless to work on a draft version of a print, only to have to start processing from scratch once the end paper is introduced.

A paper has recently come to my attention that I have considered for this draft / straight print role. It is Hahnemühle Photo Matt Fibre 200 gsm. You have to tread carefully with affordable matt papers because at the lower end of the market you may not achieve the kind of quality you need. In point of fact, I remember thinking for some time that printing on matt supports wasn’t worth the trouble - until I discovered fine art matt media. The problem was that the image was rendered with a noticeable grainy structure (quite unlike film grain, incidentally) that gave the image a rather un-photographic quality. A quality matt paper will not suffer this, rendering your image in a smooth and photographic fashion, with good tonal transitions.

The price point of Photo Matt Fibre suggests that it is an economical but not a budget paper. It is significantly cheaper that Photo Rag Matt (one of my favourite final print papers), at nearly half the price. Hahnemühle themselves advertise it as a good first paper for fine art work. I’d like to second that view here and recommend it myself as a good place to start.

A draft print on Hahnemühle Photo Matt Fibre 200 gsm. Made using an Epson R3000 printer.

I like two things about this paper. First, it has the aforementioned quality of rendering a photographic-type image that I consider the sine qua non of inkjet printing. Second, it is not a thin paper at 200 gsm, and comes with a slight texture reminiscent of more expensive fine art matt papers. I can therefore get very close to my final print with this media, before using my preferred exhibition paper.

Good tonality, the ability to render sharp details and a gentle fine art texture are qualities of Photo Matt Fibre.

There are two possibilities here then, as I see it. Either you’re starting out and are on safe ground with this paper as a first matt paper choice and a taste of fine art printing; or you’re already printing and might consider it as a replacement to your draft matt. In either scenario Photo Matt is a sound, keenly priced option.

You can buy Photo Matt Fibre via this link from Amazon:

Hahne Muhle 10641900 Photo Matt Fibre 25 A4 200 Inkjet Printer Paper

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Making my Statute of Liberty, Las Vegas print

This print is very much a hybrid of new and old technology. It was shot on Ilford Delta 100 film and scanned and processed digitally before being printed on an Epson R3000 inkjet printer. The film was processed using Ilfosol 3, a developer that works very well with Delta 100, if one wants to emphasise fine detail.

I had made a darkroom print before I went down the digital route. I had envisaged this image as a very crisp and tonally varied one, something that my darkroom print didn’t quite achieve. Admittedly, I hadn’t spent too long on it in the darkroom, and remember filing the work print for further work. I must have been trying out some new ideas in digital processing, because I scanned the negative knowing what was in it and began to work on it in earnest.

One of the joys of modern technology is control. I think the analog darkroom has more than enough control in itself; the digital darkroom multiplies even this much further. The image needed some substantial perspective correction (you can see I am looking up from the camera position) and cropping as a result. I wrestled for a long time with the balance between emphasising the details in the architecture and conveying the grain in a way that I liked. You can’t have it all your own way: enhancing midtone contrast comes at the expense of adding noise to smooth areas. You are forced to protect certain areas (like sky) with carefully made layer masks. I went backwards and forwards for a long time with the tones and detail enhancement. I learnt a great deal about processing along the way.

I hadn’t really considered the print finished until a friend asked me to talk about my work and show some prints. It was at that point that I decided that I had a definitive version, printed on Epson Archival Matte paper. Looking at it on screen and then seeing the print brings a certain surprise. There is a fullness and depth to the print, a ‘rightness’ and balance that you can’t appreciate looking at a screen. It is as if the image can finally breathe. Happily, my first audience greeted the print with a lot of praise. As a photographer you do hope that others will enjoy the aesthetic decisions you make and share and understand a modicum of your vision.