Saturday, January 17, 2009

The Big Brown Truck :)



Thursday morning the nice person from UPS showed up with my package from Adorama, which included a box of ProJet Elite Watercolor Linen Texture 11x14 printer paper, along with a number of ink cartridges for my R1900 printer. Now I've only been doing my own printing for about year due the fact that everything I've read about printing made it sound pretty dam hard, but I finally decided to bite the bullet give it a try. Luckily for me the first paper I tried was Iford Gold Fibre Silk (FGS)which came with instructions that allow even someone as slow as myself to get high quality prints.
One the other hand the instructions for Projet Elite pretty much suck if you're using a MAC rather then a PC. In fact I'd probably still be trying to figure out how to load/use the profiles that I'd download from Adorama if I hadn't just said screw it and went ahead and used Ilford's instructions.
So far I've done seven prints with using the new paper, including the first two that came out too dark, due the fact that there's not a specific profile for the Watercolor Linen Texture oh and the profiles are actually for the older R1800 rather then the R1900. Once I figured/guessed which profile to use the resulting prints came out quit nicely. In fact just a few minutes ago I printed out the second image ,which was shot at ISO 3200, and was pleasantly surprised by the quality of the print. I'm still trying to decide it I like texture of the paper and may try some more standard papers from Projet, namely Picture Rag to see what I like best.
So I'll give the paper a B+, but the person(s) who wrote the instructions gets an F-.
Next papers on my list to try are Hahnemuhle Fine Art Baryta 325 and Bamboo.
Mike
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4 comments:

  1. Vernon TrentJanuary 17, 2009 at 11:37 AM

    :) nice to see that you experiment with printing.

    I use only Hahnemühle Papers. Tried the Baryta last fall after getting back from 29p. Really cool stuff.

    I don't know if you have spent some time reading about color management, so if you haven't, please do. There is a lot of information and knowledge that helps you to understand the steps when printing. Then you'll know how to handle color profiles as well :)

    For B&W prints with Epson I'd also suggest that you should try Quad Tone Rip (http://www.quadtonerip.com/html/QTRoverview.html)
    With this software, you have more control over the gradients and much more :)

    Have a nice weekend, Mike.

    Cheers,
    VT

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  2. Mike CaryJanuary 17, 2009 at 1:10 PM

    Vernon,

    Thank you! I'm definitely going to try some Hahnemühle ASAP, I've only heard good thinks about it but have held off trying it until I was a little more familiar with printing due to the cost.
    I've downloaded Quad Tone Rip software to give it a try, first with Epson inks then later with Eboni-3MK inks from MIS.
    I'm what's called red green color blind so one of the first things I did when I first got serious about digital photography was to read-up on color management that and get an Eye One to profile my monitor.

    Mike

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  3. Vernon TrentJanuary 18, 2009 at 3:35 PM

    Hahnemühle is a really good paper.
    They are celebrating their 425 year anniversary (yep, four-two-five) and offer special kits/packs.

    ---
    To celebrate its 425th anniversary Hahnemühle announces a number of attractive special offers.

    The Hahnemühle Anniversary Photo Award is directed at photographers worldwide. The theme is “For Originals”: we are interested in the photographer’s unique angle that captures people, objects and moods from an original perspective. Hahnemühle is giving away non-cash prizes worth € 36.000 and is organizing the Anniversary Collection with presentations in the photo capitals of the world.

    An exclusive Anniversary Edition will be published in 2009 in the anniversary design using traditional or digital Hahnemühle papers. A high quality presentation folder will contain various papers from the Digital FineArt Collection. Photo Rag® Ultra Smooth, FineArt Baryta and Bamboo will be available. The black anniversary presentation box contains 50 sheets of each quality and is ideal as an elegant cover for portfolios. It is being designed exclusively for Hahnemühle by Prat, Paris.
    ---

    :-)

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  4. Mike CaryJanuary 18, 2009 at 5:04 PM

    Vernon,

    Decided to go with Photo Rag® Baryta as my first Hahnemuehle paper, should be here on Thursday or Friday.
    http://www.hahnemuehle.com/index.php?mid=1791&lng=us&pkat=1368

    Thanks Mike

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